A value in northern perspective: Sudbury journalists launch publishing house.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: SUDBURY

A pair of Sudbury journalists is extending their expertise to the world of books with a new publishing house for Northern Ontario writers.

This spring, Laura Gregorini and Heather Campbell launched Latitude 46 Publishing, named for Sudbury's geographic parallel and designed to publish new and established authors throughout the North.

"We're both writers," Gregorini said. "I think we are in tune to the issues and the stories of our community and of the North, so we see that as an extension of what we already do as wordsmiths."

Latitude 46 offers editorial and marketing support to authors seeking to get their work into print. To be eligible for the publisher's services, authors must either call the North home, or feature it in their work. Gregorini looks after author relations, while Campbell helms the business and production side of things.

The company's first project is a short story anthology. Now that the Aug. 31 deadline has passed, the pair will go through the task of reading all the submissions and whittle them down to the chosen stories.

Though Latitude 46 has admittedly low overhead--the pair largely work out of their homes--Gregorini and Campbell put up the startup capital for a website and other expenses on their own. To be eligible for funding through the Canada Council for the Arts, the publishing house has to have published at least four or five quality literary volumes.

"They have to contribute to the cultural landscape of the country, and we want to do that," Campbell said. "That's the kind of thing I'd love to see happen, that we find that writer here in Northern Ontario that just happens to wow the world."

The publishing industry is experiencing drastic changes in how it brings literature to the world. Following the merger of two of North America's big publishers, Penguin and Random House, Gregorini believes aspiring authors will be looking for alternatives to getting their work in print, as the bigger names will be printing fewer small volumes.

"I think gone are the days where an author can make a living being an author, writing...