“What’s in a Name?” or “Who Are You?”

First, a happy and a healthy New Year to those of you who have found yourselves on this page…and equal measures of the same to your families and friends. 

So, it’s a new year. And it’s a new us. Kind of. Well, not really. You see, we were never really that – we were always this. Everyone just thought we were that and it was, well, expedient to not dissuade…

Wait. Let me back up.

Waaaay back in the shadowy origins of WTF Books…that would be the summer of 2011…the fact that there was going to be a book company was a fait accompli. Like Bruce Wayne of Detective Comics #27, not any of Hollywood’s iterations, I was in deep contemplation hoping for an inspiration for a company name. Unlike the Dark Knight, it wasn’t a bat, but a seagull, that fortuitously flew into my life. I was walking the beach in Long Branch, NJ, in early October, having finished lunch with a friend, and found myself amused by a flock of seagulls (insert joke – go ahead, you know you want to) playing in the surf. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a solitary bird poise itself for takeoff and “led it” with my phone’s camera. 

And in the instant that the photo was snapped, the name for a company was born: Words Take Flight Books. It made sense. Our goal was, is and will continue to be to help authors’ words fly to their natural destination – readers’ minds and imaginations – and give readers’ minds and imaginations the wings they need to take them to new and exciting places.

Of course, as a fledgling company, we needed a hook to capture authors and readers alike – and it was found in the serendipitous abbreviation of Words Take Flight: WTF. Since then, the WTF Books name has served the company well – behold the power of the double entendre! – but now, if I may continue the bird metaphor, as we start to stretch our wings and look to expand our migratory pattern, if you will, we want to use the name that started it all…the name that tells the world exactly who we are and why we are here.

There will undoubtedly be some sad sighs and kicks at the dirt going, “Aww…” – but let’s face it: who calls IBM “International Business Machines?” We will always be our abbreviation, but we will always be something a little bit more. So, for those of you who know us, as well as for those of you who we hope will get to know us, there will always be a part of us that will be that WTF. Our website name, for instance, and our Twitter presence. And what goes through our heads when files don’t properly upload, or a shipping problem re-routes a delivery, or my dog eats a raw sausage out of the package that I stupidly left within his reach, or…

So, again, here’s to an exciting 2014: May it be the year that your words – and everything for which you wish – takes flight.

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