Alyson Books and Cleis Press, two thriving stalwarts in the world of gay and lesbian publishing, both celebrate their 25th anniversaries this year. That the festivities occur in tandem is a coincidence, but it is no coincidence that each has managed to survive a quarter of a century that lined their paths with many challenges. Both have maintained a clear eye on the marketplace. Today, Cleis is the only press in the field still owned and operated by its founders, Felice Newman and Frédérique Delacoste.
Alyson Books
At Alyson, marketing manager Dan Cullinane says that when the book publishing program began 25 years ago, the field was new. "There was no sense within the book business community that there was a viable market for gay and lesbian books," he says. Even independent stores didn't know if they had a customer base for such books, so publishers had to to make it it up as they went along, selling book by book to store by store. There was a bright spot, however: the growing number of specifically gay and lesbian bookstores. "As they increased during the 1980s," says Cullinane, that became a built-in market. At one point there were about 300 gay and lesbian bookstores." But things have changed. Cullinane estimate that today the number is closer to 60.
Launched by Sasha Alyson, the imprint began as an offshoot of a distribution company that Alyson himself had established to distribute an AIDS newsletter. "With books, it has always been a broad-based company in what it produced," says Cullinane, "including fiction, self-help, mysteries, erotica. Alyson started out with 15 books a year. We [LPI Media] took over the company in 1995, and we're now doing 50 books a year."
Initially, Alyson published for gay men, but rapidly began to incorporate women's titles into the mix. Also helping to build greater acceptance, increased attention was paid to elevating editorial and design work to professional standards. "That's one of the great stories about gay and lesbian publishing," he says, "reaching the quality that pushed the books into a broader market."
Among the titles that gained Alyson notice through the years were Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman and Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite. Published in 1990, they inaugurated the Alyson Wonderland line of books for children of gay and lesbian parents. Cullinane also mentions The Little Death, the first entry in Michael Nava's mystery series featuring gay Mexican-American criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. "We published that in 1986, and it's still in print."
Today independent booksellers gladly support gay and lesbian titles, Cullinane points out, and so do the major chains. "The chains will tell you that they take gay and lesbian books into marketplaces where they were never before available, places like Spartanburg, S.C. They do occasionally face resistance from a community, but the stores stand on the side of free speech."
Some members of the gay and lesbian population appreciate having separate sections readily apparent in bookstores. Others would prefer that the books be shelved among titles that are not gay-specific. "You'll never make people happy all the time," says Cullinane, "but I think it's great to have a special section. It's not ghettoization. It's called customer service."
Asked how Alyson copes with changing interests in the gay and lesbian audience, Cullinane says, "We try to reflect the issues of our community. There's the matter of gays in the military. Coming out next month is Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military. As we prepare each list, we look at the issues we face. Some of these books sell really well and others don't. But the way we survive is to continue evolving along with the community, to have a strong focus and mission. And our mission to entertain and inform can't remain static. We're constantly fine-tuning it.
"There has been a lot of grim news about gay and lesbian publishing and bookstores," says Cullinane, "but I want to say once and for all, we're here, and we continue to grow every year."
Cleis Press
"Our first title in 1980 was Fight Back," says Felice Newman, co-publisher of Cleis Press with Frédérique Delacoste. "It defined a movement," she adds, with its subtitle, Feminist Resistance to Male Violence. Cleis published only two books that first year, and one the second. Today, the house publishes two dozen titles a year in a variety of areas: gay and lesbian studies, sex guides, erotica, literature, human rights, art and more. Still, anywhere from half to three-quarters of the Cleis list is aimed at gay and lesbian readers.
"When we started, I remember hand-addressing and shipping boxes of books out of our basement," Newman says. Cleis had a slight edge over Alyson because its market included both gay and women's bookstores. "The women's world was a bit more organized," she says. "There wasn't any hostility to our books, but we had to fight to establish our legitimacy as a publishing company. In the late '80s, when we were wholesaled by Inland, they put together The Women's Source Catalogue and hired someone to sell that to national accounts like B&N, Borders, Ingram." That became a very big deal for Cleis because for he first time their titles were formally presented to a chain. "It took that long to create a venue for us to be seen by mainstream bookstores," says Newman. "Now we're totally integrated with them."
Among the books that Newman cites as being milestones in Cleis's growth over the years are The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex by Cathy Winks and Anne Semans (1992). "That's a really wholesome book," Newman remarks. "It was the first sex guide that spoke to everyone and was supportive of every person's sexual interest. Also important to us was Public Sex by Pat Califia, who is now Patrick Califia. "That was an important book for queer studies. We published I Am My Own Wife by Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in the mid-'90s, and that memoir by a transvestite was just sitting there, not doing much, until Doug Wright's play, which was based on it, won the Pulitzer Prize. Sex Work, which was edited by Frédérique, put the term 'sex work' into the popular vocabulary. In 1986 we published The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina by Alicia Partnoy, which has been adopted in so many courses.
"So you see, we've always been pretty audacious. We've tried to reach beyond any little box anyone wants to put us in. If a straight press can publish gay books, we can publish heterosexual literature. And we have two more upcoming: Yom Kippur à Go-Go by Matthue Roth, a straight Orthodox Jewish guy who keeps falling in love with all these girls he can't touch, and Oedipus Wrecked by Kevin Keck, who's like a sexy, straight David Sedaris writing about his bizarre sexual misadventures."
After five years of 10% growth annually, Cleis boasted a 20% increase in sales last year. "We published books for women exclusively until 1990, and then we began opening up and our audience grew," says Newman. "I recently figured out that we had a 19% profit last year, and I think that's because we listen to our audience. I think the downfall of a publisher in any market is when they feel they know what people should be reading."
Back when BEA was ABA, one could find on the floor a special exhibit of publishers lined up in a gay, lesbian and feminist row of booths, which included those for Cleis Press and Alyson Books. "In the mid '90s, that row disappeared," says Newman. "We don't need to do that any more. For us, it has been an amazing ride."
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In the week following the re-election of George W. Bush, playwright, novelist and AIDS activist Larry Kramer made an impassioned, angry speech at Cooper Union in New York City. He lacerated, among others, former New York mayor Ed Koch and Ron Reagan Jr., for contributing mightily to a scourge that has now infected 70 million people. He blamed the gay community for its lack of activism, its lack of support for its own cause, and its blind eye on a growing crystal methedrine problem. Ken Siman at Jeremy Tarcher convinced Kramer to publish the speech. The Tragedy of Today's Gays, with a foreword by Naomi Wolf, has just been published. We sat down with Kramer in his sunny apartment on lower Fifth Avenue (where Ed Koch is a neighbor) to talk about his take on the gay community today.
A different sort of "packaging" plays a part, too, in a Broadway Books title out this month—Major Conflict: One Man's Gay Life in the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Military by Jeffrey McGowan. Here's a book that targets two critical gay issues: military service and gay marriage. After hiding his sexual preference during a 10-year army career (in which he rose to the rank of Major), McGowan realized that the Army held no future for gay men and resigned in the late '90s. In February 2004, he married his partner of six years in New Paltz, N.Y., making front-page New York Times news and starting a firestorm of controversy. Editor Stacy Creamer says she acquired this "incredibly moving and real" account primarily because "it's the kind of book that could win hearts—and then change minds, about gays serving in the military."
Once they're hitched—with or without the "m" word—and out of the military, gay men and lesbians can take advantage of a November release from New Page books, 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live by Gregory A. Kompes. This third entry in the publisher's "50 Fabulous" series marks its first venture into gay and lesbian publishing. Says publisher Ron Fry, "There was definitely an audience for this book, but virtually no information about gay communities could be found anywhere—we decided it was time to provide it." Also coming in November is The Complete Gay Divorce by attorney Brette McWhorter Sember, and publicist Linda Reinecker reports that more gay and lesbian titles are on tap.
