Long-time Plymouth resident Lydia Cohn always loved her Mother's (Joan C. Yingling) short stories growing up. The stories, covered several different topics from Little League baseball to never doubting your abilities to achieve your goals. While the stories were known among the family, Lydia's Mother - Joan, kept them within the family for years, sharing them occasionally. As time went on Lydia admired her Mother's writing ability and the way she connected with the audience, but she developed a particularly strong connection with one story which would lead her on a multi-year journey into the publishing world.
Time went on and years passed as the stories sat tucked away, first in Joan's personal notebook, then after her passing in Lydia's office. At a recent family gathering, the subject of Joan's stories came up in conversation. Lydia was shocked some of her siblings had all but forgotten their mother's stories. Lydia also realized most of Joan's 10 grandchildren had never heard her stories! This is when Lydia realized that if she didn't turn her mother's stories into something special they would get lost over time and they deserve more than to relegated to a forgotten folder. Lydia had always talked about getting her mother's work published but had no idea how to go about it.
In a twist of fate, Lydia's daughter Jess had recently begun working as an Acquisitions Editor for Mascot Books, a hybrid publishing company that publishes books by both veteran and first-time authors, such as Lydia. Jess pushed Lydia to try the hybrid publishing method to help share "The Can't That Could" with the world. Lydia took a leap of faith and decided to give the process a try. After a year of hard work and many edits, Lydia was able to realize her dream when she unpacked the first shipment of books this June.
The Story of The Can't That Could is a children's book about changing your mindset from "I can't" to "I can." Whether it is tying your shoes or making your bed, if you say I can't, surely you can! With a little help from a wee little elf, the Can't learns that change comes from within and all he has to do is believe in himself and he'll see everything he can do that he didn't see before!
The Story of The Can't That Could is now available for order by clicking here, Lydia will also be doing a number of meet the author and live readings over the several months to help spread the word of The Story of The Can't That Could.
About Mascot Books:
Mascot Books is a full-service hybrid book publisher, they sit between the traditional and self-publishing world. Like the publishers in New York City, Mascot manages the full production of the book like editing, layout, illustrations, and cover design. They also market and distribute the book with their connections to Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon, Costco, and independent stores all across the country. However, one key difference about Mascot is that they do not purchase the rights to the book. Instead, the author owns all rights, which allows them to have more creative control over the project and earn royalty rates between 100% to 85%. The author gets to pick out the illustrator, go through different cover design drafts, approve edits. In traditional publishing, the author hands over their book and characters to the publisher to own and create based on their vision instead of the author’s. With Mascot, they always make sure the book turns out the way the author wants and gets into the hands of readers everywhere.
