About Blue Ear Books

Blue Ear Books, based in Seattle and Cape Town, publishes selected new and reprinted nonfiction books of global and/or topical interest, with a preference for personally reported narrative. Our ethos is hospitable, driven by the specific interests and priorities of the authors we publish, yet at the same time selective and rigorous in maintaining high standards in editing as well as book design and production.

The name Blue Ear Books is an homage to Blue Ear (1999-2005), a pioneering online periodical co-founded by Ethan Casey and praised at the time by James Fallows as “ambitious” and “innovative.” The original Blue Ear’s aspiration was to explore the potential of the Internet and other then-novel digital publishing media to reach readers instantly worldwide, with minimal distribution costs.

Blue Ear’s crowning accomplishment was the book 09/11 8:48 a.m.: Documenting America’s Greatest Tragedy, an 80,000-word collection of personal writings compiled and edited in ten days during the second half of September 2001. It was the first-ever book covering the events of September 11 and was published less than three weeks after that date, using then-unproven print-on-demand (POD) technology. About 09/11 8:48 a.m., John Sutherland wrote in The Guardian:

[Ethan Casey and Prof. Jay Rosen of the New York University Department of Journalism] have functioned like conductors of an orchestra, blending others’ talents into unity. One is obliged to think analogically, because there has been nothing quite like this before. … The content of the 320-page book … is choral. It brings together dozens of witnesses, weaving their voices into a complex narrative. … On one level, 09/11 8:48 a.m. looks like a spontaneous reaction of the kind that led bereaved New Yorkers to plaster city walls with posters, advertising missing loved ones or mourning their loss. But this book has been subjected to stringent editing. … It is something complete – more complete (because truer to the event) than if it arrived next Easter.

Since then, modern printing technology and digital communications have made it both possible and necessary to write, publish, and promote books in new ways. Books that would not have been commercially viable in the past can now be made available much more efficiently and inexpensively. Blue Ear Books, founded in 2015, is only one of many nimble companies that have learned how to take advantage of those changes, but we recognize that what is crucial is to maintain high standards in all elements of book production.

Blue Ear Books also recognizes that the writing and publishing of books is inherently not primarily a commercial business, but rather a set of mission-driven cultural vocations, and that the real work of editing and designing books is not subject to technological shortcuts. This means, among other things, that Blue Ear Books is firmly opposed to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in any aspect of the production of any of its books. Our books are written, edited, and designed by human beings.

Blue Ear Books endorses the views expressed by critic Ted Gioia in “The Glorious Future of the Book”:

In this coming dark age of bogus media, the physical book is more important than ever. My humble bookshelf is a fail-safe bunker where bots and AI agents and intrusive technocrats cannot enter.

Power brokers can now destroy digital documents instantaneously. But they have no power over dried ink on a printed page. Even the most repressive regimes struggle to control physical texts (and don’t think they haven’t tried).

That’s why I envision a glorious future for the book. It solves problems that didn’t even exist a few years ago. And will counter all new threats from digital tech in the future.

As the legendary editor Jason Epstein argued in an influential series of lectures at the New York Public Library in 1999:

Trade book publishing is by nature a cottage industry, decentralized, improvisational, personal; best performed by small groups of like-minded people, devoted to their craft, jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of writers and to the diverse interests of readers. If money were their primary goal these people would probably have chosen other careers. They might, for example, have become literary agents. … But most publishers and editors I have known prefer to think of themselves, as I do, as devotees of a craft whose reward is the work itself and not its cash value.

One of the tasks that cannot be automated is book marketing, because books are not a mass-produced consumer product; every book is unique. Blue Ear Books will always do all that it can to support the promotion, distribution, and marketing of any book it publishes, and we have a body of experience and a network of relationships to serve those ends. But one thing that has always been true, and remains true, is that there is no better salesperson for any book than its author. Therefore, authors must be enterprising on their own behalf. This principle is reflected in the business model of Blue Ear Books, in which – most of the time, and by mutual agreement – authors bear responsibility for publishing costs and logistics and, by the same token, also keep most of the revenue from sales after publication.

The main costs of book publishing are:

• • • • editing
      • cover design and art
      • page (interior) design
      • printing (this cost is minimized by print-on-demand).

       

Blue Ear Books arranges for these tasks to be done, on an agreed schedule and to high standards of quality. Blue Ear Books publisher Ethan Casey or another editor is hired personally by each author on a negotiable basis, depending on the scope of the work needed. Decisions on both the specifications and the schedule of design work are made jointly by author and publisher. Most Blue Ear Books covers are designed by Sean Robertson, and most interiors are designed by Jennifer Haywood.

If you are, or want to be, an author and would like your book to be considered for publication by Blue Ear Books, feel free to get in touch.