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After returning to Omaha to receive medical treatment for a potentially fatal illness, international business consultant Leslie Little went on to start a new venture that recently earned several national awards.
The Omaha native, who had been living in London for the past 15 years, was given less than a 30 percent chance of recovering from complications following a routine surgery she underwent in England.
Little decided she wanted to see Paris, her favorite city, at least one more time. So she booked a trip to the French capital to celebrate her 40th birthday. While there, Little said, she vowed that if she lived she would follow through with a longtime dream of producing a book capturing the essence of Paris.
The result was “Paris Icons,” a large, coffee-table book of quotations and original photographs that Little, who eventually recovered, published last year. The book recently received a gold medal for Most Outstanding Book Design and a bronze medal for Best Coffee Table Book of the Year at the 2009 IPPY Independent Publisher Book Awards in New York City.
More than 4,000 books from English-speaking countries were considered, said IPPY awards director Jim Barnes.
The organization of independent publishers started the awards in 1997 to provide recognition and exposure for the books, most of which don’t have the hefty marketing budgets and connections of the large publishing houses, Barnes said.
“They’re up against a tough battle to get recognition and media attention,” he said.
“Paris Icons” also earned a silver medal for the year’s best travel-essay book by ForeWord magazine.
The genesis of the book goes back 20 years, Little said, when she developed a business plan for a project that would marry quotations with photographs from the world’s iconic cities. She had a database of quotes that she collected over two decades.
In 2005, Little founded a publishing company, Icon Images, and enlisted Omaha photographer James Scholz, who is known for his architectural photographs, and Justine Tucker, a graphic designer from Des Moines, to work on the project.
Little and Scholz traveled to Paris for two weeks in the summer and again in the winter, which resulted in more than 5,000 photographs of the city. The quotes that Little wanted to use determined most of the photo subjects, which included landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral, she said.
Little said her vision for the book was to capture the “soul of the city” from a Parisian’s perspective.
Palace Press International in California printed 2,000 copies of 328-page “Paris Icons” in the book’s first printing. Little said about two-thirds of the copies have been sold.
The book is available for purchase online at www.iconimages.us, or locally at Voila!, the Linen Gallery in Regency and the Bookworm in Countryside Village. It also is carried by various outlets in London, Paris and the U.S., including Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys New York.
Prices vary from about $175 to $800, depending on where the book is purchased and whether the buyer chooses the standard or a special edition, which includes additional features such as a case for the book.
Scholz’s photographs have been featured at galleries and will be on display next summer at Mumm Winery in Napa Valley, Calif.
Barnes said Little’s book is a great example of the quality, creativity and expense that go into producing an independent book.
“It goes beyond what a big publisher can do,” he said.
The book’s distinctive features include a silk-screened cloth cover and hand sewn vellum pages for each quotation.
“It’s essentially a handmade book,” Little said. “Paris is all about design and quality, so we wanted something that is unique, not mass produced.”
Barnes called the book “a work of art.”
“It went above and beyond normal publishing practices.”
“Paris Icons” has led to other business opportunities, Little said. She is working with several luxury brands and companies that are considering publishing private-edition books to define the essence of their brand. She declined to name the companies.
She has begun work on “London Icons,” the second in a series of coffee table books on iconic cities that Little plans. The London book will be published before the 2012 Summer Olympics, which will be held there, she said.
“It’s been an entrepreneurial dream to see the concept received globally,” Little said. “And it all happened here in Omaha. It’s a great place to start a business.”
Contact the writer:
444-1085, stefanie.monge@owh.com
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