Editorial director Dobbs takes niche publishing to next level

Jean Dobbs

The magazine editing career of Jean Dobbs (MA '93) began on her first day of grad school when she asked an instructor to identify the best magazine being published in Boulder.

Informed that Spinal Network was doing good work, Dobbs went to the magazine's offices, knocked on publisher Sam Maddox's door and told him, "I want to be your intern," and he agreed to hire her.

"I worked there without pay for a while and then actually landed a place on the masthead and started getting paychecks – that is, until they started bouncing," she says.

The struggling wheelchair-lifestyle magazine, renamed New Mobility, ceased publication the year Dobbs graduated.

"But then Sam sold it to a company in Malibu called Miramar. I flew myself out to California to convince the new company that they should hire me. They did," she says.

Dobbs was the managing editor for four years. When the magazine was sold again, to Pennsylvania-based No Limits Communications, she became executive editor and later editorial director, working out of her home in Santa Monica.

When Miramar sold the magazine, the company retained the rights to the book "Spinal Network: The Total Wheelchair Resource Book" that had spawned the magazine.

"A couple of years later, the book went out of print, and we started hearing from readers who wondered how they could get the book," Dobbs says.

"I contacted the owner and asked him if he planned to reprint it. He said that he would rather sell the rights to someone with the passion and commitment to do it right."

In 2001, she started Nine Lives Press and became a publisher.

Dobbs says she got together enough money for a down payment on the book rights and arranged to pay the rest over time. In 2002, she reprinted the book and now markets it through direct mail, the Internet and New Mobility (www.newmobility.com), where she remains the editorial director.

jean.dobbs@earthlink.net