A Funny Thing Happened. . . or How I Accidentally Started a Publishing Company

by Catherine Rayburn-Trobaugh: President, Word Branch Media

A funny thing happened on the way to getting a federal contract: I accidentally started a publishing company. In the 25 plus years that I have been writing professionally, it never occurred to me that I would ever own a publishing company--yet here I am. It happened this way.

I was working diligently as a federal subcontractor through my company, CRT Commercial Media*, when the funding for my project was cut. Although I had several freelance gigs, I liked the steady paycheck so I decided to bid on more contracts. But federal contracting can be a fickle thing, so I wanted a little residual income that I wouldn’t have to tend to much when I was busy. I thought I would exploit my little-used literary criticism degree and write short literary analysis of individual poems and publish them for the Kindle e-reader for a reasonable price. I called them Befuddled Students’ Guides because I wanted to make literature accessible to the non-major as well as English majors and lay people who are just interested in knowing more.

Well, what you know—they sold.

I spent several months reading everything I could find on e-publishing and teaching myself the ins and outs of publishing on Amazon. Soon I added Barnes & Noble as well as PDFs to my venues.

After a few more publications and a side-trip into writing guides, a friend told me that she would like to publish some guides on psychology and family dynamics—her field of expertise. I mentioned this to another friend and got a similar response.

The idea of federal contracting began to fade as I realized that the idea of starting a publishing company made me truly happy. And I thought I could make other people happy as well.

Word Branch Publishing was born.

My vision for Word Branch is to publish high quality e-guides written by authors who are experts in their fields for students, educators, and professionals . . . or just people who want to know more about a given subjects. The Befuddled Guide series currently offers literature and writing titles, but we’ll soon be adding guides on law, psychology, sales and more. These guides are priced reasonably, beginning at .99, and are written for understandability and are easy to use.

Authors who are interested in becoming a part of the team can pitch their ideas by emailing me at catherine@wordbranch.com. Currently, I am working with a focus group to work the bugs out of the system, but I should be ready to open publishing up to a wider circle in March of 2012.

Please visit Word Branch Publishing at http://wordbranch.com.


*2015 Update: CRT Commercial Media is now Word Branch Media.

---