Hannibal Boxing, a Boston-based, boxing-focused media company founded by book business veteran Kyle Sarofeen and his partner Andy Komack, will launch a boxing book imprint, Hamilcar Publications, this fall.
According to Hannibal Boxing, the new imprint will "target an underserved niche in the book industry—readers devoted to the world of professional prizefighting," with its debut catalog comprising "a combination of biography, narrative nonfiction, essays, and historical/cultural looks at the sport of boxing."
Its first book, a reissue of Candace Taft's biography of heavyweight boxer Ron Lyle, Off the Ropes: The Ron Lyle Story, is slated to publish this October, and another five books are planned over the following year. Among them will be Guardian writer Kevin Mitchell's Jacobs Beach: The Mob, The Garden & The Golden Age of Boxing (November); the first U.S. edition of Guardian writer Donald McRae's Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing (also November); and Sporting Blood (January 2019), a collection of essays by boxing writer Carlos Acevedo.
Sarofeen—who worked previously at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Quarto, and Pearson—will take the lead as publisher, and he and Komack will both serve as principals.
"We love boxing and books in equal measure," says Sarofeen. "Our aim is to share that passion with book-buyers worldwide."
