From stage to page: Sarasota director launches book publishing company
At just about every turn in an interview about his new Sarasota book publishing company, Jason Cannon finds an analogy to the theater in which he made his living for years.
Cannon came to Sarasota a decade ago to become an associate artist at Florida Studio Theatre, where he directed a variety of productions, acted occasionally, most notably in his award-winning run in “Dancing Lessons,” worked with apprentices and taught acting and playwrighting classes.
But overlapping events led him to refocus his creative energies on writing novels and helping others get theirs published.
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During the pandemic, when there were no plays for him to direct, no improv to be part of, he was involved in a Saturday writer’s club known as the Rabbit Room on Zoom.
“We shared chapters, went back and forth about what we’d written,” Cannon said. One of the participants was Sam Mossler, an actor and writer who grew up in Sarasota and got involved at FST as a child. After college and working a few years, Mossler returned to FST as an instructor and actor, often working with Cannon as a director.
Mossler was turning his original screenplay “Queen Palm” into a novel when he unexpectedly passed away nearly two years ago at age 45.
Cannon wanted to see that the book got published.
“I was still putting in 40-50 hours a week at FST, but I was getting up at 5 or 6 a.m. and writing in the morning and then going to work. Sam was writing his book,” Cannon said. “I was like, ‘Should I find a literary agent,’ and then your artistic brother passes away like that out of nowhere and you start thinking, ‘what are you waiting for?’”
The publishing world has gone through a major transformation in the last two decades, with the growth of self-publishing, publishing on demand, Amazon and other sites that make it far easier for anyone to have a book published.
Cannon said he “did the deep dive on self publishing and the word I’d use is conflicted. That didn’t seem the right way.”
So like millions of others who have made career changes during the pandemic, Cannon decided to leave a job he loved and take a chance.
“Once that decision was behind me, it was just the logistics, finding the right time, handing off my projects at FST cleanly in a way that was graceful and fair. I am nothing but grateful for those 10 years of my theater career. It has been an honor,” he said.
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The hardest part of that transition process, he said, was handing his resignation letter to Producing Artistic Director Richard Hopkins. “That was one of the worst moments in my life, to disappoint someone you care about and admire so much. It was sort of disassociating myself from Jason the theater person.”
Hopkins describes Cannon as a “valuable member” of the theater’s artistic team whose “contributions were considerable.” He added that he looks forward to continue working with him as a freelance director.
First books
Cannon quickly created Ibis Books, starting with Mossler’s novel, which was nearly complete at the time.
“I had 80 percent of Sam’s book on my laptop. I reached out to his girlfriend, Nicole Hancock, and his family and said I know how to do this now, it’s so close. His brother, Mickey, said he had the completed screenplay, here’s how it ends, so we did the ending of ‘Queen Palm.’”
He also published two of his own books, “The Understudy” (which is available for free) and “Ghost Light,” and is publishing his third this summer. Playwright Mark St. Germain, who wrote “Dancing Lessons” and many other plays produced at FST, “reached out to me and said ‘I’ve written a thriller. Do you want to publish my book?’ The gates started opening.” St. Germain’s book is called “The Mirror Man.”
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Cannon’s latest book is a nonfiction work called “This Above All” about living an artistic life. He expects to publish some of St. Germain’s plays, and this summer he also will publish “Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret,” a one-act play written by Ret. Lt. Col. Scott Man, who was a student of Cannon’s at FST.
Mann “is starting a veteran performing arts center and wants me to help him with readings for vets to help them adapt to civilian life, working with people with mental health issues to develop monologues and plays to help them handle their mental illnesses. I’m definitely not leaving storytelling by leaving the theater.”
In fact, he said his experiences at FST combined with the new company “opens me up to more projects that have niche missions, veterans, mental health issues, my books. I’ve been getting offers for other books.”
He is working on plans to launch St. Germain’s book with an event at Bookstore1Sarasota. Owner Georgia Court “has been an incredible mentor. The generosity of people blows you away when you’re able to receive it.”
Ibis is not a vanity label, he said, even though he’s publishing his own books through the imprint.
“It gives me the opportunity to publish other people. Self-publishing has a lack of vetting or oversight and people take advantage of the system,” he said. “Amazon is not a publisher. It’s just a way for you to get your book out there and they don’t care if it’s good or not. Amazon works on such a bulk level. They’re paying authors on the number of pages read. Someone may buy your book but only read 10 pages. And they pay you for those pages.”
He’s joining an industry with many independent publishers who are providing a sense of gate keeping without trying to grow into a major publisher like Simon & Schuster or Random House.
“There are hundreds of these independent publishers out there who create legitimacy. The financial model is profit sharing, rather than an advance,” Cannon said. “People don’t realize how little they get paid. There’s a comparison to nonprofit theater artists.”
He said his company is about “stories that are fun, exciting and matter. The three pockets I’m living in now are genre fiction, specifically thriller suspense; literary fiction where Sam lives; and the other pocket is memoir. People have amazing stories. So many people don’t know how to get their stories out. I was teaching a spoken memoir class for years where people could tell a theatrical version of their life story.”
He will be adding another pocket: theater, acting, directing books, improv and plays. “Those are places I know and can speak intelligently about. If other genres come in, we’ll see. I don’t read romance novels, so I would need someone to vet those. I’m not pretending I can edit a romance novel,” he said.
Choosing the books he will publish is similar to picking plays to stage in the theater.
“I know what I’m good at and it feels similar to when we’re reading plays in new play development. I did double major in English and theater.”
When books are submitted, he is looking for the same thing that he seeks in the plays he read at FST: “Compelling characters. does the story move? I want character-driven story over plot. And I also like when the language is fun. It can be the best book, but if it’s written dryly, ugh. And then can you sell it? Is it too niche? Is it something that only five people will read or is it something that has legs?”
While it might be great to discover the next Stephen King or John Grisham, he expects his company is “always going to be a grassroots, word-of-mouth kind of business. It’s a grind, so similar to the theater business. Grind it out over time and develop relationships.”
The process of printing on demand has drastically changed the publishing business and made it possible for independent publishers to grow.
“You don’t have to carry a U-Haul full of stock. I have a couple of boxes of books in my trunk for when I do an event,” he said. “But if someone orders it online, it will get printed and sent to them. People in Australia and France have bought my books. To do that myself would be more work intensive and expensive.”
How does he measure success? “For me right now, it’s a low bar. They can sell and sell and spike or not. I’m less concerned that I have to have a big opening. I got into this to tell good stories and I’m more interested in building relationships. There’s a kind of integrity being there. As long as I can pay my bills and I’m publishing things I believe in, we’re good.”
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota stage director launches new, local book publishing company
