The Pantheon Collective

In November 2009, I had the crazy notion to start a publishing company with fellow author’s Stephanie Casher and James W. Lewis. I’d been watching the changes happening in the publishing industry and thought that the rise of e-books and the success and growth of the Kindle provided a unique opportunity for us to take our publishing destiny’s in our own hands. We officially joined forces in December 2009 and launched our first book, Sellout by James W. Lewis a mere six months later (June 20120) while blogging about the entire process of creating an LLC, building our brand, and preparing for the release of SELLOUT in real-time. In November of 2010, we launched Stephanie Casher’s debut novel, When Love Isn’t Enough. In 2011, we added James’ second novel, A Hard Man is Good to Find and my long-gestating debut, One Blood.

It quickly became clear to me that we were on the cusp of a brave new world. First of all, our e-book sales were moving much faster than our print sales, and although we’d secured global print book distribution via Lightning Source and ebook distribution across all e-reader platforms via smashwords and Amazon KDP, sales via Amazon soon out-surpassed all other channels. Publishers were being sued by the Department of Justice for price-fixing and collusion, self-publishers were moving millions of units on Amazon, and being signed to six figure contracts by the Big 6. Meanwhile, the 4 TPC Books were racking up fantastic reviews, literary awards, and sales. More importantly, we continue to make strides toward our mission of empowering and inspiring authors to take control of their publishing destiny’s.

Clearly, the TPC story is just beginning.

We enter our 4^th year more experienced and much wiser in the ways of this publishing world, but we will still need a lot of energy for the next phase of our journey. On the to do list for 2013 are launching our unique take on author services, publishing Stephanie Casher’s 2^nd and 3^rd novels (THE SPACE BETWEEN and SOULMATES), James W. Lewis 3^rd novel, TANGLED WEB, and maybe even Qwantu Amaru’s ONE BLOOD follow-up, THE UNEASY SLEEP OF GIANTS. We will also be attending several conferences, conducting bookstore, radio, and blog tours, interacting with as many book clubs as possible, continuing our blog, and turning our experiences into books and resources that will give insight into the business and personal sides of starting an independent publishing venture.