Indie Publishing Stories, Part 3: Ella Publishing!

Today’s indie publishing story comes about as a result of a mainstream publishing failure.

Earlier this year, Simple Scrapbooks Magazine ceased publication. And two of its editors, Lain Ehmann and Angie Lucas, were left wondering what to do next.

(You may remember Lain from this podcast, btw.)

Anyway, what these women did was draw on talented people they’d met while working on the magazine to start a digital publishing company for scrapbookers – Ella Publishing. They offer a variety of ebooks and a regular e-zine.

Ella sent me one of its new titles, Vintage Hip Crafts. Its design is lovely, and takes advantage of the horizontal page format – which gets my vote for Best Format for crafty ebooks. Much easier to read on-screen.

In this ebook are scrapbooking projects, along with gifts, decorations, cards, and more. Everything is based on papers and scrapbook doodads, and the projects are all very accessible. (I love this garland, festooned with paper cones you can fill with treats.)

The production value is really high – great photography, well-written, clean design.

The Ella catalog also includes titles like Special Effects for Digital Photos and Text Tricks for Scrapbookers.

I’m excited to see what Lain and Angie do with this new venture. I like that it focuses on one genre of crafting – so the content can go really deep. And I’m really impressed with the overall presentation.

Go tell Ella hello!