You might be an artist who would like to introduce yourself and your work here; or maybe you’re a business with a mission to describe. We can help you with that. I am the lead hand at our company. My name is Desmond Grundy and I have done this before.
The genesis of Next Level Press was College in Oakville, Ontario. I had an internship at a Canadian publisher called Mosaic Press. I read and asked questions and got inspired and bought books. While pouring over catalogues I could see there were lots of books that only interested parties read. This was a market far away from any mainstream distribution. I believe the content is no less valuable and so I set out to develop these types of vertical-geek type media properties that only sold to the select few who were looking for them, had a relationship to the author or otherwise liked the material we published before –the allusive return customer.
Our first publication, Burma Liberators, RCAF in SEAC by J.R. Gwynne Timothy was a must print project for its author. Jack was one of the three survivors from his squadron who survived Burma in WWII. Jack provides fathomless detail to the daily routine of piloting a flying fortress. At 1200 plus pages, with hand drawn replicas of the insignia used to identify each squadron starting each chapter, Burma Liberators is a tome of inside knowledge and a must have for scholars looking at Canada’s role in Burma during the second world war.
When I started Next Level, mostly to publish Jack’s back and scratch an itch I had for making books, multi-media was a giant industry movement during the mid-nineties. It wasn’t until 2005 that I had the equipment and other resources to film, script and produce Equine Massage, with Jamie Downey and Bob Fisher. I always joke that the video gets so many hits because people are searching for ‘Massage’ videos, people massage. But I was wrong. The video gets hits from all over the world, well over 50,000 mostly from Saudi Arabia, Germany, the U.S. and Brazil.
Another off ramp of the Information Highway is the e-book, which I a fully embraced and we created the Bandit Guide to Teaching Online in 2010.
During this period of side hustle publishing I worked as an on-contract print production coordinator and technology consultant, mostly for the publishing industry. I grew up on hot wax and X-acto knives slaving under a brace of florescent lights staring down at a light table covered in artwork and text. We made books and advertisements that way once. I worked, learned and progressed through all the stages that have lead to the multi-flavoured analogue and digital smorgasbords of publishing we have today.