Interview with the President
By: Lauren Friedman
Gabriel Vaughn isn’t your average book publisher. A life peppered with careers including military service, meat cutting, and a flourishing drywall business frames his unlikely entry into publishing—over 30 years ago. With so much time and experience in the business, it would be easy to highlight his many successes and brush the failures under the rug. Still, Mr. Vaughn remains humble. Alongside the national news interviews of his authors and books for which he’s sold thousands of copies, Mr. Vaughn freely admits to ventures that didn’t turn out as expected and deals that have fallen through.
It may also be easy, in the publishing business, to favor projects with high potential of becoming bestsellers, but Mr. Vaughn has not succumbed to this trend. He remains passionate about his authors and the projects he chooses to work on, measuring each against Legacy Book Publishing’s motto—books inspiring virtuous character. Mr. Vaughn believes that each manuscript he publishes has the potential to change lives and deserves the chance to get out in the world, whether it reaches 50 people or 50,000.
An intimate office environment fosters the opportunity for Mr. Vaughn to build close relationships with his authors and provide necessary support. He works with each individual author in constructing a customized project to fit their needs. A bestselling author himself, he remains acutely aware of promotional events such as book signings and interviews, offering free coaching to any and all of his authors. Mr. Vaughn seeks the personal success of his authors over his own profit, working to put together contracts that authors are satisfied with, where other publishers may look to line their pockets.
The fears of first-time authors are ever-present in Mr. Vaughn’s mind—“People are afraid or uncertain about doing things they haven’t done before,” he explains. Publishing can be an intimidating experience, and he knows that everyone has a different perception of what it entails. For this reason, Mr. Vaughn offers services including editing and graphic design to help each author’s vision come alive.
Mr. Vaughn recognizes that not every author has the same goal. Legacy Book Publishing offers multiple options, including strictly printing manuscripts as well as publishing and promoting them in various formats. Whether an author needs 10 or 100 copies made, with the intention of selling them or not, Mr. Vaughn is happy to accommodate their needs.
At the end of the day, when asked why he does what he does, Mr. Vaughn responds with this:
“I believe that there are stories worth telling, that may not be the next Harry Potter series, but deserve to be told all the same. And if big publishers focus on finding those types of stories that are sure to hit it big, who’s left to help tell the rest, but me?”
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