Our History
To understand the background and experience that ePress brings to the public, we need to go back to March of 1995.
Bob Hembree of Norfolk, Virginia participated in online writing classes through Virtual University. There were shortcomings in the program and one of the students suggested they establish an email study group. This is when Bob became involved in the Cyberhouse 7+ Gang. The original group consisted of 7 members, therefore the name.
This group grew to encompass 16 people who formed an international group, including members from the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Argentina and Spain. This group of writers came to know each other well. They exchanged manuscripts and gave one another valuable critiques. They exchanged daily emails and helped one another become better writers.
Bob found ways to fine-tune the system they were using. He standardized their emails for posting, critiquing and chatting. Individual web pages were created for each member, and he created a system for them to post and critique work.
This sowed the seeds which lead to Bob’s desire to teach Creative Writing classes online. The class entitled Fiction 251 was offered online in 1995. These classes are no longer available.
Later, he built a new site, which at first was dedicated to postmodern and magical realism writers. Bob's motivation for starting the site was to met other writers with his same interests. The first class was added to this site. Later, Fiction 401 and Fiction 301 were added.
In an early editorial written by Mr. Hembree, he gave us some valuable insights. "Writers should be able to find the words for anything...hope you get all the support to make this, one of the most interesting writer publications on the net. We certainly have the potential with this talented, imaginative and diverse group of writers."
The above quote is from "Letters to the Editor" written by Mr. Henbree. It was sent to Glennis Hobbs when she began to lay the groundwork for an early ezine, which was tied into the original site. This ezine provided the early seeds that grew into T-Zero. The first ezine was entitled the Cyberhous 7 International Chronicle.
Mr. Hembree made dramatic revisions to the writing site. This began the evolution from 4-writers.com to become Writopia, which eventually evolved into Writers’ Village University.
Fiction 98 began in January 1998. As the classes began to take shape, the members faced the inevitable ups and downs, good times and bad. Each person’s work began to grow and improve with the help of others.
ePress-online.com was formed in 2000. The website was created in 2001 and a book of poetry, Word Castles by Tom Spencer, was published. In 2002 a children's book, Samantha the Duck by suz, was published, and early in 2004 a collection of short stories, Other People's Lives, was published. Since that time, ePress-online has accepted and published many manuscripts, full-length works of fiction as well as nonfiction pertaining to the craft of writing. Our team editing approach has resulted in accolades for the quality of our books. In early 2007, two of our books--Needle by L.L. Whitaker, and Hierath by UK writer Joanne Hall--took finalist positions in the prestigious EPPIE Awards held at Virginia Beach. In June of 2007, ePress incorporated as a legal entity as ePress-Online Inc. With sound management and structured growth, ePress is poised to be the premier ePublisher of the
future. The following link will take you to our submission guidelines.
