The Ann Arbor Media Group, the small publishing operation of printer Edwards Brothers, has formed a new sports imprint that will release its debut title this fall. Bobby Jones: Portrait of a Champion is a reprint of a biography of the grand-slam winner. The title marks a return to familiar ground for the imprint's head, Skip DeWall, the former publisher of Clock Tower Press, which has its own line of books about Jones. The hardcover will have a first printing of 5,000 to 7,500 copies, DeWall said.
The new imprint, Sports Media Group, will publish 12 books in 2004, including six previously published titles in its vintage series. The imprint will focus on a mix of enhanced reprints and original titles, including history, biography and fiction centered on golf.
DeWall, who left Clock Tower this spring, was one of two senior staff members to leave the company. The other, executive editor Brett Marshall, recently launched his own publishing company, Harbor Links Publishing.
Clock Tower was formed a year ago by the former shareholders of Sleeping Bear Press, who acquired the rights to that company's golf titles. Despite losing two of its key executives, Clock Tower is growing, with a new publisher and plans to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time, said its president and CEO Charles Gelman. Its frontlist for next year will include several golf titles, as well as a cookbook and a history book, Distant Thunder: Michigan in the Civil War. One of its major titles this year is Wit and Wisdom of Bobby Jones, which has sold over 7,000 copies.
