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Lila Wallace Fund Awards $2.4M to Literary Presses
Calvin Reid -- 2/1/99
Opening a new phase in its support of small literary presses, the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Fund has awarded a total of $2.4 million in grants to 10 nonprofit literary publishers to develop a variety of innovative, nontraditional marketing strategies and new editorial ventures.
Between 1991 and 1996, LWRD awarded grants to 12 literary presses, enabling them to establish strong marketing strategies for the first time. The results, according to LWRD, were "stunning," with presses reporting aggregate revenue increases of as much as 65% (News, Sept. 5, 1994). The new round of grants, said LWRD spokesperson Soneni Smith, is meant to "build on past successes and to prepare the presses for the new realities of the marketplace." The new grants bring LWRD's total investment in nonprofit literary publishing to nearly $7 million, noted Christine Devita, president of the LWRD Fund.

The new grants include support for distributing bilingual Spanish/English editions from Arte Public Press ($175,000) to neighborhood supermarkets and convenience stores; an expanded literary Web site for readers age 18-26 by Dalkey Archive Press ($175,000); an imprint devoted to writers of the 1960s black arts movement at Coffee House Press ($173,000); and a curriculum on international literature for high school teachers from the New Press ($160,000). Other grantees include the Boston Review ($100,000), Copper Canyon Press ($174,663), Milkweed Editions ($150,000), Ploughshares ($125,000), Sarabande Books ($71,284) and Theatre Communications Group ($150,000).

In addition, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses will receive $525,000 to bolster its many services to publishers. Small Press Distribution, a California-based wholesaler specializing in small literary houses, will receive $424,374 to develop its EDI systems, its Web site, Internet marketing efforts and more.
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