Founder Profile: Derek Vasconi

Derek Vasconi lived and worked in Japan on and off for a few years and came away impressed with a sense of balance that “pervades everything.” He was also struck by a sense that incredible imbalance could occur at any moment — bringing full circle the notions of fragility and possibility.

 

Back in the U.S., he noticed the same things in the publishing industry, particularly when it came to how large publishing houses deal with new authors and technology.

 

That prompted Vascani, an author and musician himself, to found Sakura Publishing in Hermitage, Mercer County in 2007. 

 

“It hit me when I got back from Japan and was doing ghost writes and huge edits for authors all over the country and I would inevitably be asked ‘How do I get this published?'”

 

Since launching Sakura, an intermediary publishing label for first-time authors that also offers website construction and social networking and SEO services,Vasconi has worked with several hundred authors and is slowly growing into a valued resource for both established authors and those who merely have a creative literary vision. He also created an app that aims to grow “cell phone novels,” or literary works composed via text messaging, in the U.S.

 

Realizing that I don’t have the budget or the connections that major publishers do, so I would have to do major groundwork to establish income and the connections that you need as a publisher. It’s an ongoing process and one I’m still working on, but that definitely was the biggest hurdle for me getting this publishing company started.

 

I have several interns employed under the Sakura banner; when I started it was just me. I have a graphic designer on staff who does many book covers for authors I work with. I also have quadrupled my revenue since the first year. I am able to do this as something real and not something I just sort of do, like most people with side jobs. Sakura is my No. 1 priority every single day.

 

I definitely have been out on my own in terms of my region. There is nobody that does what I do anywhere near me. Most of the publishing world is somewhat snobbish and doesn’t help each other unless your company has been around forever, and since I’m relatively new, it’s been hard to share and network with any companies in publishing, even those in the Pittsburgh region. 
 

At the same time, my door has always been open and I welcome any alliances or partnerships. I think my focus has been just to do my own thing and not worry about trying to form too many partnerships. I think what I’m doing is so unique with publishing that I’m not sure most publishing entities would even agree with my modus operandi. I offer authors a chance to get distributed and promoted and in return, we work out a deal for the editing, book cover design, ebook conversion, and website design if an author wants a website. I do payment plans and also in most cases offer these things at such a reduced rate that I beat anyone else out there who has authors pay for these things. Yet I’m not a vanity because I am extremely selective with who I pick to publish and we make 90% of our money on royalties, same as the authors. So we are a middle ground publishing company, the first of its kind really.

 

What advantages does being in your region hold for entrepreneurs? I think the fact that there are four other major cities all within 1-4 hours of driving distance, has helped me gain acess to clients. Pittsburgh and Erie are Pennsylvania’s second and fourth-largest cities, respectively. There’s Cleveland and Buffalo not that far away either. I mean, cities usually mean more people to work with, and for me, this has definitely been the case.

 

I think for Sakura, we do one thing that most companies really don’t: make things personal. For example, my one author Jason Kinnear’s book Elvolution, we struggled immensely all year to get it turned into a play. Now on Dec. 3, it’s being done as a play at the Greenhouse Theater in Chicago. Nobody at Sakura had any obligation to do this for Jason, but we saw the book could be a play and we pursued this until it happened. Next year, we hope to see Elvolution turned into a nationwide production. And this is just one example of what we do to make things personal at Sakura. We don’t just talk about helping our authors, we actually try to find the best possible way to make the books our authors have put out huge successes. So far, this approach has worked like a charm for us.

 

We have several books coming out between now and the spring, including a book similar to Sh*t My Dad Says, it’s a story about a crazy 4 year old girl and the things she says, as observed by her mother. Her mother is Gina London, who happens to have been a very prominent CNN journalist. We also have a very special new age-type book coming out by an author who is famous in Japan, and a book about the perils of being married, called my “My Unlawfully Wedded Life,” by Colorado author Jimmy Hyten.  

 

Along with this, I’ve created an iphone app called eMobo, which brings the concept of the “Cell Phone Novel” to American people. It’s available in the app store on iTunes for free at this time and users can read thousands of novels for free right on their phone and also write their own stories which are instantly distributed right to the phones of thousands of other people. This has been done in Japan for years and is known as “keitai shousetsu.” Last year, three of the top 5 best selling books in Japan were cell phone novels. So we have this we are trying to heavily promote and shop around for investors to get interested in.

 

Last, I want to expand Sakura and try to get more public exposure through possible celebrity endorsements and try to get some books we have published turned into movies, of which we have several that could be great candidates.

— by Joe Petrucci