Who We Are and Why

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How it Started 

Rather than the predictable condensed CVs, hackneyed corporate catchwords, and toothy headshots, I thought I would tell our origin story. After all, at the heart of it, we are in the business of telling stories.

My name is Pat Walsh and I came into publishing in a strange way. It happened in San Francisco in the late 1990s. I had worked at a newspaper for a decade, and then, as disastrous as it was brief, I went into public relations. During this foray, I met a man who started a publishing house and he, without much thought, made me Editor-in-Chief. I knew nothing about publishing, and he knew even less. When founding MacAdam/Cage, we inadvertently ignored all “publishing wisdom” and rote practices. We didn’t know it at the time, but our collective ignorance – coupled with a healthy budget – was our greatest asset. We had an enthusiastic team and a drive to invest in and promote our books. We made mistakes – expensive and time-consuming ones – but we had a clarity of vision and a strong company ethos. Everyone we met in publishing was bearish on our future. Instead, we had a number one New York Times bestseller in three years from hanging out our shingle.

The point I learned above all is this, best said by anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I also learned that publishing is a dysfunctional industry based on a 140-year-old business model, and finding success has eluded many smart people and worthy projects. Huge multinational publishers try to close the marketplace to all competitors and, if they had their way, there would only be a limited number of titles available to consumers – all controlled by them. Put bluntly, the big companies have rigged the game. But their plan to close the market and create an oligopoly is flawed.

After years working for other publishers and then as an independent editor/consultant, book project manager, and ghostwriter, I learned that book writing is not a meritocracy. I have seen great books wither on the vine while much more mediocre books sell in staggering numbers. Despite attempts to jam the same products down readers’ throats, audience demand for new voices not only persists, it grows.

Editorial content may not be merit based but book publishing strategies, marketing plans, and implementation are. Opportunities for thoughtful, important books are everywhere provided they are supported by a strong team, an imaginative plan, and a manageable budget. This is the genesis of the Walsh Book Team.

Who We Are 

After working for multiple other publishers and then operating as a publishing consultant and independent contractor in all aspects of publishing, I concluded that I needed a team of dedicated professionals to accomplish the kind of success that I wanted for my clients. Easier said than done. It took three years of working with scores of editors, marketing consultants, publishing professionals, production experts, and even freelancers to piece together my perfect team. Establishing our LLC partnership in early 2023, we have the ideal mix of experience/business acumen/management with youth/vigor/technology to
overcome hurdles.

Editorial Director Ingrid Lola Nilsson was the first to partner with me. Her goals are clear: To work with authors to make their books inspiring, informative, and impactful to readers. In my thirty plus years of working with words, I recognize her natural talent at helping authors tell their stories better and I’ve never known anyone else who can advocate on behalf of the reader as well. Ingrid is a rising star in our industry and her constant thirst to get even better is, possibly, WBT’s
greatest asset.

Project Director Maria McCoy is one of the most experienced and qualified Project Managers in any field. Her skills at breaking down initiatives to a comprehensible and realistic series of steps is rivaled only by her organizational skills and professional acumen. We all consider it a great compliment that she deemed fit to forgo several lucrative corporate projects to join our team and work on projects that have cultural, educational, and literary merit. Maria manages our operations like clockwork, keeps the business running smoothly, and elegantly evades the pitfalls that kill projects.

Marketing Director Maya Biekert is a wunderkind. Her collegiate and post collegiate career offered her the opportunity to work anywhere she wanted, including many storied high-tech firms. But her love of books led her to want to use her talents and perspectives on the ever-changing ways that the arts, especially books, intersect with business. Her ideas are as creative as they are cutting edge and she turns every problem or hurdle into an opportunity to promote, publicize, and sell our titles.

This is our team. We each oversee our own staff and we will certainly be growing quickly, but our ethos and goals will never change.

What We Do 

WBT often gets lumped in as a “book packager,” a catchall term for those who create publishing projects and place them with traditional publishing houses for a fee and share of the royalties. Our role in this business is so much more though. While we take on a number of a la carte tasks, see list here, our primary mission is this: build a dedicated virtual publishing house centered around each client and prepare and execute a plan that has a high likelihood of achieving our author’s goals and strong sales around the world.

We have relationships with many carefully chosen partner vendors including traditional publishers, book sales and distribution teams, digital and web press printers, graphic designers, marketing and advertising firms, television-radio-newspaper publicity firms, book tour specialists, and so on.

With our core team, and our staff, we investigate, vet, and engage the perfect vendor partner for each element of a fruitful publishing launch. And, being industry insiders, our clients’ costs are at the industry wholesale level, providing significant savings. Due to the contracts with our vendors, any royalty share
greatly favors the author. For example, the standard traditional royalty rate is 7.5% of retail for trade paperback; our clients get an average of 50% of the publisher’s net. Likewise, we are able to maximize our vendors’ contributions and efforts with the promise of future work and the threat of moving our business across the street if they don’t perform to our expectations. Unlike traditional publishing, where the author is at best an obedient tool to promote via interviews and book signings and at worst a pesky afterthought, WBT includes and represents the author in every major initiative and decision. They are a key part of their publishing journey, not a piece of baggage along for the ride.

We often manage the project from the first words on a screen up through dozens of formats and reprintings – including expanding outside of the US. One of the most important components we have is a strong subsidiary rights department to sell TV/film/documentary rights, audiobook rights, and foreign/translation licensing. We attend all major publishing conventions/trade shows like the London and Frankfurt book fairs, with the goal of breaking our books across the globe.

As a team, we relish the variety of our projects. Depending on the month, we could find ourselves working on a museum-quality coffee table book that we printed in Hong Kong, launching a novel with a glowing review in the New York Times, or touring a business book author around the country speaking at colleges, conferences, or conventions.

When we accept a client, and there is a great deal of discussion before we do, we are starting a multi-year relationship that we are all invested in. We need clients that meet our criteria: a book that affects the reader positively, a strong market for readers, manageable but high expectations, the means to support the book with enough resources, an understanding that publishing is a business and it has risks, and the ineffable human qualities that make them a good fit for the team.

While we primarily find authors by referral from existing clients, literary agents, and publishers, we are always excited to review new prospects. Please contact us for information on how to apply.

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