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| BOOK WORM: Milli Brown started with scrapbooks and now publishes 100 titles a year. photography by Jeremy Sharp |
Once upon a time in a city far, far away, Milli Brown was the top NutriSystem franchise owner in the country. But 17 years ago, the petite platinum blonde with the larger-than-life personality left Atlanta and diet-dealing behind to found Personal Profiles, a publishing company of sorts. The Dallas-based company’s purpose was to help people preserve their family history in the form of a book or heirloom package. Several clients, pleased with her work, recommended Brown to aspiring-author friends in need of help with the often-confusing editing and publishing process.
After seeing the clear need for personal, intimate relationships between authors and publishers, Brown incorporated Brown Books Publishing Group in 1994. “My goal from day one was to give writers a viable alternative to vanity publishing houses,” she says, referring to companies that will print any manuscript regardless of quality, as long as the author can fund it.
Instead, Brown charges clients for her editing, design, marketing, publicity, and distribution services, while the author retains 100 percent of the profits from the book’s sales and maintains all intellectual rights to his or her work. It is the only system of its kind operating in the U.S. Now, on average, Brown receives 50 manuscripts per week from people around the world and publishes more than 100 titles annually. (Personal Profiles still exists as a division of the company.)
Brown has lofty goals for her now 12-employee firm—which she says is still only in its infancy stage—and the industry as a whole. “When I am queen of the publishing world, things will be different,” says Brown, whose employees have affectionately taken to calling her The Queen already. “It will be all about building trusting, mutually respectful relationships with our authors.” And both publishers and writers will live happily ever after.
Top Sellers Published by Brown Books
Spirituality of Success: Getting Rich with Integrity
By Vinny Roazzi
Published in 2001
Free Publicity
By Jeff Crilley
Published in 2005
Downtown Dallas
By Mark Rick
Published in March 2007
