AdLab Media Teams with Publisher to Launch New Business Book Imprint

On Feb 11, 2019

AdLab Media, a 20 year-old Fairfield-based ad agency/PR firm has joined with Absolutely Amazing e-Books of Key West, Florida, to launch Mentor Business Books, a new imprint. Barry Cohen, managing member of AdLab, announced the launch in conjunction with Shirrel Rhoades, principal of the Florida-based publishing house.

“This was a natural; we have helped many first-time authors—entrepreneurs, coaches, trainers, financial advisors, accountants and other professionals create and promote their intellectual property. We can now offer them an alternative to self-publishing,” Cohen remarked. Rhoades’ firm had published mostly other genres and can now offer its reader base a broader range of quality business books.

Prior to forming his own company, Shirrel Rhoades held executive roles in some of the most prestigious publishing operations, including Marvel Entertainment, Scholastic, Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. Cohen’s career spans 40 years in the broadcast and advertising agency arenas. After successfully authoring and publishing his own books, in response to his aggressive promotion and publicity efforts, authors began seeking him out for help with their book projects. As a result, AdLab has now helped over two dozen authors with several more projects in progress. Recently, AdLab increased its editorial staff in order to handle the increasing demand.

Since the publishing world has changed dramatically over recent years, major legacy publishers have experienced declining revenues. As a result, they have become extremely risk averse and seldom take on new talent. The rise in new technologies has lowered the barriers to entry for authors to self-publish and to put out a quality product rapidly. Alternatively, they can now seek out any number of smaller publishers such as Mentor Business Books.

According to Cohen, the new business mantra is “Publish or Perish.” Publishing helps professionals and entrepreneurs raise their profile and credibility in the marketplace, giving them a competitive edge. However, as both Cohen and Rhoades will attest to, the authors need to actively promote their works—something these publishers have done successfully for their clients.

“The very definition of publishing has changed. Today, publishing includes books, e-books, audio books, blogs, podcasts and a multitude of ways to repurpose your content for consumption,” states Cohen.  AdLab has a competitive edge with its in-house audio-video production facility, allowing the company to offer all of those services. Rhoades echoes the sentiment, also indicating how his firm has a nimble, cost-efficient and more user-friendly model than the large legacy companies he worked for during his career.

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