Back when Northern California Publishers & Authors (NCPA) was still Sacramento Publishers Association (SPA), I was the newsletter editor for a year or so. There have been so many changes in publishing, the passing time feels like an eon rather than a decade. One of the featured articles back then was the switch to sending PDFs (rather than the PageMaker files) to printers; the member publishers were all putting out print books only. At least one author member was submitting to Hard Shell Word Factory, but I don’t even remember now what devices could read those e-books.
The Pen & Press is still in production, but the nameplate I designed hasn’t been in use for years. I think the design holds up well, even now, and evokes the long tradition of self-publishing. As I wrote in 2001:
The first English-language self-publisher was William Caxton. A textile merchant based in Bruges, Caxton was also a writer. His translation from the French of Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, self-published around 1475, was the first printed English-language book. Two years later Caxton returned to England, setting up a printing house that published still-studied works such as Morte d’Arthur and The Canterbury Tales, and establishing the independent publishing tradition followed by members of Sacramento Publishers Association.
The date and volume number of each issue was added below the organization name.
