Adams-Blake Publishing
Convention/Hotel Coverage | Web Design | Ebooks and Media Consulting

A bit about us


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HISTORY

Adams-Blake Publishing has been in and around the publishing business since 1980, when we brough out our first book called ComputerMoney: How To Make It In High Tech Consulting. We sold about 15,000 copies mail-order for $30 each. We were pretty happy with that. We made the book into a seminar and took it on the road where we would "fill the room" with young data processing professionals seeking to start their own businesses.

It was several years later when we went into the trade publishing business and lost our shirts! The books were good but the marketing wasn't and the middle-channel took all the profit. Thus we stumbled on the idea of creating 'special' books for specific markets. We printed in small quantities and priced the items very high. We did very well with $99 items like How To Move A Corporate Data Center and Emergency Procedures for Apartment Communities as well as others.

Of course, this was before Al Gore invented the Internet :-) With the net came the downturn of non-fiction publishing for many publishing houses. Everything people wanted to know they could find on the web, for free, often in video format. Thus, we left the ink-on-paper book biz and moved into other areas, as outlined below.


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REPORTING: CONVENTION COVERAGE AND HOTEL REVIEWS

A main sector of our business is in writing about trade shows and conventions. We have business relationships with many large media operations, mostly in the European and Asian markets. Sometimes we are contracted to attend trade conventions (like the annual BookExpo America and the Consumer Electronics Show) to cover certain topics, such as sidelines or young-adult lines. Other times we attend "on spec" looking for stories we can market and sell to our media customers. In the 'old days' we would be called 'stringers.' We do both print and electronic reporting. Often our work is translated from English to that of the media's host country.

A growing part of our business is in reviewing hotels, most often those in the major convention cities of the world. These get syndicated to many different media, both print and electronic.

Sample Hotel Clips

Please note that our content is totally independent and is not paid for by the hotels or the conventions that we cover or review. We pay our own way.... we're an honest house.


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WEB DESIGN AND JAYA123

Adams-Blake is the managing partner of NewMedia Website Design.Our goal is to provide our clients with attractive, professional WordPress websites at a reasonable cost. For one flat fee, we produce up to a 10-page WordPress or landing-page Bootstrap site… in a few days time, and we provide superior customer service in doing the job; not often found in the web design sector.

Having come out of the world of publishing, we noticed there were not any good WordPress themes tailored to the needs of authors’ book sites. So we developed some. Clients will find among our offerings several book-targeted designs that we can adapt especially to the look of their book. One of our partners is an award-winning book designer, who can make the client site gorgeous for a fraction of what they would pay others to do something similar.

Adams-Blake Publishing was the owner and operator of the well-known JAYA123Plus back-office system which lets small publishers run their business via the web from anywhere in the world. It was sold a in 2018 and has been "out there" for many years and is a stable and affordable system for the small publisher as well as any small business. One area that it excels in is the royalty module. Very few systems have as comprehensive royalty system and JAYA123Plus.


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BOOKS

We have served as technical consultants on ebooks to other publishers. While not a huge part of our business, it is growing.

Now, like many other houses, Adams-Blake Publishing has returned to the book biz by publishing e-books. Our sector is niche market books; specialized publications targeted to corporations, law, medicine, engineering, computers, etc., as well as the travel and convention industies.

We look for industry how-to, training material, directories, policy and procedure manuals, etc. that run between 200-500 pages and which have a market value in the range of $89 to $150.

We are NOT looking for things that are already out on the electronic bookshelves. We WANT specialized products that we can sell via direct marketing.

Contact us by email (see Contact page) if you have something we might be interested in.