Executive editor Jordan Bass says
McSweeney’s wants to be “a great home
for writers, and a place for readers to
come to for new and ambitious and
hard-to-pigeonhole work—the business
model, and the move toward nonprofit
operation, are a means toward that
end.” In addition to the nonprofit shift,
McSweeney’s launched a successful
Kickstarter campaign in May to help
support the press.
Crowdfunding has also helped San
Francisco’s Last Gasp, a publisher and
distributor of comics and art books.
Colin Turner, associate publisher and
son of Last Gasp founder Ron Turner,
says that crowdfunding is a “great way
to connect with fans.” Last Gasp’s
Kickstarter campaign, which ended in
October, exceeded its goal of $75,000,
with 1,229 backers pledging $83,762.
While Last Gasp says it’s scaling down
slightly, publishing a few less titles
this year, the successful Kickstarter
has helped to keep it in the publishing game.
Last Gasp is one of a number of
indie presses that have been in the
Bay Area for quite some time.
Take Berkeley-based
Heyday Books,
founded by
Malcolm
Margolin in
1974, during
part of what he calls
“an explosion of small press activity in
the Bay Area.” Heyday celebrated its
40th anniversary in 2014, and Margolin
says sales in the first five months of 2015
increased substantially over the same
period in 2014, adding that “for the
first time in our entire history we seem
to be getting through the spring without
a major, sleep-disrupting cash-flow
crisis.” One change that has helped
boost sales is a more aggressive use of
consignment sales arrangements, which
Margolin believes provides booksellers
and other outlets a low-risk option to
stock Heyday titles. Heyday has also
recently opened an office in Los Angeles,
Heyday South. With Heyday in a good
financial spot, Margolin says he’ll be
stepping back from—but not out of—
Heyday’s day-to-day operations by the
end of the year, and the press is currently
searching for a successor.
Another mainstay is City Lights
Publishers, which celebrates its
60th anniversary this year.
Executive director and
publisher Elaine
Katzenberger says the
company owes its lon-
gevity to the lasting
political ideals that
founder Lawrence
Ferlinghetti put
in place when
opening the book-
store and launching its
Something for Quite
Literally Everybody
By Anisse Gross
California embodies the spirit of the West, a place where reinvention is possible, so it is no surprise that many independent publishers call the Bay Area home. In that
same spirit, as the publishing landscape
changes, companies have adopted a variety
of techniques to keep up with the
shifting scene.
One major factor that allows many
independent publishers to remain in
business in the Bay Area is nonprofit
status. For example, being a nonprofit
allows Parallax Press to keep “
compassion” as its bottom line. “We are a very
financially successful publisher and we
do this while ensuring that we are amplifying new and often marginalized voices,
that all our books are available free to
people who are incarcerated, and available in all formats to those who need
them,” says publisher Rachel Neumann.
To keep costs under control, Parallax
has its offices in the East Bay instead of
waging war with San Francisco’s sky-high rents.
In October 2014, the iconic San
Francisco–based indie publisher
McSweeney’s, founded by author Dave
Eggers, announced that it is becoming a
nonprofit. According to the publisher’s
website, the move will allow McSweeney’s
to “sustain itself for many years to come,
with the help of an expanded community of donors, writers, and readers.”
From self-help to spirituality and anarchism to feminism,
Bay Area publishers’ interests run the gamut
