Denver Business Journal – President of Outskirts Press

Denver Business Journal recognizes Outskirst Press as 3rd fastest growing privately-held company in Colorado*

In the category of “better late than never” I figured I would share some exciting news from July. Every year the Denver Business Journal recognizes the fastest growing privately-held companies in Colorado, based upon reported revenue for a three year period of time. The companies that demonstrated the greatest overall percentage of revenue growth between 2004 – 2006 were honored at a breakfast banquet in downtown Denver. The fastest growing company was a software company (Rally, I think), out of Boulder. The second fastest growing company was also a software company.

Outskirts Press was the third fastest growing privately held-company, which is a testament to the value our authors find in our services. (2011 update: Outskirts Press went on to be recognized as a top 10 company by the Denver Business Journal 2 more times since then…)

Even though I live and breathe this industry every day and night, it takes a step out into the other business sectors to realize just how revolutionary (and still brand-new) the concept of print-on-demand publishing truly is. When I was speaking at the podium while accepting the award, and explained what it is we do, there were surprised and amazed looks on the faces in the crowd. “I can pull that old forgotten manuscript out of my bottom drawer, dust it off, and give it to you and actually be selling it from Amazon in about 12 weeks?” their jaw-dropping expressions seemed to ask.

Writers and authors who are already searching for a solution to their publishing woes are already well-informed about their publishing choices.

But 95% of our market remains untapped, because these are people who would never think of typing “self publishing” into Google.

* Originally posted on self-publishing.blogspot.com on August 21, 2007. To see why, click here.

ceo

Denver Powerbook Finalist

Every year the Denver Business Journal recognizes Denver’s top business newsmakers during their annual PowerBook Luncheon Celebration. This year’s event took place yesterday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Denver. I had learned I was a finalist when I received a letter from the Denver Business Journal on October 5th:

“The results are in and the Denver Business Journal and our gold sponsors, BKD LLP, Colorado Business Bank and Greenberg Traurig, are pleased to congratulate you as one of the Denver area’s top business newsmakers. You have been selected as one of the Top 10 business newsmakers in your category and you will be profiled in the 2010 Denver Business Journal Power Book.”

It’s true that Outskirts Press has received a lot of positive press in 2010. For the 4th year in a row we appeared on the Denver Business Journal’s list of Top 10 Fastest-Growing Privately Held Companies. We also appeared for the second year in a row on the Inc. 5000, recognizing the fastest-growing private companies nationwide.

Nevertheless, it was quite an honor being recognized among such business stalwarts as Hikmet Ersek from Western Union, John Martie from Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Michael Fries from Liberty Global, John McCarvel from Crocs, Inc., and Jake Jabs from American Furniture Warehouse.

The CEO of Southwest Airlines, Gary C. Kelly, gave the Keynote and the Governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter, added some comments to those in attendance as well. He was also a fellow-finalist. The PowerBook winner in our category went to Udi Bar-on of Udi’s Handcrafted Foods.

As if yesterday wasn’t good enough, I also received the following email from one of our recently published authors:

Brent …

Love you guys. Thank you. I knew nothing about publishing. You folks took me by the hand and with no pressure guided me though my first book. I can now say… “I have been published.” The response I have had is overwhelming. I have already ordered my second book from you. You are a joy to work with.

Thank you.
John

All in all, a great day.

ceo, search engine optimization, self publishing

Inc. 5000 Self Publishing Company

Recently I made a change to this blog’s main title. For those of you reading since the beginning, you may realize how much thought I put into the title of the blog to begin with, since the subject of “titling your blog” was one that stretched across a number of postings at the beginning of this year. In short, blog titles (not to be confused with posting titles) are extremely important for search engine optimization purposes.

Up until very recently, the “title” of my blog for the past year or so has been: Brent Sampson: CEO of Inc. 500 Self Publishing Company OutskirtsPress.com. This accomplished a couple of things: It introduced me and my role/position; it identified the name and URL of our company; and it provided some promotion of its own, using other recognized keywords (Inc. 500, for instance).

Two things occurred that led to the change. For one, Outskirts Press broadened its scope and its customer base with the launch of the Version 4 website, which is a subject I’ve been blogging about quite a bit recently, so I won’t cover it much here. But the long and short of it is that we are now offering book marketing services to writers on an a la carte basis regardless of where they publish. As a result, the new name became “Brent Sampson: CEO of Self Publishing & Book Marketing Company OutskirtsPress.com” to define this wider vision and incorporate perhaps a more applicable keyword phrase into the title (book marketing).

Secondly, came the change to our Inc Magazine listing. August was an exciting month because Outskirts Press won two different honors for fastest-growing private company, one from the Denver Business Journal indentifying us as the #10 fastest growing private company in the small-to-medium category; and the other from Inc. Magazine, which identified us as a Fast 5000 company–not that the Inc. Fast 5000 is anything to sneeze at, as 4999 other honorees will attest.

The “fastest growing” lists are interesting because, due to the way they are calculated, your company can actually increase its revenue year after year and still decrease its growth percentage. But that is a subject for a future post.

ceo, self publishing

Fastest Growth Among Self Publishing Services

In July, the Denver Business Journal held its annual Fastest Growing Private Companies awards banquet, and for the 4th year in a row, Outskirts Press was recognized.

The fastest-growing companies are determined by examining the gross revenue increase over the previous three years (2007 – 2009 in this case). Companies are separated into 5 “flights” based upon their overall annual revenue in the most current tax year (2009). Flight V designates small companies, Flight IV designates small-to-medium sized companies, Flight III designates medium companies, and so on. This is the 3rd year in a row Outskirts Press has been in Flight IV and we held the #10 spot overall. Last year we were #7. The year before that we were #1.

In an economy where “flat is the new up,” appearing on any “fastest-growing list” for multiple years in a row is a feat onto itself. After all, the majority of the companies appearing in the top 10 weren’t on the previous year’s list at all. So to say I am proud of our company and our authors would be an understatement.

I think this post also supports a previous blog posting I wrote recently, which centered on pursuing awards. Whether for a book or a company, winning an award helps establish some prestige and PR, and those are valuable commodities in this day and age.

Speaking of which, the annual Inc. Magazine Fast 500 list is announced at the end of this month. This is the national version of the fastest-growing private companies. We placed #268 last year among all private companies and #1 among participating self-publishing services. We’ll see where we are this year when they’re announced later this month…