An as-told-to interview with a Chicago publishing whiz, for our Spring Books issue.
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“When I first started Agate Publishing in spring 2003, I was working out of my basement. I had a cell phone, a laptop, and a DSL line. That was pretty much Agate Publishing.
“Around that same time, some former colleagues of mine from a folded dot-com reached out to me about creating their own content for the schools where they then worked. I saw this as a business opportunity, so we created a new business called ProBooks. ProBooks is essentially a digital content service that creates resources and courses for textbook publishing companies and for-profit education companies.
“But we’re not reducing our print publishing. This past fall we had our most successful book to date: I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words. It was a classic case of timing. We’d acquired the project much earlier in the year, but when Jobs retired and passed away, the book just blew up. It was on the New York Times best seller list.
Read more interviews:
»James O’Neill, Houghton Mifflin
»Victor David Giron, Curbside Splendor
»Rian Murphy, Drag City
»Mike Levine, Northwestern University Press
