Emerald Lake Books is a boutique publisher. We offer a personalized publishing service to our authors. That means that we don’t offer package pricing, but instead customize publishing activities to the specific needs of the author and manuscript.
Many of our clients are positive people who want to be recognized as notable experts and thought leaders in their specific market niche. Others are writing to leave a legacy. All have a specific goal in mind when they come to us.
We help them clarify and shape that goal into multiple smaller goals, which are foremost in our minds as we edit, design, position and market the book.
This process helps us to know specifically:
- Who the ideal reader is.
- Why the reader has picked up the book.
- What the reader is hoping to get out of it.
- Why the author has written the book.
- What benefit the author hopes to achieve for their business or brand.
- What impact the book is intended to have.
Our History
Emerald Lake Books was started in October 2014 as a division of Aleweb Social Marketing. Tara R. Alemany founded the company in response to a growing need she saw among her business colleagues and clients. Many of them saw the benefits of having a book to grow their business or brand, but publishing wasn’t their primary business. Coaching, speaking, training and other products and services were, and publishing a book was only a means to an end.
These individuals wanted to self-publish to retain creative control of their work, but needed a support team to achieve their goals.
Having self-published five books of her own at that point, Tara knew the pain of “unconscious incompetence,” as one of her mentors refers to it. Essentially, you don’t know what you don’t know. And it’s those kinds of stumbling blocks that were getting in the way for many people who self-published.
Tara helped a few friends in her mastermind group prepare their books for publication and walked those authors through the process. After a while, though, she realized nothing in that work was pointing back to her as a business or a brand. Since she was already primarily working with authors and speakers on their websites and social media (through Aleweb Social Marketing), she decided to start Emerald Lake Books as an additional service she could provide to those same clients.
Each book published by Emerald Lake Books is carefully edited with the author’s message and the reader’s enjoyment in mind. This kind of personalized publishing service means that each book is designed with an eye for detail and balance. It is positioned in the market so that it stands out against the competition. Business-building elements are artfully woven into the content to ensure that the author’s business objectives are achieved.
The result of Emerald Lake Books’ understanding of the industry and partnership with our authors is that we have consistently helped our authors create high-quality books they can be proud of. Almost all of the books that authors have chosen to submit to book awards have won them, and that’s something we’re very proud of.
That’s due in no small part to the efforts of art director Mark Gerber, who joined Emerald Lake Books in 2016. Tara had been contracting him for various projects prior to that and knew his addition to the company would only make it stronger. In addition to cover design and interior layouts, Mark is responsible for all design and illustration-related activities, including creating sell sheets, print ads, bookmarks, book bonuses and other marketing materials.
It has been our privilege to get to know and work with each of the authors we’ve published during the years we’ve been in business. And we look forward to working with many more authors in the years to come.
Our Name
People often comment on the Emerald Lake Books name, wondering where it came from… It’s actually a funny story.
The road that Tara lives on is called “Green Pond Road,” and it’s named after a nearby body of water. When she purchased her house, she found a map of the area from 1973, and on that map Green Pond was missing. In its place was Emerald Lake.
Shaking her head in wonder, she began imagining the town meeting where someone must have petitioned for a name change. Why would anyone think that it made sense to rename this beautiful, pristine spring-fed lake from “Emerald Lake” to “Green Pond?”
It just goes to show the power of words, though. The difference in mental images that Emerald Lake and Green Pond pull forth is staggering.
Part of our job as editors and publishers is to help our authors conjure the best images and make the strongest impressions possible with the words that they use. So when it came to naming the company she was founding, Tara wanted the everpresent reminder of the power and privilege of that role.
Therefore, she chose to honor Emerald Lake as a continual reminder of her responsibility as a publishing service to the authors she would work with.
