After her father’s death in 2006, Sarah Bauhan wasn’t sure that she wanted to take over the New Hampshire publishing business that he had built up over nearly half a century, William L. Bauhan, Inc. This fall, however, Bauhan, who handled book design and managed the company for her father, relaunched the press in Peterborough as Bauhan Publishing, LLC. “I decided it was too deep in my blood,” says Bauhan, who remembers packing books as a child.
Fittingly for a press that operated for many years in Dublin, home of Yankee magazine, the reincorporated press’s first title is a reissue of Yankee editor-in-chief Judson D. Hale’s Inside New England, originally published by Harper and Row in 1982. “In the old days we used to joke that we were the second largest publisher in Dublin,” says Bauhan. Her inaugural list also includes reissues of a baker’s dozen of titles from the earlier press’s backlist, including William V. McDermott’s A Surgeon in Combat, part of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation; Paul Norton’s An Historical Guide to Rhode Island Stained Glass; and a series of architectural monographs.
Bauhan credits Ian Aldridge with keeping the press alive until she decided to return to publishing. It’s through him that she met climbers Nancy Sporborg and Pat Piper, authors of Bauhan Publishing’s upcoming book, It’s Not about the Hike. Other new titles cover shared housing and the slowness movement.
So far Bauhan is pleased with sales. “In this economy,” she says, “my expectations are low.” Still, the press is sufficiently capitalized to carry on her father’s tradition of high-quality editions—with gatefold covers in the case of Inside New England “With the proliferation of new media and Internet publish-on-demand services," says Bauhan, “this may seem an odd time to invest in a traditional book publishing business. But we can offer something that the newcomer’s can’t: well-designed and well-edited books printed on high-quality paper.” That’s not to say that the press won’t move into e-books, something that Bauhan has already begun exploring. It also has a new Web site (www.bauhanpublishing.com), which she is also using to market her CDs; Bauhan is an accomplished wooden whistle and flute player.
Doug Cochrane of New England Books Sales will begin selling Bauhan’s list throughout New England in January; the books are available through Baker & Taylor. But even before he and his partner, Tony Giordano, signed on, Bauhan was starting to get copies of Inside New England into local bookstores. Hale has done signings at Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough and the Book Cellar in Brattleboro, Vt.
