Spanner Books — Rights Outreach Draft

TL;DR

Who they are: Spanner Books, Asheville NC — a two-person shop run by Carol and Jamie (first names from their About page; full names not published anywhere I could find). Both are former Bright Mountain Books employees who founded Spanner after Cynthia Bright's retirement to keep "a few" Bright Mountain and Historical Images titles in print. Their homepage explicitly invites people to suggest out-of-print books for republishing or ebook editions — our ask fits their stated mission exactly.

Send to: spannerbooks@gmail.com — the only contact method they publish (confirmed on both spannerbooks.com/contact and brightmountainbooks.com, which redirects retailer/sales inquiries to that same address). No phone, no form, no mailing address.

Do they carry Eleanor's titles? Not confirmed either way. Their site lists no catalog at all (Home/About/Contact only, no books page — /books 404s). Both memoirs currently appear only as used copies (Amazon, AbeBooks, ThriftBooks, eBay) — consistent with out-of-print, NOT among the titles Spanner actively continues. That's fine for us: it makes reversion more likely and them a source of information rather than a rights holder to negotiate with.

Email draft (copy-paste ready)

To: spannerbooks@gmail.com From: ben@raydata.co Subject: Eleanor Lambert Wilson's Brasstown memoirs — a grandson's question

Hi Carol and Jamie,

My name is Ben Wilson. My grandmother, Eleanor Lambert Wilson, wrote two memoirs about her life in Brasstown — My Journey to Appalachia: A Year at the Folk School (2004) and My Life in Brasstown: An Appalachian Memoir (2009) — both published by Bright Mountain Books. I found Spanner through the note on the Bright Mountain site, and I'm glad there are people keeping these regional titles alive; that's exactly the shelf my grandmother's books lived on.

She passed away in 2010, and our family — my dad and his siblings — would love to bring both books back into print and eventually record an audiobook. Since you two know the Bright Mountain catalog better than anyone, I'm hoping you can help with three things:

1. Rights — do you know whether rights to her titles reverted to the author/estate when Bright Mountain wound down, or where they sit now?
2. Files — is there any chance the manuscripts or production files (text or covers) still exist somewhere?
3. Spanner — do you carry any remaining stock of her titles, or have any continuing interest in them?

No urgency and nothing legalistic here — just a family trying to do right by Grandma Ellie's books. Happy to connect by email or phone, whatever's easiest.

With thanks, Ben Wilson Grandson of Eleanor Lambert Wilson ben@raydata.co

(~230 words)

Alternate opening — use if it turns out they personally worked on or knew her books:

Hi Carol and Jamie — if either of you worked on Ellie Wilson's two Brasstown memoirs during your Bright Mountain years, you may remember her: the Vassar girl who came to the Folk School for one year in 1941 and stayed for sixty. I'm her grandson, Ben.

⚡ CORRECTION 2026-07-21 evening (founder): RIGHTS ARE SETTLED — the ask is FILES

Founder, verbatim: "I think this has already been litigated and we have clean and clear rights to it (aunt Florence specifically) but she has lost track of the files." → The [UNVERIFIED] rights-reversion items below are OBE: family rights confirmed, Aunt Florence = rights holder of record; the outreach purpose = locating surviving manuscripts/production files + stock. Email v2 (rewritten in DAD's voice, files-first) lives in the parents packet: Family-Asks-for-Mom-and-Dad-2026-07-21-v2.pdf. Scanning the signed copies remains the manuscript plan regardless.

What we know about the rights chain

• Bright Mountain Books, Inc. — Fairview NC, founded 1983 by Eric and Cynthia Bright; specialized in adult non-fiction on the Southern Appalachians. No longer actively publishing; their own site frames it as post-"Cynthia's retirement." [CONFIRMED — brightmountainbooks.com + publisher profiles]
• Spanner Books — founded by two former Bright Mountain employees (Carol + Jamie) to continue "a few" Bright Mountain and Historical Images titles; Bright Mountain's site sends retailers to Spanner for sales terms. [CONFIRMED — both sites]
• Whether Eleanor's two titles are among the "few" Spanner continues — [UNVERIFIED]. No public catalog; both titles look out-of-print (used copies only).
• Rights reverted to the author/estate after closure — [UNVERIFIED]. This is family belief, not documented. Typical small-press contracts revert rights on out-of-print status or publisher wind-down, but nobody has seen Eleanor's contract. The Spanner email is the fastest way to find out.
• Estate = founder's dad (John Herman Wilson) + his three siblings' lines (Anne Harper, Florence Atwood; Danny died 2019, unmarried, no children). One-page sign-off from dad + aunts is already the plan pre-publish. [FAMILY-CONFIRMED, not legally papered yet]
• Manuscript is NOT blocked on Spanner: founder owns SIGNED copies of both books — scan-as-manuscript is already the plan. Production files from Spanner would be a nice-to-have (cleaner text, cover art), not a dependency.

Fallback doors if Spanner doesn't respond (give it ~2 weeks)

1. The Bright family directly — Cynthia and Eric Bright, Fairview NC (already noted as fallback in the tree doc). If Spanner is silent, the founders of the original press are the next people who'd know where contracts and files went.
2. US Copyright Office records search (copyright.gov public catalog) — both books are post-1978, so if either was registered, the record names the claimant (Eleanor vs. Bright Mountain). Free, ~15 minutes, and clarifies what the estate actually holds before anyone signs anything. Worth doing in parallel, not just as fallback.
3. John C. Campbell Folk School craft shop/bookstore — they sold her books for years, the school knew Eleanor (and employed uncle Danny as groundskeeper 2002–2011). They may hold stock, know the Bright Mountain wind-down story, and are a natural partner for a republished edition anyway.

Sources

• Spanner Books — home · about · contact
• Bright Mountain Books (closure note + Spanner referral + spannerbooks@gmail.com)
• Used-copy status: Amazon · AbeBooks (Brasstown) · AbeBooks (Journey)