Publishing During a Pandemic

The following are a few of my thoughts as deals with the COVID-19 and the genealogy publishing business.

Washington State was the first place in the USA to have a known COVID-19 patient. This was announced on January 21, 2020. The patient had recently traveled to Wuhan, China, and thankfully, he has since fully recovered. Nobody here was worrying about it much. The President imposed a travel ban on those who would enter the USA from China on January 31. Most of us still weren’t worrying about it. China was a world away. Washingtonians weren’t concerned until Life Care Center in Kirkland suddenly began having their patients get sick and die, the first two on February 26th. The nursing home is now linked to 37 deaths. And the contagion had already escaped before anyone fully understood what they were dealing with.

RootsTech started on Wednesday, Feb. 26. We left Orting on February 20, and set up our FRPC store in the Plaza Hotel across the street on Sunday, Feb. 23. We opened the shop from Feb. 24 through the 28th. We had a gentleman of Chinese descent come by and told us in great detail about the agony that his family in China was going through. It was rather shocking and I was thinking how thankful that we weren’t dealing with something like that here. We left Salt Lake City on Monday, March 2nd, arriving home late that evening. As with most major conferences, we spent most of the next three weeks unpacking boxes, restocking shelves, and catching up after having been on the road a few days. Note – a typical 4-day conference can easily take up four to five weeks of our lives. There was manuscript editing to do, and my plan was to begin intense marketing the week of the 22nd of March. We also had to deal with veterinary appointments for 3 cats and our dog. And I had three doctor’s appointments to work in. We were just going about our lives, hearing about the virus, but it wasn’t effecting us in the slightest. Even after it was known that the virus was killing people who lived just 45 miles from us, in Kirkland, most folks I knew didn’t even think about it.

Then Monday, March 23 was upon us. At that point I began keeping a hand-written journal. I realized that we were about to live through history. Governor Insley made the decision to shut down the State of Washington. Schools were closed. Restaurants, bars and any business considered nonessential was to close their doors. Restaurants could continue to operate, but take-out only. Business owners wondered if their business was “essential” or not. We were given to believe that we probably weren’t essential, but no one would stop us from packing and shipping genealogy books, as long as our employees weren’t onsite. So Dale and Tara immediately began all processing orders from home. I did most of the packing and shipping, with help from Patty and my brother, Steve, who runs the press side of our business. I had no idea what I was in for! Without doing any marketing – NONE – I was still overwhelmed with shipping books. Every day it got a little worse. Library sales, always a huge part of the business, basically stopped. Standing orders were canceled. However, genealogists just kept ordering books! We were very cautious – leaving the place, face covering in place, once a day to deliver packages and mail to the post office a block away. Shopping in physical stores nearly ceased. Groceries were obtained during “senior” hours about every 10 days. The business kept a low profile, as Washington State set up a website where you could turn in your offending neighbors – and we weren’t so sure we weren’t offending (that turned out to be a fiasco, as the State then made the names of the whistleblowers public). Last week we finally got a letter stating that Printers and Packagers are deemed essential by the Federal government. But it was too late for some. We lost one of the best “for the trade” printers in Seattle – a company that did our UV coating for us. They won’t be reopening. The publishing world as such is in a shambles. Many small printing operations closed. Create Space – an Ingram owned company that prints and ships one-off books for publishers, is now running 22 days behind, as much of the burden shifted to them. Thousands of genealogy-related titles are involved. Over 1000 of the books sold on the FRPC website are drop-shipped from Create Space. Note that anything at our site with the item number ending in D is a drop-ship item – most from Create Space.

Finding to time edit has been difficult. We’re backed up with 12 books currently under edit – with another 13 that are scheduled to be in print by Fall. We get some editing done every day, but not like normal!

The majority of the books and guides sold at the Family Roots Publishing website are printed here. Paper is still available. If bindery is needed, it gets done at a small “mom and pop” shop in the south end of Seattle. We’re confident that “this too shall pass,” and that things will return to – if not normal – then, something comparable. As of today, we are getting employees back onsite – while fully observing social distancing, face coverings, and regular surface wipe downs. Pierce County has been fortunate. On March 23, when the lockdown took place, the county recorded 126 COVID-19 cases and one death. As of now, Pierce County has had 1,725 cases, and 63 deaths. All things considered, those numbers are amazing, as Tacoma itself has nearly a quarter million in population – with the county coming in at 904,000. Orting has now grown to over 8000 people, and I haven’t heard of anyone having COVID-19. Most folks are being careful, and although some rural counties are opening again, most of the state will continue to be under lockdown until the end of the month.

So, as of today I’m announcing that we’re officially “back in business.” We’ve got a lot of new product in the works and will be making announcements over the coming weeks. Stay safe everyone…