The History Press is a prolific, low-cost operation. The books tend to be brief \u2014 under 200 pages \u2014 and illustrated with photos drawn from local archives or taken by the authors themselves. The print runs are small, and authors are usually paid through royalties from sales rather than advances up front. History Press books rarely are major hits, but they can still attract substantial attention for works\u00a0tailored to specific areas,\u00a0and they tend to keep selling over time. Editions selling 15,000 copies or more include \u201cLong-Ago Stories of the Eastern Cherokee,\u201d by Lloyd Arneach, Alphonso Brown’s \u201cA Gullah Guide to Charleston\u201d and Gayle Soucek’s \u201cMarshall Field’s,\u201d a tribute to the Chicago department store.<\/p>\n
The King guide, which has sold around 8,500 copies so far, received an unexpected lift \u2014 an endorsement by its subject, who was shown the book at Maine’s Bridgton Books and posted an Instagram of himself giving it a thumbs-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was genuinely shocked in the best possible way,\u201d Kitchens says, adding that she saw the book as a kind of thank-you note to King. \u201cEvery choice I made while writing the book, I made with him in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting the story right<\/p>\n
History Press authors say they like the chance to tell stories that they believe haven\u2019t been heard, or were told incorrectly.<\/p>\n
Rory O’Neill Schmitt is an Arizona-based researcher, lecturer and writer who feels\u00a0her native New Orleans\u00a0is often \u201cportrayed in way that feels false or highlights a touristy element,\u201d like a \u201ccaricature.\u201d She has responded with such books as \u201cThe Haunted Guide to New Orleans\u201d and \u201cKate Chopin in New Orleans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brianne Turczynski is a freelance writer and self-described \u201cperpetual seeker of the human condition\u201d who lives outside of Detroit and has an acknowledged obsession with \u201cPoletown,\u201d a Polish ethnic community\u00a0uprooted and dismantled in the 1980s\u00a0after General Motors decided to build a new plant there and successfully asserted eminent domain. In 2021, The History Press released Turczynski’s \u201cDetroit\u2019s Lost Poletown: The Little Neighborhood That Touched a Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the journalist work that followed the story seemed to lack a sense of closure for the people who suffered,\u201d she said. \u201cSo my book is a love letter to that community, an attempt for closure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kitchens has followed her King book with the story of an unsolved homicide, \u201cThe Murder of Dorothy Milliken, Cold Case in Maine.\u201d One of her early boosters, Michelle Souliere, is the owner of the Green Hand Bookstore in Portland and herself a History Press writer. A lifelong aficionado of Maine history, her publishing career, like Kitchens’, began with an online posting. She had been maintaining a blog of local lore, \u201cStrange Maine,\u201d when The History Press contacted her and suggested she expand her writing into a book.<\/p>\n
\u201cStrange Maine: True Tales from the Pine Tree State\u201d was published in 2010.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy blog had been going for about 4 years, and had grown from brief speculative and expressive posts to longer original research articles,\u201d she wrote in an email. \u201cI often wonder how I did it at all — I wrote the book just as I was opening up the Green Hand Bookshop. Madness!!! Or a lot of coffee. Or both!!!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The History Press is a prolific, low-cost operation. The books tend to be brief \u2014 under 200 pages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,29951,15064,56,54,55,741],"class_list":{"0":"post-54610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-history-press-books","11":"tag-stephen-king","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom","15":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}