Tina McElroy Ansa takes on publishing to keep reaching fans

Either way, your full measure would be based on what you did next: believe the assessment and give up, or move on despite it.

On the eve of the release of her fifth novel, "Taking After Mudear, " it could be said that Georgia author Tina McElroy Ansa is in this position. She hit it big in 1989 with her lyrical first novel, "Baby of the Family, " a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

But nearly 20 years and three novels later, Ansa woke up one day and found that a market she'd helped build —- popular fiction aimed at contemporary, middle-class African-American women —- was flooded with such books. Publishers were telling the seasoned writer that the appetite for her kind of work had softened. Softened to the point that the six-figure advances she'd gotten in the 1990s were no more.

So, at age 58, well past the traditional dues-paying years, McElroy Ansa must prove herself again. Not only as a bankable writer, but as a publisher.

"Taking After Mudear, " a sequel to her second novel, "Ugly Ways, " is scheduled for release in April by DownSouth Press, a year-old publishing company based out of McElroy Ansa's St. Simons Island home. It's her company's first release.

DownSouth's mission is to publish the work of select emerging writers as well as established authors. Some of these writers' profiles will be similar to McElroy Ansa's: black women who write primarily for other black women but who've been told their work isn't as groundbreaking —- or marketable —- as it once was.

It is a tall order. Simultaneously acting as author and publisher is difficult. But they are roles McElroy Ansa feels she must take on.

"There's a hunger out there, " McElroy Ansa said. "My readers didn't just die off. That market didn't just dry up."

There is much to prove to so many, but mostly to herself.