The Importance of Finding Your Niche: A Q&A with publishing veteran Richard E. Abel
Of course, none of us [on the West Coast] have been long established. [On the East Coast,] there are so many long-established outfits, or people who have [worked at] long-established publishing houses who have spun off to start their own imprint. Out here, there isn’t any of that. …
Extra: Did you ever think about relocating during your career? What has kept you on the West Coast?
Abel: … I grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana. I simply don’t like a lot of people around. … Secondly, there has always been something different in the West …. We are a self-reliant lot. … That leads to a spirit of innovation. I think that those publishers that have been really successful have been what I like to call niche publishers. They discovered a niche that needed to be served that the big publishers in the East might not even have known about. What East Coast publishers would want to look at max print runs of 5,000? Very few. They sneer at that kind of thing.