Polson author co-founds innovative publishing firm
<p>Gary Cook's book, "Lonewalker," is one of the first two volumes published by his new company, Inari Publishing.</p>
A new publishing company with offices in Polson and Bloomington, Ind., is using two novels by Polson author Gary Cook to jump-start the company.
Inari Publishing is a collaboration between Cook and Mike Kelsey, who is based in Indiana and has more than three decades of experience in producing and editing books. The two met in Japan, where Kelsey was a journal editor and translator at Nanzan University and Cook was running the nonprofit Montana Study Program with his wife, Yasuko, a Japanese native.
“We are the antithesis of a vanity press,” Cook said. “We’re a small publishing company that publishes only established authors.
“Our goal is to make a decent living for authors who have been ripped off by big traditional publishers” or have been ignored by traditional publishing companies, he said.
Self-publishing is a means for a lot of aspiring writers to try to establish names for themselves, and while small publishers can make money at it, it’s not as easy for self-published writers, Cook maintained.
“If you self-publish you have no time to keep writing,” he said. “What we’re really after is something that comes close to a writers’ co-op.”
Cook said he and Kelsey crunched the numbers, and by taking a 15 percent commission and publishing smaller runs of about 5,000 books, it’s profitable for both Inari Publishing and its writers.
“We’re finding a way for good writers to make a living, and that includes niche writers,” he said. “We’re trying to get the author as much money as possible.”
Using Inari’s publishing formula, an author would have all of his or her expenses paid well before 700 books are sold, Cook said.
Inari offers writers a full range of traditional publishing services, from editorial through production, as well as marketing and distribution.
One of the reasons the business partners decided to establish an office in Polson is because Northwest Montana offers a drier climate in which to store quantities of books, Cook said.
No matter where they’re stored, it’s a heavy proposition. An initial run of 3,000 copies of one of Cook’s novels came in 140 boxes weighing well over two tons.
Cook’s books, “Lonewalker” and “A Murder of Wolves,” are the first two volumes published by Inari. He draws on his military and law enforcement experience in his fiction.
He is a U.S. Marine combat veteran who served during the Vietnam War and is a former sheriff’s deputy with years of experience working undercover. After Cook was injured in a water-skiing accident in 1980, he decided he was weary of “going from one adrenaline fix to the next” and decided to go to college.
He showed up at the University of Montana and told a journalism professor: “I think I’d make a great investigative reporter.”
But he’d never taken a writing class.
By the time Cook was done he’d earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing on a full-ride scholarship at UM.
His writing career didn’t immediately take off, though, and after college he was broke, with no car, so he took a sheriff’s deputy job in Sanders County, where he wore himself out working upwards of 100 hours a week investigating crimes. When a good friend of his, who was teaching in Japan, came through and told him he should come over to Japan and spend time on his writing, Cook took him up on the offer.
Taking a breather from life worked. Cook wrote “Graveyard Rules,” published in 1988 by Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books division.
Cook met Yasuko in Japan and together they ran the Montana Study Program for 17 years, bringing more than 200 of Japan’s “best and brightest” college students to Western Montana for academic learning experiences and exposure to the American lifestyle.
Around 2006, when fuel prices went through the roof, it was no longer feasible to operate the nonprofit transcontinental program. Cook returned his focus to writing, but when his agent, well-known New York book editor Knox Burger, died two years ago Cook found himself at a loss.
“I couldn’t find another [agent] that I felt compatible with,” he said. “And the book publishing world walked off a financial cliff. It was a good time to circle the wagons and just write.”
“Lonewalker,” Inari Publishing’s first book off the press, originally was published in March 2006 under the title “Blood Trail.” Cook’s next novel, “A Murder of Wolves,” is at the printer.
For more information about Inari Publishing, go online to www.inaripublishing.com.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.