Vineyard Stories (meaning me, since I am the editor, publisher and sole full time employee), is an Island publisher. I am based on Martha’s Vineyard, but more importantly, I take my inspiration from the Vineyard.

I’ve been in business since 2005, and I’ve published about 20 books. All of them are about this Island that I love so much – the culture, the history, the ethos that makes it such a draw for the thousands who live here or who visit here only one time or dozens of times.

The books I’ve published have been about artists or boat builders or cooks or farms or birding or the history of the Vineyard.

They are most often “pretty” books – heavily illustrated, sometimes coffee-table sized, lush with photographs or paintings or old pictures.

They include four children’s books, two mystery novels, two self-help books, three cookbooks, a book on fishing that doubles as an art book, two local histories about fascinating places, and even one collection of newspaper columns from the 1960s.

The thing they have in common – besides having captured my interest – is the ability to offer a little window on one of the most interesting places in the United States: an Island, eight miles off the coast of Massachusetts, a place with no McDonalds, no stoplights, and no malls.

What it does have, besides unparalleled beauty, is 16,000 hard-working year-round residents who are quirky and smart and innovative and who seem, quite often, to have a book manuscript in the bottom drawer of their desks or stuck in the front recesses of their brains.

Which is where I come in.

I’ve lived on the Vineyard for nine years. My husband and I founded Vineyard Stories; together, we’d already had seventy years experience in publishing. We were both print journalists who’d had successful newspaper careers; I veered off into books in 1996, when I started to write corporate histories for a small book publisher in Atlanta.

Because it was a small publishing house, I often had a hand in every aspect of the books, from concept through design. Moving to the Vineyard opened up an opportunity to help others with their own book needs. My husband and I worked together until his death in 2008. Now, I operate the company.

Like the place where it was founded, Vineyard Stories is unusual. It’s a custom publishing house – in essence, a publishing gun for hire. People hire me to do their books; a few years ago, you might have called us “vanity press.” But we’re so far from the “publish anything that comes in” reputation of vanity press that it’s like calling Hemingway a third-rate talent who got lucky.

We provide a full range of services. We are very opinionated, and we often turn books away we don’t think will sell. We store and sell what we create. And we often hire all the talent to get a book done: artists, photographers, writers, designers, editors.

We also, of course, take a book already written or conceived and whip it into the sort of shape we think will appeal to our audiences. I routinely tell people they’re going to pay me to beat them up editorially so we can get an amazing book they’ll be proud to bear their name.

It must all work: my books have received state, national, and international awards.