I’ve been spending the past few days preparing for a radio interview (recording tonight!) on my ebook, Curing Camden: How One City Became a Model for Smarter, More Affordable Healthcare. With my book on the brain, I thought I’d share how it came to be.

From 2010 to 2012, I wrote a half-dozen stories about healthcare in Camden, New Jersey. Even if you’re not from the Philadelphia area, you’ve likely heard about Camden. The city is considered one of the poorest and most violent in the country. But a frustrated family physician there has taken it upon himself to change Camden’s story — at least when it comes to healthcare. Dr. Jeffrey Brenner founded a nonprofit to revamp Camden’s healthcare system, and his ideas could become models around the country.

After the stories were published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, I still felt like they needed a wider audience. (Also, one of the stories hadn’t been published due to space and time constraints.) I considered self-publishing an ebook of the articles, but I knew I’d rather work with a publisher. I posed a question about turning newspaper articles into an ebook to the network of professional freelancers on Freelance Success. Several people mentioned Agate Publishing, which was working with Chicago newspapers to do just that.

As it turns out, Agate’s president was born in Camden and has a personal interest in health policy. It took about a year, but the ebook was released this winter. (If you’re interested, you can buy the ebook here.)