February 20, 2008: Kenneth Arnold, a veteran of forty years in the book industry, has announced the formation of KenArnoldBooks, LLC. The company’s model challenges the industry’s traditional ways of doing business, printing its books on demand, selling primarily through Amazon.com, and paying authors quarterly. KenArnoldBooks offers standard royalty contracts; it does not accept subsidies from its authors.

“We will not be selling our books through the big distributors, such as Ingram and Baker and Taylor,” Arnold said, “nor will we accept returns from booksellers. We intend to cultivate a network of independent partner stores with favorable terms, however.”

The company’s list reflects the publisher’s interests in fiction, poetry, spirituality, contemporary culture, political satire, and humor. Its authors are well published as well as promising first-timers.

The company expects to publish 10 new titles in 2008.

Available now on Amazon; publication dates are set for April 15:

Samuel Joseph for President: Media, Politics, Religion, Race, by Malcolm Boyd. The best-selling author of Are You Running with Me, Jesus? skewers American culture and religion in five trenchant stories particularly appropriate in this election year.

High Hat, by Oregonian columnist, Greg Mandel. The Pope’s packin’ heat in this send up of the hard-boiled detective novel. Disguised as A. Pope, Private Eye, he battles the Neo-Canadian Amish Mafia, which has stolen St. Peter’s bones, for control of the Vatican underworld.

Available on Amazon March 1; publication date is set for May 1:

Zublinka Among Women, by Robert Wexelblatt, is a novel about a European philosopher living in the US since being expelled from a communist country. Following the fall of communism, he returns to face the shocking truth of his former life. Admired as a superb ironist, Wexelblatt is the author of two previous short-story collections praised by numerous literary journals, as well as The New York Times Book Review.

Available now on Amazon; publication date, April 1:

Circle of the Way, by Ken Arnold. O’Neill playwright and award-winning poet, Ken Arnold writes a poetic narrative of his recovery from prostate cancer, drawing on the healing qualities of Japanese art, music, and culture.

Books currently planned for April through June: Grounded in Love, an urgent book on environmental spirituality by Episcopal priest and beloved author, Nancy Roth; Bonny’s America: Cut the Woman Some Slacks, a book of humorous essays by popular Minneapolis columnist, Bonny Thomson Belgum.

Scheduled for September are Feast of the Universe and Psalm of the Universe, two resource books in environmental spirituality from the world’s religions, edited by Anne Rowthorn, award-winning author of Your Daily Life is Your Temple.

Kenneth Arnold is the former publisher for Church Publishing Inc., the book company for the Episcopal Church. His wife Connie Kirk is the company’s marketing director. A graduate of New York University’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, she studied under the late Neil Postman.

Contact:

Connie Kirk 503-227-4699
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