Emily Nathan - My Tiny Atlas: Our World Through Your Eyes

acknowledgments

There are so many people to thank for the creation of this book, but first and foremost I need to thank my literary agent, Kate Woodrow. She is smart, talented, and such a warm ray of sunshine. After experiencing the pressure of self-publishing and distributing a print magazine, I was at first a little skeptical about making a book. But Kate simply glowed with talent and assurance, and I felt like I could actually get a project of this scope done with her in my corner. Because I was busy with the day-to-day life of the magazine, going on shoots, and running Tiny Atlas projects all over the world (to say nothing of taking care of my young son), I wasnt as focused as I should have been on getting my book proposal done at first (ahem, I handed it in eight months later than I said I would). In the end, I finally finished it just so I wouldnt disappoint Kate. I wasnt sure anyone was going to say yes to us, but I had told her I wanted to make a book (because of course I wanted to make a book!!!). She sent the proposal off and the following day we had a book deal.

In order to actually create our book proposal I needed help both on the design and concept sides. Explaining what Tiny Atlas is takes more work than you might think, and in this endeavor Ive had many allies. Janna Stark, a great friend, confidant, and creative jack of all trades proved to be of invaluable assistance in that effort, flying up from LA for book meetings and working with me remotely from her home (while taking care of two young kids herselfthere is a theme here). I called Janna one day and asked if she could please help me just finish this proposal I felt like I was never going to complete (a talented designer and former Tiny Atlas Quarterly intern Lizzie Vaughan had started the proposal with me). With Kates stewardship and Jannas help and intuition, our proposal was completed. Early on, managing editor Flora Tsapovsky helped me wrench my thoughts into a written plan. Later, another former intern, Summer Sewell, saw what the writing for the book could be and helped me shape it (thanks to another old managing editor, Diana Mulvihill, who had suggested she get in touch with me).

Like Summer, Charlotte Boates proved key to content creation. We met Charlotte when she was writing with Spot, an excellent travel app (whose team actually helped us immensely on the first organization of book contributors) that featured Tiny Atlas a few years ago. We knew a good thing when we met her and Charlotte has been working on written Tiny Atlas Quarterly projects with us ever since. Charlotte researched and profiled so many tastemakers with mealways with a smile and always a joy to work with.

From the start of the project Jenny Wapner, our executive editor at Ten Speed Press, was our advocate. She knew and loved Tiny Atlas and had a vision for how we could make a beautiful book together. The creation of this book has been such a pleasure because Jenny wanted a Tiny Atlas book to be just that. Every core value I have instilled into the brandthe authentic and loose quality of the imagery, the accessibility of the locations, the wide variety of contributors who themselves are all really fascinating people, the beauty of the imagery explored in a natural and casual waywas precisely what Jenny wanted explained, explored, and highlighted in this book. Jenny also pushed to make the minimal written content we envisioned for this photography-first book both interesting and useful.

Our Ten Speed designer, Lizzie Allen, had a beautiful but challenging project with the design of this book. I could only get the photo edit whittled down so far without actually putting together the entire book. So I made larger pools of favorite images for each chapter, and then relayed them to Lizzie, who then got super creative with the pairings and flow for the layout. She took on the challenge of having too many beautiful images with aplomb, and gave back gorgeous page after gorgeous page. Working behind the scenes in production at Ten Speed, Jane Chinn had a key role in color proofing, sourcing materials for the jacket, and coordinating with printers.

Anne Goldberg waded deep into the heart of the content production and design, and proved a wonderful guardian editor and bastion of the process and our ethos as a whole while Jenny was on maternity leave. She has been a cheerleader throughout the hardest written portion of this book, while also focusing on the core of my vision with warmth and generosity.

Even though I went to school for writing (long ago), my entire adult life has been mostly about photographic communication. I feared readers might just skip any writing in the book, and I was hesitant to write overly simple introductions to all the chapters--I wasnt a writer but damn it, if I was going to write something, I wanted it to be good! The saving grace came from Jennifer Rodrigue, who I knew first as my yoga instructor in San Francisco. Years later I found out she is a professional editor, and recruited her to work with me on the Tiny Atlas magazine as an executive editor who came with the grounding and depth you might expect from a lifelong yogi. When it came time to do the hard work of trying to reconcile writing something meaningful for all the introductions within the elusive world of deadlines and tracked changes, Jennifer saved me. She came into the process knowing me, knowing Tiny Atlas , and understanding both where Tiny Atlas had started and where we were headed. She was the best possible writing coach. By the time we were done I was proud of the thoughtfulness, clarity, and utility of all the chapter intros and tastemaker profiles.

Our magazine editor and photo partnerships director Deb Hearey held down the fort at Tiny Atlas while I pursued this #dreambook. Deb kept the lights on with all the projects we were running concurrently (meanwhile taking care of three young kids of her own) so that I could make this book. Lindsey Adams, our social media editor and all around production support, made sure deadlines were met and projects completed time and again. Alex Genette has kept our website alive and moving towards the future throughout the process as well. I have a village of support, and I have not even mentioned any of the contributors to the books content.

The work of creating this book has been the curation and writing, but the pure joy and fun of it has always been in discovering the content and the creators whose photographs fill these pages with their travels. A big thanks to all of the creators whose work we profiled in the chapters, and especially to Elke Frotscher, who came to California for a few weeks while we were deep in the thick of the process, and edited alongside me.

Thank you to Jimmy Mezei, the wonderful illustrator whose beautiful print lines the inside of the jacket, who we know thanks to the late and great Tom Slaughter, whom I met on Instagram. Thank you to Mark Sloan for our incredible rebranding, and for being my design bastion at all sorts of important moments during the past few years.

Thanks to all of the photographers who trusted us with an image or two in the book. Thank you to all of the creators who submitted work to us to review for the book; my only regret is that there was not space to feature every one of you. A #mytinyatlas book would have never happened without this community. Our thanks goes out to Instagram for that matter, to creators Kevin and Mikey who gave the world this crazy gift of photographic connection. The #mytinyatlas hastag was launched to the world at the tail end of our first Kickstarter campaign because my friends Michael ONeal and Daniel Dent agreed to meet me at a bar and discuss a tag that could work to spread word about the magazine on social media. Thank you for being the first contributors to the tag.