Ann’s recent book, “Deadwood’s Jewish Pioneers: A Gold Rush Odyssey” is a tour-de-force of research, writing and sheer willpower. Over the course of a lifetime, Ann gathered material about Deadwood, South Dakota, the infamous gold rush town. It was the project that brought her to the Black Hills in the first place. I helped her put the long version of her book into publication form, doing a layout that did her research justice. With InDesign as my main tool, I took her Word manuscript and laid out the 300 pages of history and decadence to appeal to today’s modern reader.
My great good luck in self-publishing Deadwood’s Jewish Pioneers; A Gold Rush Odyssey, a 300-plus-page book that took 25 years of research, interviews, exploration, and writing to accomplish, was only possible after meeting James Parker. James recognized my feeble attempts to consolidate all this material, make it attractive and cohesive, and turn it into a valuable contribution to historical nonfiction literature.
With James’s artistic taste and talent with book design, his photographic and technical skills, his knowledge and experience with the publishing world, this heretofore unknown piece of the Black Hills Gold Rush story can finally be told. It is safe to say that every aspect of the book has James’s imprint, from the beautiful front and back covers, to the placement of each section, to the carefully selected fonts, the artwork, the historical photographs – all accomplished with careful consideration and constant communication.
Furthermore, James is a terrific guy and fun to work with. Couldn’t have done this without him.
Ann Haber Stanton, Prairie Hills Publishing
If you’d like to read Ann’s book, you can get it through Amazon.com. A simple one-page website was put together to help market the book before getting it into wider distribution. This project led to other book design work for local writer, Linda M. Hasselstrom.