We recently connected with Terri Leidich and have shared our conversation below.

Terri, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

My wish is that I will be remembered for creating a publishing company and an approach that has given a lot of unknown but talented writers an opportunity to get their work out into the marketplace in a way that combines traditional publishing with author involvement. I also believe I’ve lived up to our motto “publishing with a heart.”

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

About 13 years ago, I looked at retiring. My husband encouraged me to consider putting time and energy into publishing some of the many stories and manuscripts I had written over the years. As I began my research, I discovered that there were basically two models of publishing at that time: traditional publishing or self-publishing. Traditional publishing didn’t appeal to me because of the arduous process. And from many articles I read, writers often give up the rights and control of their manuscripts. As a writer, I understand that the fictional characters we write about become real to us – they’re like family. Giving up control of how my stories played out didn’t appeal to me. So, I checked into self-publishing, and in general, there was not much support offered. Also, it was an industry I knew little or nothing about. I attended several conferences, and getting published as a whole felt impossible. In general, the publishing industry didn’t feel kind to writers. I even had one agent tell me that all writers needed to be taken down a peg or two. I felt like telling him that the very nice suit he was wearing was because of writers, but I instead just smiled.

After some extensive research, I tabled my publishing plans until one night when I had a dream about a different type of publishing model – a hybrid combination of the quality control, distribution, etc. of traditional publishing, and the author–involvement of self-publishing. The next morning, I told my husband about it, and he looked at me and smiled, saying, “I think you’re being told that if you can’t find it, create it.” So I did, and Boutique of Quality Books Publishing (BQB Publishing) – a traditional hybrid publisher – was born. Our mission was (and still is) to be the writer’s publisher and to publish with a heart.

We started with two authors and two books in 2010, and now, in 2022, we have 150+ authors and 200+ books. Our books are distributed world-wide by Independent Publishers Group (IPG), and our authors are involved both with pre-publishing costs and investing their time in marketing.

I have an amazing management team of marketing and social–media gurus, plus a team of editors, designers, sales reps, printers, etc. It is with the help of these magnificent people that we are able to bring between 20-30 new books into the marketplace each year and continue to promote and market both our front list and backlist titles on an ongoing basis. . We have two acquisition editors who are very selective in the manuscripts that we accept, and also provide good feedback to writers on manuscripts we don’t accept, so writers have a direction to go in if they choose to continue to hone their work.

In the beginning, we basically published adult and children’s fiction. Then in 2014, we had the opportunity to purchase WriteLife Publishing. It became our second imprint, one that now carries our nonfiction titles (memoirs, biographies, body/mind/spirit books, etc.)

Through the process, four of my own books have been published, using the same stringent acceptance process and editing that we put every book we publish through. It has helped me to be on both sides of the process to understand what writers experience.

It has been a beautiful journey and one on which I have met so many wonderful, talented writers. I have had an opportunity to read and then introduce amazing books to the world.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

When we first started, the idea of a hybrid publisher was not well-accepted. Everyone equated us with vanity publishing or self-publishing (which didn’t have a good reputation), so the going was hard and slow in the beginning. Bookstores didn’t want to carry our books and distributors were not interested. But we kept being true to our model, concentrated on the quality of the books we published, and continued to offer authors support and information. Over the years, our reputation for producing quality books from talented writers has grown.

For the last six years, our books have been distributed by Independent Publishing Group (IPG) to bookstores and book buyers all over the world.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Our authors basically come to us through word-of-mouth or through the few conferences I’ve spoken at over the years. Our flow of new manuscript submissions is constant, and even though we only accept from 20-50% of the manuscripts we receive, we have never had to advertise for manuscript submissions.

Many of our manuscripts also come from current authors who are prolific writers, or whose first books turn into a series.

Contact Info:

• Website: bqbpublishing.com writelife.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bqbpublishing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BQBPublishing https://www.facebooks.com/WriteLife
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boutique-of-quality-books-publishing-company-inc./
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bqbpublishing https://twitter.com/WriteLifePUB
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BoutiqueofQualityBks
• Other: TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com@bqbpublishing