ICSC Creates Its Own Press

After co-authoring the book Creativity Rising: Creative Thinking & Creative Problem Solving in the 21st Century earlier this year, the four writers, all associated with Buffalo State’s International Center for Studies in Creativity (ICSC), got creative when it came time to publish it.

Rather than sending the manuscript to a publishing house and hoping for the best, they helped the ICSC form its own press.

"We have all this wonderful content, a clearinghouse of information on creativity. We thought, 'Why don’t we package it?'" explained Gerard Puccio, professor of creative studies. He wrote Creativity Rising with Marie Mance, the ICSC’s director of leadership development, and Laura Barbero Switalski, ’03, and Paul D. Reali, ’84, ’09.

ICSC Press was born last May; Creativity Rising is its inaugural title. While the ICSC does not operate a physical printing press, it offers a print-on-demand format.  Creativity Rising, for instance, is available in a PDF version for $4.95, and in paperback, either black and white or color, that the ICSC Press orders from a printing partner in Raleigh, North Carolina. They also just released a version for Kindle.

Puccio, who has written four books, including most recently The Innovative Team with ICSC alumnus Chris Grivas, '96, noted that creating an in-house press not only is more expedient than going the traditional publishing route, it also allows for more creative license.

"My experience has been when you publish with a major publisher, you are more limited, as they have own way of doing things," Puccio said.

Owner of a training and consulting company in Charlotte, North Carolina, Reali serves as the ICSP Press managing editor and handles the bulk of the work from his desktop computer.

"Digital presses these days are very affordable with the print-on-demand format," Reali said. "We realized we didn’t need to print 5,000 copies. We print just as many copies as we can sell."

Puccio said the ICSC is loosely analogous to the Harvard Business Press.

"At one point, many, many years ago, they thought, 'We are the authority on business and have a lot to say. Let's create our own press.'"

Likewise, they envision the ICSC Press as a vehicle to publish books not only written by ICSC faculty but also by alumni and others in the field who want to disseminate their original thinking about creativity, something Puccio describes as a crucial "twenty-first century skill."

During the Creativity Experts Exchange held in May at Buffalo State, Puccio and Reali introduced the ICSC Press to the 100 participants.

"It was met with great excitement, partly because the ICSC doesn’t have the kind of international recognition we'd like it to have. And that is one mission of the press—to promote the department," which is an incredible resource," Reali said. "The second mission is to provide an opportunity for our alumni and other creativity authors."

Creativity Rising is available from the ICSC online store, along with Amazon and Buffalo State’s Barnes & Noble.