Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire

In the mid-80s, with the advent of the personal computer, publishing entrepreneurs sprang up throughout the San Francisco Bay Area ushering in a heyday of small press publishing.

At twenty-eight, Foghorn Press publisher Vicki Morgan is in the middle of this phenomenon, while still trying to extricate herself from a bad marriage and build a life in the City. Her alcoholic ex-husband isn't happy with the bloodless coup to get him out of Foghorn, but luckily Dave, Vicki's eccentric younger brother, healing from a break-up of his own, joins her to help build the business. As Morgans, they have been raised to "take the mountain" which they now see as Foghorn Press.

Together the siblings revive their hope for the future by working 100-hour work weeks, drinking Mickey Bigmouth beers, and creating jokes that they alone find hilarious while great music of the era from Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman, Bonnie Raitt, and Don Henley plays on the office cassette player. They rehash their past relationships and analyze the failings of the teen parents who raised them while they take inventory, ship orders, layout books, and market them, making the publishing up as they go along. The duo endures a fleet of good old boys, questionable authors, humor-resistant employees, calculating distributors, and one con man. But just when they realize some success, they begin to clash in their approach to business and life.

Foghorn charts the climb of a young woman in the world of business, revealing the crazy intensity of a determined entrepreneur who "will do anything" to succeed. It's a love story between siblings and a celebration of the lexicon and power of family. Amid the backdrop of San Francisco in the tumultuous 1990s, it revisits a unique time in Bay Area history when small presses-powered by personal computers--took the publishing field.