This is my story and I'm sticking to it!

In 1989, Bert Herrman, a graduate of the Wharton School, University of Pennslvania and the Ohio University Graduate School of Communication, a former corporate public relations director and public relations account executive in Philadelphia found himself in San Francisco, where he self-published his first book: BEING * BEING HAPPY * BEING GAY.

The book was a success and his publishing company, Alamo Square Press, followed It up with seven other titles. In 1994, he published WHAT THE BIBLE REALLY SAY ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY by Daniel Helminiak, a block-buster best seller, which now has over 100 thousand copies in print. Ten more books followed.

At that time, it was very difficult for small gay/lesbian publishers to find wholesalers that offered them any respect and Bert created Alamo Square Distributors as a subsidiary of Alamo Square Press. The new wholesale business soon became much larger than the press and in 1997, Bert spun off the business as a separate entity and took in a partner. With the help of funds realized by selling half the wholesale business, Bert constructed his dream house and bed & breakfast in the mountains of New Mexico. In 2001, the wholesale business was sold and then was sold again in 2003. Bert continued with the successors as buyer although he had no ownership in the business.

This past August, Alamo Square Distributors Inc closed for business with tremendous vendor debts. The same week, Koen Book distributors also closed. The previous year, BookPeople, another wholesaler that served the gay/lesbian market went bankrupt. They were each following an old formula that made it once, but wasn't making it in hard times. Burdened with large fixed expense with payroll and warehouses, they could not deal with the diminishing book market.

With some hesitation, Bert has come out of relative retirement to step back to the plate. He has created ASP Wholesale, once again a division of Alamo Square Press, to again serve the publishers and stores that depended on him with the small-press wholesale operation that is so desperately needed.

Bert has negotiated with a highly-reliable book fulfillment house in Hayward, CA to handle the warehousing and shipping, receiving payment based on a percentage of sales. Bert is handling all sales, purchases and bookkeeping from his home in the mountains of New Mexico, communicating by email, fax and occasionally telephone.

We hope you will maintain faith with us and trust us to handle your wholesale book needs. If you travel to New Mexico, stop by Casa Manzano Bed & Breakfast and see how Bert was able to leave San Francisco!



Bert Herrman

http://home.earthlink.net/~casa.manzano/