Atkinson: Incredible Stories From Space

INCREDIBLE STORIES FROM SPACE:
A BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT THE MISSIONS
CHANGING OUR VIEW OF THE COSMOS
Nancy Atkinson
Page Street Publishing (subsidiary of Macmillan), December 20, 2016, $19.99
ISBN-10: 1624143172; ISBN-13: 978-1624143175

Atkinson reports:

Since 2004, I’ve been “covering the Universe,” as a writer and editor for the space and astronomy news site Universe Today. In the fall of 2015, I received a call from Page Street Publishing, a subsidiary of Macmillan. They had an idea for a book about NASA’s current robotic missions and wondered if I would consider writing it. To say I was honored is an understatement.

The biggest challenge was an extremely tight timeline: I had about four and a half months to conduct interviews and finish the first draft. Thankfully, I was able to rearrange my duties at Universe Today.

Page Street gave me almost complete discretion on the content and direction of the book. I wanted to tell the stories of the people behind the robots that explore the solar system and beyond. So I traveled to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute, conducting one-on-one interviews with 22 NASA scientists and engineers. I then followed up with 15 more interviews via phone and email, for a total of 37 unique voices for the book.

As soon as I heard stories from the dedicated and passionate people that work at NASA, the outline developed quite easily. I was able to weave their stories into the chronicles of the missions, creating what I hope is an enduring legacy to these spacecraft, even though what I’ve really done is take a snapshot in time. The stories of these ongoing missions are always changing because of new developments and discoveries.

I chose the 240 images in the book and wrote the captions. While I met or was early on all my deadlines, the publication was delayed by a month because of a “unique” font corruption that occurred during production. The books had to be reprinted. The publisher said in 25 years, he’s never had that happen before. The takeaway is to be flexible, patient, and understanding, as the publishing process entails many things that are out of your control.

I did not hire a publicist, my one regret. Getting out the word about the book is incredibly time consuming. But the experience overall has been exhilarating. I’m grateful for a publisher who trusted my abilities, and gave me the opportunity to be resourceful and creative.

Contact info:

• Nancy Atkinson, 217-622-1096, nancy@universetoday.com
• Book website: http://www.nancyatkinson.com/blog/the-book-incredible-stories-from-space/
• Blog website: http://www.nancyatkinson.com/
• Publicist: Caitlin Kling, 978-594-8758, caitlink@pagestreetpublishing.com

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