WE ARE NOT:
Technically, Clearwater Florida is more of a town than a publishing company. If you’re having trouble telling the difference, our gentle message is, “Your taxes are now due, feel free to send them to us here in Broomfield, Colorado. Trust us, it’s an outsourcing kind of deal, very modern. Good for the economy. Cash preferred.”
The Hudson River Clearwater Sloop Project
At some point, fisherman on the Hudson River thought, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if there were actual FISH in the river? Maybe if it weren’t polluted to the point of being flammable… So they decided to reverse that and make the river completely INflammable and clean enough for earth-based life forms. Very cool folks, neat org, they do a ton of good, if you like the environment.
Clearwater Publishing of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
These guys swiped our name, but it could be an honest mistake. Up there in Canada they may have some actual “clear water” and named the company after that. Or, it could translate differently in Canadian. They do artistic nature prints.
Other places have swiped our name as well, like Clearwater Lake in California, but they were crafty and swiped it years before we incorporated, creating a legal loophole whereby they can continue to use the name.
Clearwater Publishing from years ago
We inadvertently swiped their name, which caused us both some confusion. They had changed their name just before we sprang into existence. The previous Clearwater published microfiche and Indian Affairs proceedings. They changed their name to Norman Ross Publishing, then Ross Publishing. Since then they were acquired by ProQuest Information and Learning, where they were absorbed into the UMI Division. Norman Ross can probably answer your questions. On the very bottom right hand corner of his new webpage at Ross Publishing, he’s got a link for you to ask him questions like that. Although he may just direct you somewhere else, much as we are doing here.
Kenn chose the name “Clearwater” because he looked up his own name, “kenn” in a name-your-baby book and learned it’s an old Scottish name meaning “clear bright water.” He also considered “Donald Trump Publishing” but decided against it for legal reasons. There are so many Donalds in the world, one of them was bound to object.
Sure, our names don’t sound much alike unless you’re coughing violently. But I just discovered they published books by a guy named Jonathan Safran Foer who apparently has written two books that remind people of Kenn’s unpublished novel “Jumper” which also has the code name “Roses in Pencil.” Not only must this Foer fellow be a fabulous writer, he must also be psychic. I hope everyone buys his books to establish the marketplace, and I hope the folks at Houghton Mifflin contact me to publish Jumper. They are obviously enlightened folks who deserve to make the monumental profits.
This is an honest mistake, a lot of people get us confused with these folks. We get calls for Bennet Cerf all the time. We tell them all the same thing: “The check is in the mail, I’ll buy the negatives, and I’m sorry but your manuscript failed to fully engage me.” But then, that’s what we say when people call looking for us too. In those cases we usually talk in our fake Swedish so it comes out “Larkin, larkin, oofta lefsa codfish snarkenmishen.”
We hope this link brings them a lot of business. No, no. Please don’t thank us. And of course, there is no real, technical, legal reason to reciprocate our unselfish goodwill…..
Surely they know that penguins come in herds, not groups, and they’d probably be a lot more successful if they changed their name to The Penguin Herd. I’m just trying to help.
We are also not Barnes and Noble or Amazon orBorders, but we mention them here in case search engines like Google or Yahoo or Alta Vista or Dog Pile or Hot Bot or Lycos are listening. Similarly, we are not Jessica Simpsonor that Simon guy from American Idol, or the band Free Money Sex and Beer. But I bet they get a lot of hits. We are also not The Tattered Cover or Powells or The Vatican. Or Barack Obama or Sarah Palin for that matter.
Clearwater Books in London
http//:www.clearwaterbooks.co.uk
This bookseller has been in business for 35 years. Originally, they specialized in the books of Henry Williamson, whose most famous book is Tarka the Otter, which is set in the fictional river “Clearwater.” They continue to sell his books, as well as others. Bevis Clarke, the original owner’s son, continues the family tradition. We discovered these folks because they are selling a copy of a book by YH Yoxall, which refers to the song Smalilou, an old Irish song. Kenn Amdahl is probably the only human who sings this song these days. Bevis Clarke now runs the company. He seems like a cool guy.