Brian Hurley
Publishing Director
Sasquatch Books
Sasquatch Books publishing director Brian Hurley takes a holistic approach to the book industry, which he says is full of contradictions. “It spans art and commerce, people and systems,” he says. “Those can feel irreconcilable, but if you love the output, it’s really exciting to embrace those tensions.”
At Seattle-based Sasquatch, Hurley exercises this perspective in several ways. He says his focus is on “preserving the strong ties locally and the love that we get from Elliott Bay Book Co., Third Place Books, and Powell’s.” Meanwhile, he’s steeped in data analytics, e-commerce strategies, and taking Sasquatch’s Pacific Northwest vibe national.
Hurley honed his skills during his six years at Oxford University Press, learning from academic publisher and president Niko Pfund, who Hurley praises for understanding every aspect of the “organism of the publishing house.” “That brought me back to a feeling I had as a kid, where you could write and illustrate and print and pass out something, and the whole endeavor was within your grasp,” he adds. “Seeing Niko, who had mastered this at a large corporate level, was motivating.”
Hurley joined Callisto Media in 2013, when the company was a scrappy Bay Area startup just shy of a dozen employees. He rose through the ranks to become publisher as Callisto grew to a $100 million company. Despite the company’s trajectory and the 2023 acquisition of its assets by PRH/Sourcebooks, Hurley says, “Callisto unlocked something that a lot of people are imitating, by matching supply to demand. For a while, over 80% of our titles were earning out, which is unheard of.”
Still, as a venture-backed company, Hurley says, Callisto “deliberately ignored a lot of things that were almost heretical to ignore” in traditional book publishing, such as branding, building an audience, and developing expertise in a category. He brings those lessons learned to his new position at Sasquatch.
Sasquatch president Frances Baca, Hurley’s longtime Callisto colleague, tapped him as publishing director when Blue Star Press acquired the company last June. Baca was tasked with “reinventing their publishing strategy, reviving their backlist, overhauling resource allocation, and re-orienting their retained team,” she says, and “I knew I could not accomplish these tasks without a strong partner.”
Baca praises Hurley for his empathy and his ability to stay “focused on helping the team move their books through production, while beginning to teach them to look at title acquisition and development through a more rigorous and data-informed lens.”
Hurley feels energized by the “fun, shaggy, DIY, adventure-loving” brand he now leads, and says his Star Watch recognition reminds him of the collegial relationships and formative experiences that got him to this point. “We’re all orbiting each other in this industry,” he says. “I try to remind myself that in publishing we all have that spark, and we’re here because we want to be. We share that passion in common.”
