Orange Frazer Press Meets COVID-19: Another Chapter

 The Little Publisher That Will

It was an inauspicious beginning on July 31, 1987, when I drove to the gas station parking lot at the intersection of SR73 and I-71 in Clinton County, climbed out of my car and got into the beat-up, brown Mercedes owned by our gentleman farmer/Cincinnati lawyer friend Dan Berger (who was wearing his farm coveralls and boots) to sign the incorporation papers after which Orange Frazer Press, Inc. was officially born. John Baskin, Damaine Vonada, and I had, through trial, error, and more error, managed to create and publish one book, researched, written, and designed by us.

I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing, but Dan assured me that the legal portion of our idea was important to document and since he made the best homemade vegetable soup I’d ever tasted, I was going to trust him on this advice.

I signed the paperwork. He filed it.

There’s much I could report on those first five years of one book each year and no pay, but this is not to be a manuscript (maybe one day). It’s a communique to you, our friends…about resolve.

As writers, editors, and designers (we each wore multiple hats), our dream was to create intelligent, handsome (some call them beautiful) books. We began without the use of computers (Our first computer was purchased in 1992 and we were slow to learn the difference between hardware and software, much to the chagrin of our computer builder, Herb.) and drove to Washington Courthouse where Hans the Typesetter converted our typewritten manuscripts into type. The type was pasted meticulously into our designs using wax, x-acto knives, and a patience we haven’t had since, onto boards which then (based on two-page spreads) were sent to the book manufacturer. Never once did we think this was hard work. It was interesting work. It was challenging work. It was exciting work. It was creative.

So, we just kept going.

Between 1992 and 1997 we published approximately a dozen books. In 1997, sparked by a global economic scare, the Dow Jones followed world markets and plummeted 554 points to 7,161. This barely registered with Orange Frazer Press. Why? Because we didn’t know enough about the stock market to understand it might affect us. We didn’t have a clue about macroeconomics. We didn’t have money in the stock market.

So, we just kept going.

In 1995, the first book sold on Amazon.com (Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought) In the first two months of business, Amazon sold to all fifty states and over forty-five countries. Within two months, Amazon's sales were up to $20,000 per week. Orange Frazer’s revenues were not.

So, we just kept going.

In 1999, along with the rest of the world, it appeared that the United States was preparing for the possible effects of the Y2K computer bug, which was thought to cause computers to become useless. We asked around and got mixed responses. By the time the fear subsided, we had finished several more books.

So, we just kept going.

Also, in the late nineties, e-readers became popular in the form of gadgets like the Palm Pilot and Rocket e-book. We didn’t pay too much attention. We had no e-books or knowledge on how to market them. We were reading manuscripts, editing, designing, marketing, and shipping small, medium, and large softcover and hardcover Orange Frazer Press titles to independent bookstores. We now had two warehouses. There were lots of bookstores, libraries, and school orders to fill.

So, we just kept going.

One morning, in 2001, friend Janet Williams called me from her home and asked if I had heard about a small plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers. “Do you have a TV up there?” she asked? We did. A tiny Emerson with a VHS slot. I moved it from a shelf onto a counter and turned in on. The reception was poor but you couldn’t miss an airliner exploding as it crashed into the second tower. We spent the day huddled around the TV wondering what was happening to the United States and to the world. We were all shaken. It took a very long time to calm down. We had friends in NYC. We were fortunate that we didn’t lose anyone we knew and we ached for those who were lost.

Yet, we knew we should keep going.

In 2002, in a city that’s notorious for taking itself a bit too seriously yet was inspired by the successes of Chicago’s urban art project “Cows on Parade” (and similar art projects in other cities), the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities asked Orange Frazer Press to publish the book on their urban art project called Party Animals, Washington DC.. The urban art project was commissioned by First Lady Laura Bush and Mayor Anthony Williams. Who were we to say no? So, we flew to DC and met with the project leader at the DC Arts Commission. The two hundred donkeys and elephants beautifully painted by local artists adorned Washington’s streets. The event received over two hundred national media mentions on one day. The handsome works of art were auctioned off in late October 2002, leaving only the book, with photographs by John Woo and designed and created by Orange Frazer Press, as a record of the event. On December 22, 2002, Party Animals Washington DC was #3 on the bestseller list of the Washington Post Book World. A framed copy of that page hangs in my office.

Even knowing this would never happen again, we just kept going.

In 2004, the social networking website Facebook was created.  However, we thought it more important for a Facelift. So, in celebration of seventeen years of book publishing (nothing wrong with an off year) we hired artist and muralist—and son-in-law—Jason Morgan to use our front door alley entrance (known affectionately as the ‘penitential façade’) for an “extreme makeover.” He transformed the façade into a beautiful faux Italian villa, where, from our windows, we amused ourselves watching folks puzzle over the illusion of a real blue awning. Orange Frazer’s handsome books were now complemented by a handsome place in which to make them.

And, we just kept going.

In 2008, the financial crisis hit, which coincided with the fact that we had, several years earlier, finally learned about macroeconomics, the stock market, and the banking industry. We had learned these things not because we were now business people (we were not), but because we had been asked to produce a book for the CINTAS corporation and billionaire Richard Farmer. We learned how the company began, how it solved problems, how it grew. And grew. And grew. I learned all the things we should have been doing.

So, we just kept going.

Much has happened in the last dozen years. But I’m thinking you are getting my drift. We have been writing, editing, designing, formatting, proofreading, printing, warehousing, and shipping between fifteen and twenty books every year. They range from sixty-four pages to two-volume, six hundred pages. We have made them for folks who live down the street to those who live overseas. We have made them for individuals and Fortune 500 companies. We have made them for museums, schools, sport teams, and libraries. We have made them for the famous and the infamous.

It’s 2020 and COVID-19 has knocked everyone down and locked us up. Last week, the New York Times wrote, “Two-thirds of rural counties in the U.S. are reporting cases of the virus, many in areas some hoped would be shielded by their remoteness.” In Wilmington, Ohio, a town of 14,000 in a county of 40,000, there have been fifteen confirmed cases, one putting a beloved pediatrician on a ventilator. (He is presently reported to be recovering.)

Officially, we are closed. The downstairs door is locked to visitors. We have put a sticky note on our door telling UPS, FedEx, Amazon, and Staples we’ll check to see if they’ve left any packages, because…unofficially, we are here in our offices overlooking Main Street working in shifts, remaining yards and offices apart. I have two daughters who work here. I can’t hug them. We have a shipment of books arriving to our warehouse on April 24. Another title is to arrive in Washington DC early next month. We are in the design and formatting stage of two others and begin the 100th Anniversary of the Hamilton County Courthouse in May as well as a celebratory book for Wilmington College’s 150th anniversary.

Making beautiful books is what makes us feel normal. Making beautiful books for others is what makes us feel good. I wonder if Gutenberg felt the same.

So, we will keep going. You, we, everyone must keep going.

Be safe and smart, good friends. We have so loved being here for you and will continue to be.

Marcy Hawley

Publisher