Based in Florence, Mass., the small, part-time publishing company was founded in 1994 by Stan Freeman, a newspaper science and environmental writer, with the aim of publishing regional natural history guides. Relying on new desktop publishing software, he and Mike Nasuti, an illustrator, began with a guide to the natural history of Western Massachusetts, where they both worked for the Springfield Republican newspaper of Springfield, Mass. For individuals to publish sophisticated full-color books on their own was so new that when the printing company's semi-trailer truck arrived with a pallet full of books at Freeman's house, the driver was convinced he had the wrong address. "If you're the publisher, where's your loading dock?" The book went on to sell its entire print run of 5,000 copies even though there were fewer than 20 bookstores in the territory it covered. In several local stores, it reached the bestseller list. Freeman and Nasuti went on to publish guides for Eastern Massachusetts and New York and then a new edition of the Western Massachusetts book. However, because of the high cost to print enough books for a unit cost that would be low enough to make a profit, there were a considerable number of years between books. Now, though, with the rise of "print on demand" technology and the declining cost of shorter print runs, in recent year they have been able to publish editions for Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well as updated editions of the books for New York, Western Massachusetts and Eastern Massachusetts.
About Stan Freeman
. Stan Freeman was a journalist for nearly 30 years before retiring in 2010. He spent most of those years as the science and environmental writer for the Springfield Republican of Springfield, Mass. However, his articles have appeared in more than forty other publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times, Seattle Times, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Houston Chronicle, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He's won awards for both science and environmental writing, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s award for environmental reporting in New England and the “Audubon A” award from the Massachusetts Audubon Society. He is a graduate of Cornell University and a native of New York Freeman studied fiction writing in the MFA program at University of Massachusetts and held a fiction writing fellowship from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities.
About Mike Nasuti
Mike Nasuti has been an art director for newspapers and magazines for nearly 30 years. He is currently the art director for Business West, which covers business issues in Western Massachusetts. He began as a staff illustrator for the Springfield Republican in 1985. In 1995, Mike won a first place in illustration from the New England chapter of the Associated Press. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art and a native of Massachusetts.