Mo Cohen, the founder and publisher of Gingko Press, made news at Frankfurt last fall with his purchase of world English-language rights to the work of media maverick Marshall McLuhan. Rights have been held by various parties, including McLuhan's son, Eric. Gingko, with offices in Hamburg and Marin County, Calif., is a prominent source of visual books on international design, art and culture.
A spokesperson in the Marin office told PW that publishing plans for getting the message out to a new generation of readers will include the release of 18 McLuhan titles in the next nine seasons. Gingko will make graphic presentation of the work a priority with the creation of new collections and the redesign of existing editions, and by creating facsimile editions of classics such as The Mechanical Bride.
Headlining Gingko's spring 2001 catalogue is a newly compiled anthology of McLuhan's aphorisms called The Book of Probes, which will debut in May. Gingko will print 15,000 copies in English and another 15,000 total in other languages. Also this May, Gingko will release the first of three projected collections of McLuhan's shorter essays in Marshall McLuhan Unbound Volume 1. Printed in separated "offprints," each of the 18 essays is separately bound and the group presented in a slipcase. The essays will be printed in English editions of 3,000, with strong interest already expressed by an undisclosed Spanish publisher.
As publishers of the recent Architecture Must Burn, with Museum of Modern Art director Aaron Betsky, Gingko Press is no stranger to the power of the postmodern aphorism or to avant-garde graphic culture in its many forms. Recent titles include Fucked Up + Photocopied: The Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement, while monographs and collections of European design work are a backlist staple for the press.
The American-born Cohen founded the press in Hamburg in 1982, as an importer/exporter of titles from art houses such as Calloway and Verso. With his wife and art director, Julie von der Ropp, Cohen began to publish English-language editions of European titles and expanded Gingko's distribution business. Gingko Press Verlag currently distributes 2,000 graphic book titles annually. Gingko's California office opened in 1992; its staff of only four handles editorial, publicity, marketing and all U.S. sales.
