New publishing house focuses on the Northwest

Seattle -- Not much of an entrepreneur at heart, Laura Kelly Robb did have one business asset – a family history of successful business people.

“My dad was self-made,” reports Laura. “He dropped out of school in 1925 at the age of fifteen and ended up Director of Marketing for the Penn Central Railroad. My sisters are either successful bankers or run their own businesses,” she adds. “I was the family dreamer. I learned Spanish and taught school, but mostly I just wrote stories.”

After twenty-plus years teaching school, she looked at the calendar and decided the time was now or never to publish her work. “At sixty-two-years-old, one realizes there are no guarantees about the time left to accomplish goals,” she comments.

Since traditional paths to publication seemed inaccessible, Laura started Mark House Publishing, a firm with the mission of bringing to the public writers and topics relevant to the Pacific Northwest. Joining her in the firm was Jim Thomsen, a long-time editor and Pacific Northwest resident.

“We are starting with my novel, China Rock, about a family growing up in the San Juans during the Great Depression,” says Laura. “The narrator, Augie Mohan, discovers that his father’s disappearance may be connected to two bodies of Chinese immigrants that have washed up on the local beach.”

She notes that starting a business and writing stories are wildly different endeavors, but they have a key ingredient in common – hard work.

“I was pretty sure the resources were out there to help us create this company. We just had to dig in and develop our own talents,” adds Laura.

Mark House Publishing occupies the better part of her basement. Lists of chores lay next to the laptop, clippings and mail are piled up on a long desk, and flanking the bookcases are rolling vertical files holding bills, receipts, marketing opportunities, story ideas and manuscripts. With so much of publishing done electronically, the company’s internet connection is its most used tool and provides leads on book fairs, blogs, printing and design firms, book distributors and legal requirements, not to mention a record of writings published and unpublished.

The toughest things for me to get a handle on are the financial decisions. What we should invest in, what advertising we should pay for, things like that. Luckily, I can resort to my family, either by remembering what they’ve told me in the past, or simply calling up one of my sisters for advice,” she says. “Also, the memory of my dad as an honest guy, an honest businessman, is one of my main points of reference so he’s in the company title. His name was Mark Kelly.”

Mark House Publishing is in the early stages of its next projects – a book of Northwest short stories and a guide to West Seattle wildlife. “It’s delightful who you get to meet in this kind of work – it’s not only your own imaginary characters, but plenty of other very imaginative individuals,” remarks Laura. “Nobody ever told me that business could be fun.”