David and Connor have been working together since 1991, when they met at the San Leandro offices of AKG Acoustics (back then one of the major players in pro audio). David was AKG's head of marketing and advertising, after executive stints at Orban, dbx, and Otari. Connor was writing for every music magazine in sight, and doing manual writing and consulting work for a good half-dozen different music technology firms. They hit it off and for about a year Connor was David's man in the field, traveling around America to collect useful research data and evangelize the latest AKG products.

When David left AKG in 1993 to start his own advertising and marketing firm, their working relationship expanded hugely. In the twelve years since they have put their heads together on literally hundreds of projects for David's clients, and David has become involved, in turn, with all of Connor's film, book, and music development.

When Connor decided it was time to move beyond individual projects and build his own big, far-reaching, multi-company business, a mutual friend told him he absolutely had to get David involved in order to succeed. When asked why, the friend said only this: "Because he's good at all the things you aren't, and what's more, he'll be amused by the idea's impossibility."

You can email David at david@conlanpress.com.

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FROM THE CO-PUBLISHER

April 27th, 2005

Hi!

Like many Conlan Press customers, I read a lot as a child. My parents would take us to the library and we'd all return with our own stack of books. Pretty soon, I was making the trek on my own. Whenever I discovered an author who connected with me, I would read every book they had on the Library shelf, then order more titles in from the other branches, until there weren't any more to find and I had to move on to someone new. As a teenager, I used to "rescue" books other people discarded. I had decided — and would tell anyone who asked about the growing collection of unrelated books in my bedroom — that there was some mystical importance to each volume, an importance connected to its physical history as much as its content. It seemed to me that books were so important they needed to be preserved.

As an adult, I recognize that far more attention is put into the physical manifestation and distribution of most books than ever goes into their content. Still, I can't shake the general belief that books are a key, a channel, a shared refuge, a resource that connects people to each other and the world in a "larger" context. And I continue to feel uncomfortable at the sight of a book discarded. (Actually, I still rescue them - I'm just more selective.)

So.... some books have content that exists only to hold the covers apart. And many books are earnest efforts that are worth reading but probably not rereading. —But some books are more than that. Which brings us to Conlan Press, and my personal goals for the imprint, which are simple.

In the time between those first library days and now, I have occasionally had someone give me a book for no other reason that they felt it was important that I read that particular work. They didn't want to risk simply mentioning it and not have me actually follow up and get a copy. So they made sure to get a copy into my hands. They wanted that book's impact to become part of our shared experience.

My mission for Conlan Press is to successfully publish works with the level of impact that creates that compulsion for sharing. I want our books and audiobooks and other releases to affect people so significantly, so powerfully, that they feel it necessary to reach out and connect with others who are important to them. In the process, we will encourage and support the creators of these works, so they can do more, and so others are encouraged to attempt to do the same.

The first stage of that "sharing" process is from us to you. I would be grateful if you would let me know how you feel we are succeeding.

— David Roudebush

You can email David at david@conlanpress.com.