Happy Pub Day to Jamey Stegmaier, author of A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide!

I’m so happy to announce that today is the publication date for Jamey Stegmaier’s book on Kickstarter and crowdfunding, entitled A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide: Build a Better Company by Building Community (published by Berrett-Koehler). Jamey Stegmaier is president and co-founder of Stonemaier Games, and has successfully raised over $1.4 million on Kickstarter. The core message of the book is that crowdfunding isn’t about the money, it’s about building a community of supporters who believe in you. Here’s a description of the book:

Jamey Stegmaier knows crowdfunding. He’s a veteran of seven successful Kickstarter campaigns (and counting) that have raised over $1.4 million, and he’s the proprietor of the widely read Kickstarter Lessons blog. In this book he offers a comprehensive guide to crowdfunding, demonstrating that it can be a powerful way for entrepreneurs to grow their businesses by building community and putting their customers first.

This book includes over forty stories of inspiring successes and sobering disasters. Stegmaier uses these examples to demonstrate how to (and how not to) prepare for a campaign, grow a fan base, structure a pitch, find new backers, and execute many other crucially important “nuts and bolts” elements of a successful crowdfunding project.

But Stegmaier emphasizes that the benefits of crowdfunding are much more about the “crowd” than the “funding.” He shows that if you treat your backers as people, not pocketbooks—communicate regularly and transparently with them, ask their opinions, attend to their needs—they’ll become advocates as well as funders, exponentially increasing your project’s chances of succeeding.

As of pub date, the book is the #1 book in the crowdfunding category on Amazon.com and also an Amazon.com Hot New Release. You can buy a copy on Amazon.com by clicking here, or if you prefer to support indie book stores, click here. You can also buy direct from the publisher by clicking here. Please consider gifting this book to the creative and entrepreneurial individual(s) in your life!

New Client Alert: NAHID RACHLIN, Award-Winning Author of Persian Girls

I’m very pleased to announce that Fuse Literary has signed Nahid Rachlin, the talented and award-winning author of the memoir PERSIAN GIRLS. A bit about Nahid: Nahid Rachlin went to the Columbia University Writing Program on a Doubleday-Columbia Fellowship and then went on to Stanford University’s MFA program on a Stegner Fellowship. Her publications include a memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS, and four novels, JUMPING OVER FIRE, FOREIGNER, MARRIED TO A STRANGER, THE HEART’S DESIRE, and a collection of short stories, VEILS and CROWD OF SORROWS. Her individual short stories have appeared in more than fifty magazines, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Redbook, and Shenandoah. One of her stories was adapted by Symphony Space, “Selected Shorts,” and was aired on NPR’s around the country and two stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has received favorable reviews in major magazines and newspapers and is translated into Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Dutch, German, Arabic, and Persian.

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Nahid has been interviewed in NPR stations such as All Things Considered (Terry Gross), Poets & Writers, and Writer’s Chronicle. She has written reviews and essays for New York Times, Newsday, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Other grants and awards she has received include the Bennet Cerf Award, PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She has taught creative writing at Barnard College, Yale University and at a wide variety of writers conferences, including Paris Writers Conference, Geneva Writers Conference, and Yale Writers Conference. She has been judge for several fiction awards and competitions, including: Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction (2015)  sponsored by AWP; Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award sponsored by Poets & Writers; Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize; University of Maryland, English Dept., Teichmann Fiction Prize; and Barnard College, English Dept.

Jennifer will be working with Nahid to place her next fiction work, SYMMETRICAL LIVES, which focuses on identical twin sisters, Zarrin and Roya, born in Iran to an Argentinean mother and Iranian father. The novel is mainly set in the present day Tehran, and deals with themes of identity, self-realization, cross-cultural issues, motherhood, sisterhood, betrayal, unfathomable loss and envy, depression, marriage, impact of memories, illusion, and reality. It is an emotionally moving novel that asks: what happens when the person you know and love most in the world, your own sister, may have betrayed you? You can learn more about Nahid at her website http://www.nahidrachlin.com. Congratulations Nahid!

Sold! Congratulations to M.F. Alvarez on his Groundbreaking Work Which was Acquired by Lexington Books

A big congratulations to M.F. Alvarez on the sale of his groundbreaking book on the intersection between creativity and suicide, to Amy King at Lexington books! Here is a screenshot of the deal as announced on Publisher’s Marketplace:

              M.F. Alvarez

The book draws on a decade of research and features some well-known creative and accomplished individuals who chose to end their life. The aim of the book is to humanize rather than reduce to mere labels, the lives of these creative individuals by examining more closely their life’s work and contributions to society at large. M.F. Alvarez, a 2014 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, recently spoke at the Out of Darkness Walk on March 29, 2015, and is passionate about reducing the stigma surrounding mental health and increasing awareness regarding suicide and suicide prevention. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at UMASS-Amherst. You can check out his website here: http://www.mfalvarez.net/ or follow him on Twitter @mfalvarez121. Congratulations again Mike!

Recap of 2014, Welcome 2015, and Hello to Penumbra’s Spring Intern Natalie Marra!

2014 was an exciting whirlwind of a year for Penumbra Literary! We closed two book deals and are currently negotiating another, with multiple projects now out on submission and more in the pipeline for development. 2015 will be an even more exciting year with the release of two books:

• Rebecca Kelley’s debut fiction book, BROKEN HOMES AND GARDENS, will be published by Blank Slate Press in early May 2015. This contemporary romance, pitched as a cross between When Harry Met Sally meets Portlandia, explores what it means when two twenty-somethings fall in love without marriage or the picket fence. You can follow Rebecca Kelley on Twitter @rkelleywrites and/or like her Facebook author page. Stay tuned for more news!

• Jamey Stegmaier’s non-fiction book, now titled A CROWDFUNDER’S STRATEGY GUIDE: HOW I KICKSTARTED MY DREAM COMPANY, will be published by Berrett-Koehler in early Fall 2015. Jamey, a successful board game entrepreneur and Kickstarter guru, will reveal his time-tested techniques and strategies, including those of other successful Kickstarter and crowdfunded campaigns, to build success on any crowdfunding platform. This timely and pragmatic book will help many entrepreneurial individuals. Check Jamey out on his Twitter @jameystegmaier, and/or like his company Stonemaier Games’s Facebook Page.

Penumbra Literary would also like to take a moment to welcome its Spring 2015 intern, Natalie Marra!

Natalie in front of the set of the Potions classroom from the Harry Potter Studio Tour in Leavesdon, U.K.

Natalie is a senior English major and Communication Studies minor at Rowan University. She is excited to graduate this Spring 2015. Like all English majors, she adores reading and writing. Natalie studied abroad at King’s College London in the spring of 2013 and still won’t shut up about it. As a result, she eventually hopes to move to London and work in a creative field there, which will then lead to meeting Michael Fassbender and marrying him. Natalie is also an idealist (she blames it on all the reading), loves watching television, and is particularly interested in comedy. She would list Mindy Kaling, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler as a few of her absolute favorite comedy writers/actresses. Her other favorite reads include the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris. Natalie is very excited to work with Jennifer at Penumbra Literary. Welcome Natalie!

Cole Ledford Signs with Penumbra Literary!

We are very excited to announce that Cole Ledford has signed with Penumbra Literary!

Cole Ledford is a savings expert, as seen on two seasons of TLC’s hit show Extreme Couponing. Cole is a busy junior at The Ohio State University, studying business full-time. Also an activist in the LGBQT community, Cole recently launched a social media campaign “Love > Hate” and shared his personal experiences on #LoveisLouder.

   Cole Ledford

Cole is a sought-after speaker and contributor to groups and media outlets across the country. He is very excited to be working with Penumbra Literary to develop a non-fiction project on couponing for students. Cole is very active on social media. You can follow him on Twitter @ColeLedford11 and support him on his Facebook Loud > Hate Page. Welcome Cole, we are so glad to have you on board!

New Client: Mike Alvarez signs with Penumbra Literary!

We are pleased to announce that Mike Alvarez has signed with Penumbra Literary!  Mike Alvarez is a Communication PhD student and an ALANA Diversity Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.  He graduated summa cum laude from Rutgers University, and received his MA and MFA degrees from Goddard College.

Collectively, Mike’s research and writings seek to humanize (rather than medicalize) suicide. Mike wrote his MFA thesis on his admission to a mental hospital following an aborted suicide attempt. Prior to that, he won the Charles Flaherty Award for his Henry Rutgers thesis on suicide and phenomenal creativity. In recent years, Mike has presented his scholarly work on the deaths of Iris Chang, Kurt Cobain, and other such important figures at the Psychology & the Other Conference, and the Creativity & Madness Conferences. Meanwhile, his critical and creative writings have appeared in Mason’s Road, Connotation Press, and Pitkin Review, among others. As part of his doctoral studies, he is currently examining the representation of suicide in film, and how parents who have lost a child to suicide express grief in cyberspace.

Mike is at work on his first book entitled A Violin in the Void: The Paradox of Suicide and Creativity, a groundbreaking examination of the link between suicide and creativity, synthesized from hundreds of sources, years of research, and travel to galleries and archives nationwide.  Penumbra Literary is looking forward to working with Mike on such an timely and culturally relevant topic. 

New Client: Jamey Stegmaier signs with Penumbra Literary!

Jamey Stegmaier is the co-founder and president of Stonemaier Games, a strategy board game startup in St. Louis. Following a lifelong passion for game design and a more recent interest in the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, Jamey successfully funded his first publicly released game, Viticulture, in the fall of 2012 to the tune of $65,000. Jamey applied his research and experiential knowledge of Kickstarter to a blog series on http://www.stonemaiergames.com called “Kickstarter Lessons,” which quickly grew in number and popularity.

Jamey also applied his expertise to a new Kickstarter campaign in May of 2013 for a game called Euphoria, raising just over $309,000 in 28 days. He continues to write Kickstarter Lessons to benefit other project creators, and now he is applying that content to a book to expand his current readership.

Jamey works full time at Washington University in St. Louis. He writes a daily personal blog as well as dystopian fiction, and he is just as avid of a reader as he is a writer. He is excited to be represented by Jennifer Chen Tran.

New Clients: S. Gregory Boyd and Brian Pyne sign with Penumbra Literary!

S. Gregory Boyd and Brian Pyne, both prominent attorneys in the interactive gaming industry, have signed with Penumbra Literary!

S. Gregory Boyd

S. Gregory Boyd is partner and chairman of the Interactive Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz.  He represents a wide variety of interactive entertainment and new media clients, counsels brands, media companies and advertising agencies on a variety of digital issues, and is co-author and editor of Business and Legal Primer for Game Development (Charles River Media).  Gregory also serves as an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School, where he teaches a seminar in advanced intellectual property.  The Legal 500 has praised him for his work with media and technology companies, and he is frequently quoted in articles in publications such as: Gamasutra, Edge-Online, CNN, Fortune, Forbes and the New York Law Journal.

Brian Pyne

Brian Pyne is the Director of Legal Affairs and Enforcement for the Entertainment Software Rating Board, where he investigates enforcement matters, negotiates agreements, maintains a trademark portfolio, and assists in policy development.  Prior to joining the ESRB, Brian was Associate Counsel to Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., the parent company of Rockstar Games and 2K Games, where he negotiated agreements, reviewed game assets and advised on a variety of issues pertaining to game development and publishing.

Gregory and Brian are currently co-authoring a new book on video game and interactive entertainment law.  Jennifer, a former gamer, is very excited to work with both Gregory and Brian on such a cutting-edge subject.  Stay tuned for updates.

Authors Lyn Di Iorio and Pamela L. Laskin Sign with Penumbra Literary!

Penumbra Literary is delighted to welcome two more authors: Lyn Di Iorio and Pamela L. Laskin.

Lyn Di Iorio

Lyn Di Iorio is the author of Outside the Bones, a novel that won the ForeWord Review’s 2011 Silver Book of the Year Award for literary fiction, was Best Debut Novel on the 2011 Latinidad List, and was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Prize.  She was second on 2012’s Top Ten Authors to Watch and Read List.  She has also written Killing Spanish: Literary Essays on Ambivalent U.S. Latino/a Identity (2004), co-edited Contemporary U.S. Latino Literary Criticism (2007), and Moments of Magical Realism in US Ethnic Literatures (2012).  Lyn received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree from Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program, where she was a Patricia Harris fellow, and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.  She is currently a professor of English at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  Lyn is also writing a second novel entitled The Sound of Falling Darkness, an excerpt of which was a runner-up for the 2011 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Novel-in-Progress Award.

Pamela Laskin
Photo by Joe Zarba

Pamela L. Laskin is the author a memoir, My Life in Shoes (2011), and also wrote several poetry chapbooks including, Grand Central Station, which won the Millennium Poetry Prize, Remembering Fireflies, Secrets of Sheets, Ghosts, Goblins and Geodes, Van Gogh’s Ear, Daring Daughters/Defiant Dreams, The Plagiarist, and The Bonsai Curator.  She has also published several children’s books, such as, A Wish Upon a Star, Historical Heroic Horses, Music From the Heart, and The Buried Treasure, short stories, including two young adult stories.  Her young adult story, “Visitation Rites”, originally published in magazine format, was expanded on and published in 2012 by Diversion Press.  She has also co-edited two anthologies: The Heroic Young Woman, a book of original feminist fairy tales, and Life on the Moon: My Best Friend’s Secrets, a collection of young adult fiction. She has received a SEED grant for Poetry Outreach, Research Foundation CUNY grants for completion of creative work, and is a Colin Powell Fellow.  Pamela is currently a lecturer in the English Department at the City College of New York, where she directs the Poetry Outreach Center.

Jennifer is excited to work with Lyn and Pamela, both co-editors, on an anthology about women’s relationships with their shoes.

New Client Alert: Sarah Gilbert signs with Penumbra Literary!

Great news! Penumbra Literary has signed Sarah Gilbert, a Portland-area writer and blogger.

Sarah is an award-winning memoirist, original mommy blogger, mother of three boys, and former investment banker. Sarah is Editor-in-Chief of Stealing Time magazine. She has been published in Oregon Humanities, Creative Nonfiction, United’s Hemispheres magazine, and received the 2011 Water~Stone Review Judith Kitchen Creative Nonfiction Prize, a ‘Notable’ mention in Best American Essays 2012, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for her essay, ‘Veteran’s Day.’ She also received second prize in the 2013 Ooligan Press Write What You Know Nonfiction Contest. She calls herself a domestic realist. Her husband, an Army Reservist, is finishing his third year in Kuwait. Her home blog is cafemama.com.

Sarah Gilbert. Photo by Jerome Hart.

Penumbra is very excited to work with Sarah!  Stay tuned for more news.