The Short Version
Todd Sattersten is publisher, writer and zen teacher, based in Portland, Oregon.
Todd is owner of Bard Press, a book publisher that works with authors to create best-selling books in business, personal development and technology.
He is the author of 100 Best Books For Work and Life (Bard Press, 2025) and Every Book Is A Startup (self-published, 2018) He is also the co-author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (Portfolio, 2009).
Todd is a lay zen teacher at Dharma Rain Zen Center. He received transmission in 2025 from his teacher Sallie Jiko Tisdale. At Dharma Rain, he has served as Assistant Kanin and Board Chair. He is also a member of the Lay Zen Teachers Association.
The Longer Version
I grew up in southeastern Wisconsin, and when to college at Michigan Technological University, where I studied mechanical engineering.
I spent the first ten years of my career working in manufacturing at Dow Chemical and General Electric. The plants I worked at made everything from Ziploc bags to industrial diamond to PET scanners. I also worked with my father at Sater Industries, a sheet metal fabrication shop that he ran for 25 years.
I served as President of Milwaukee-based specialty retailer 800-CEO-READ where I participated in the launch of hundreds of books into the marketplace. I was instrumental in providing for the continued stewardship of ChangeThis, launched the business book giveaway website InBubbleWrap, and started the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards.
I served as General Manager of IT Revolution and worked with author Gene Kim from 2011 to 2018. The first book project from the company, The Phoenix Project, has sold more than 500,000 copies and the follow-up title The DevOps Handbook has sold more than 100,000 copies. We also created The DevOps Enterprise Summit, an event series held United States and Europe with more than 2500 technology leaders that attend annually.
I have experimented with new forms of publishing for the last nine years beginning with my first weblog A Penny For… I self-published my first book in 2005 called More Space: Nine Antidotes for Complacency In Business. Since then, I have published the ebooks Fixed to Flexible: Four Simple Lessons about Cost, Price, Margin, and The Options Available to The 21st Century Business and Pricing Pictures: Drawings To Help You Make Better Business Decisions, both with more than 10,000 downloads.
In 2011, I released a project called Every Book Is A Startup: The New Business of Publishing. The project was published in a serialized fashion as I wrote it. The price started at 99 cents and gradually increased as new material was added while customers were given all updates for free. In October 2018, I released a revised edition of Every Book Is A Startup was released with a new table of contents and new material.
In January 2019, I joined my long-time friend Ray Bard at Bard Press as the deputy publisher. What makes our approach unique is we only publish a few books a year (most years only one or two) and we have built the company to serve authors. The ONE Thing and The Little Red Book of Selling are among the company’s best-selling books. In July 2020, I became publisher at Bard Press, and in September 2021, I become owner and operator of the company.
Need help? I am always happy to help with a non-fiction book project. Drop me a note.