From Garage Publisher to Google Prominence

That off-handed advice was given in 1978 to then first-grade team teachers Joy and Jo Ellen. They had taken a sabbatical from their Title I school to write an educational book and enlisted the help of Joy’s brother Bill, a journalism professor at the time. Upon completion, the three mailed the manuscript and received a bite from publisher Frank Schaffer. Schaffer was so impressed with their first title he hired Joy and Jo Ellen to write six more books. He promised to keep them busy for years to come. “It was exciting,” says Bill Evans, now CEO of Evan-Moor. But it was an editor they encountered upon delivery of one of their books that triggered Joy, Jo Ellen and Bill to consider their situation.