Northern California's publishing scene features a mix of small presses, independent houses and subsidiaries of New York publishers—in one of the year's biggest deals, Berkeley's Avalon became part of Perseus (see p. 23). The combination makes for a dynamic publishing environment, one that produces books in categories from New Age to computer science. Below are profiles of some of the companies that give Northern California its distinctive niche in the book world.
Amber-Allen PublishingSan RafaelCompany Head: Janet Mills, publisherTitles Published Annually: 3—4Major Categories: Personal growth, self-help, healthEmployees: 8Founded: 1990Notable Books:The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz; The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, “One Hour of Wisdom” edition, by Deepak ChopraAmber-Allen was founded by Janet Mills, who named the company after her cat, Amber, and her friend, Marc Allen, founder of New World Library. The company, which has published only a few dozen titles, focuses on personal growth and self-help.It struck gold with the publication of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, a book championed by Oprah that has sold more than four million copies in the U.S. and has been translated into 30 languages. Three companion volumes have together sold an additional one million. Don Jose Luis Ruiz, Don Miguel Ruiz's son, is expected to continue the Toltec wisdom series in the coming year.Among Amber-Allen's other notable titles is Deepak Chopra's The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Originally copublished with New World Library, that title has gone on to sell some 2.2 million copies worldwide.The company plans to maintain the same formula that has led to its success. “We will continue to develop the authors we've already acquired,” says Amber-Allen COO Karen Krieger. “We will remain a small, boutique, independent publisher, one committed to only publishing those books in which we truly believe.” That formula includes producing spoken-word audiobooks for most of its titles.Berrett-Koehler
San Francisco
Company Head: Steven Piersanti, president and publisher
Titles Published Annually: 30—35
Major Categories: Business and management, current affairs, personal growth
Employees: 21
Founded: 1992
Notable Books:Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins; Stewardship by Peter Block
Piersanti, who founded B-K after heading Jossey-Bass, began with a 15-title list focused almost solely on business. Today, B-K is a significantly larger operation with three different lines: BK Currents, BK Life and BK Business. In addition to an expanded list, it also publishes select paperbacks of its bestselling hardcovers. With a growing list of blockbusters, B-K has a handful of books that have sold more than 500,000 copies, including one of its flagship releases, published in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception.
With its focus on publishing books that promote progressive leadership, the company also touts a more progressive business model. It's established what it dubs “author-friendly” agreements, which grant writers more input throughout the publishing process. All of this is part of the company's mission statement: “Creating a world that works for all.” Since B-K is owned by a combination of employees, authors and various other stakeholders, it's able to stick to its independent roots. (In 2006, the house received the Business Ethics Award from Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine.) Of course, the past few years have not been without their share of troubles. The indie suffered following PGW's bankruptcy filing. Despite losing business, the house is now being distributed by Ingram.
China Books
San Francisco
Company Head: Stephen Horowitz, general manager
Titles Published Annually: 1—5 (the company distributes over 300 annually)
Major Categories: Books about China, from language guides to graphic novels
Employees: 6
Founded: 1960
Notable Books:Two Years in the Melting Pot; The Thirty-Six Strategies of Ancient China
The oldest distributor of books from China, China Books was founded by Dr. Henry Halsey Noyes, a third-generation son of a missionary family born in pre-Communist China. Noyes, who left China at eight, ruffled some feathers when he started distributing books from the Communist nation during the Cold War. But the shock didn't stop people from opening up their wallets. The house sold more than one million copies of The Little Red Book and, at one point, had some 50 employees on staff and retail locations in New York and Chicago.
While today's China Books is a much scaled-back operation, the indie came up through tumultuous political times—its stores were once surveilled by the FBI—and is now part of a larger company based in Hong Kong and Beijing. (Noyes's family sold the business to the Chinese International Publishing Group in the late '90s.) Still, its mission hasn't changed much. According to v-p of marketing Chellis Ying, almost the entire staff speaks Mandarin, and the house still aims to bring Chinese books that other publishers are ignoring to American shores. “We have made it our goal to bring in contemporary material that North Americans may never have heard of,” she explains. Now, she adds, the company distributes significantly more than it publishes.
Chronicle Books
San Francisco
Company Head: Nion McEvoy, CEO and owner; Jack Jensen, president
Books Published Annually: 400
Major Categories: Gift, illustrated art and design, cookbooks, sex, parenting and children's books
Employees: 165
Founded: 1967
Notable titles:The Beatles Anthology by the Beatles; Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock; The Complete Worst Case ScenarioSurvival Handbook; Weber's Book of Grilling
The parent company of the San Francisco Chronicle started Chronicle Books in 1967, but the book division was purchased by Nion McEvoy in January of 2000 and has been privately held ever since. McEvoy, who was Chronicle Books editor-in-chief at the time he bought the company, is the great-grandson of one of the cofounders of the San Francisco Chronicle. Initially, the publisher concentrated on local and regional titles, but eventually became known for its illustrated gift and cookbooks, children's books and art books.
This year Chronicle Books celebrated its 40th anniversary in a variety of ways, not least of which was the purchase of a new office building that it remodeled to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Although it is an international company, Chronicle has earned a reputation for being very supportive of the San Francisco Bay Area book community. While known for its illustrated nonfiction, Chronicle published first novels by California's Sen. Barbara Boxer and late-night comedian Craig Ferguson in its fiction line.
Chronicle Books' steady growth in recent years came after a relatively slow start: 10 years after its launch Chronicle was publishing 12 books with just five people on staff, which included in-house rep Jack Jensen, who is now the company's president.
City Lights Publishers
San Francisco
Company Head: Elaine Katzenberger, executive director/editorial director
Titles Published Annually: 12—15
Major Categories: Progressive political nonfiction, literary fiction, poetry
Employees: 6
Founded: 1955
Notable Books:Howl by Allen Ginsberg; Interventions by Noam Chomsky; Atomik Aztex by Sesshu Foster; If I Were God by Forough Farokhzad
City Lights Publishers started its publishing program with the Pocket Poets series envisioned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights Booksellers, a San Francisco cultural institution (see p. 32). With the publication of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg in 1956, Ferlinghetti was arrested and tried on obscenity charges. The trial brought international attention to City Lights and to the beat poets of San Francisco.
Ferlinghetti, now 88, and co-owner Nancy Peters have relinquished the day-to-day operations for the press to Elaine Katzenberger and the staff, but remain active in planning for the future of the press and bookstore. Ferlinghetti has often been quoted as saying that more booksellers should become publishers. Greg Ruggiero joined the City Lights editorial staff in 2006—its first new hire in 20 years—after producing progressive pamphlets and books on his own and then with Seven Stories Press.
Counterpoint LLC
Berkeley
Company head: Charlie Winton, CEO and publisher
Titles Published Annually: 85—90
Major Categories: Fiction, memoir, essays, current affairs/political, environmental, counterculture, graphic novels.
Employees: 10
Founded: 2007
Notable titles:Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry; Back on the Fire by Gary Snyder; Jesusland by Julia Scheeres; Bomb the Suburbs by William Upski Wimsatt; How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet
Before the events this year that led to the Perseus Book Group acquiring Publishers Group West, which was in bankruptcy, Avalon CEO Charlie Winton had been negotiating with Perseus to sell Avalon to Perseus and acquire Perseus's Counterpoint Press and create a new publishing venture. Winton did just that this summer when he acquired Counterpoint Press and launched Counterpoint LLC with longtime colleague Jack Shoemaker, who, as it happened, had founded Counterpoint in 1995.
The new team at Counterpoint LLC has been busy ever since, acquiring Soft Skull Press and hiring Soft Skull's publisher Richard Nash to head an imprint within the company from a New York office. With the merging of the Counterpoint, Shoemaker & Hoard and Soft Skull backlists, Winton says the new Counterpoint is accumulating a collection of varied authors in its stable, combined with new projects looking ahead that he thinks will provide for a diversified and balanced list of fiction, nonfiction and graphic novels.
HarperOne
San Francisco
Company Head: Mark Tauber, v-p and deputy publisher
Titles Published Annually: 100
Major Categories: Religion, spirituality and personal growth
Employees: 25
Founded: 1977
Notable Books:The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; The World's Religions by Huston Smith; The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics; The Measure of a Man by Sydney Poitier; Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
Founded 30 years ago as Harper San Francisco, HarperOne remains the only West Coast editorial division for any major New York publisher. This summer Harper changed its name to HarperOne, partly, Tauber says, to showcase the division's success in recent years. Since 2005, Harper One has had 28 New York Times bestsellers.
In its 30 years, HarperOne has gone through several downsizings and through fluctuations in the market for religion and spiritual books, and has concentrated in recent years on bringing up-and-coming academics in related fields into the mainstream, as it did with Huston Smith and Bart Ehrman. Looking forward, Tauber says to expect more of the same from HarperOne, which he thinks benefits from being a boutique publisher within a giant organization that is down a “hallway 3,000 miles away.”
Jossey-Bass, Pfeiffer, Sybex
San Francisco—based imprints of John Wiley & Sons
Company Heads: Debra S. Hunter, president, Jossey-Bass; Cedric Crocker, Pfeiffer v-p and publisher; Neil Edde, Sybex v-p and publisher
Titles Published Annually: 250 titles under Jossey-Bass imprint; 20 books and 15 training products under the Pfeiffer imprint; and 100 under the Sybex imprint.
Major Categories: Jossey-Bass publishes professional and management books in categories ranging from business to education; Pfeiffer publishes titles for HR professionals; Sybex publishes computer books
Employees: 155 in Wiley's San Francisco office.
Founded: Jossey-Bass was founded in 1967 and acquired by Wiley in 1999. Pfeiffer was founded in 1972 and acquired by Wiley in 1999, as part of the Jossey-Bass acquisition. Sybex was founded in 1976 and acquired by Wiley in 2005.
Notable Books: Jossey-Bass publishes books with the Leader to Leader Institute, the Center for Creative Leadership and the American Hospital Association; books by Patrick Lencioni, Parker Palmer and Brian McLaren; Sybex's Mastering and Certification study guides
Jossey-Bass's books, periodicals and other media “inform and inspire those interested in developing themselves, their organizations and their communities.” Wiley bought the company in 1999, and J-B's titles are aimed at professionals covering areas of leadership, business, education, spirituality, parenting and relationships. The company has partnered with a variety of prestigious institutions and its authors include Jim Kouses and Barry Posner.
Pfeiffer publishes “professional development and hands-on resources for training and human resource practitioners.” It offers products in a variety of formats, including workbooks, CD-ROMs and online.
Sybex was founded in 1976 and purchased by Wiley in 2005. The company publishes a range of computer-related training and guidebooks covering such specialized topics as programming certification, as well as consumer titles, such as how to shoot better digital photos. Sybex publishes about 100 new titles a year in 20 languages and has a backlist of approximately 450 titles in the graphics, digital photography, operating systems, programming and gaming categories.
Last Gasp
San Francisco
Company Head: Ron Turner
Titles Published Annually: 12—15
Major Categories: Art, graphic novels/manga, photography, pop culture, fiction, poetry
Employees: 18
Founded: 1970
Notable Books:Tin Tin: The Complete Companion; Gangsta Rap Coloring Book
Underground comix were Last Gasp's stock in trade when the house launched more than 30 years ago. The story goes that founder Ron Turner recalled his love of cult comic books one New Year's Eve in Berkeley when someone passed him a copy of ZAP Comix. Turner, then a grad student at San Francisco State, wound up borrowing money from a friend to publish the first issue of Slow Death Funnies, which was intended as a benefit book for an event at a local ecology center. When the ecology center turned down the book, which included work by R. Crumb and Robert Shelton and was published on the first Earth Day (April 15, 1970), Turner wound up selling it on his own and Last Gasp was born.
The business grew steadily from there. Now, in addition to publishing books, the indie also acts as distributor, wholesaler and online/mail-order bookstore. And the once all-comix list has morphed as well: now Last Gasp's list is largely dedicated to graphic novels, art books and pop culture titles.
Run by father and son Ron and Colin Turner, Last Gasp stands apart, according to the younger Turner, because it's “always on the leading edge of pop culture.” With close ties to small and self-publishers, as well as connections with cutting-edge art galleries, Last Gasp has built upon its initial relationship with comics shops, a group the publisher has been selling direct to for years. The house has also, over the years, expanded its reach to consumers; it's currently distributed in all six inhabited continents. Even there, though, Colin sees growth potential: “We'll get to Antarctica as soon as they have a bookstore,” he quipped.
Lonely Planet
Oakland
Company head: Brice Gosnell, regional publisher, Americas
Titles Published Annually: 200+
Major Categories: Travel
Employees: 500+
Founded: 1973
Notable Books:Lonely Planet Bluelist; The Travel Book, New Orleans
Founded by globe-trotting Aussies Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the company was built on a single title. After the pair was bombarded with queries upon completing an around-the-world jaunt from London through Asia and back to Australia, they whipped up a homemade, hand-stapled tale of their journey: Across Asia on the Cheap. That book sold 8,000 copies and was followed up by one of the bestselling travel books ever published: South-East Asia on a Shoestring (also typed up and laid out by its authors). Thirty years later, Lonely Planet is a globally recognized brand in the travel publishing category. Acquired in 2007 by the BBC, the company has outposts in Melbourne, London and Oakland, Calif. Committed to its original mission—to provide comprehensive information for travelers looking to explore on-the-cheap—Lonely Planet today publishes information on every continent.
MacAdam/Cage
San Francisco
Company Head: David Poindexter, founder and publisher
Titles Published Annually: 30—45 (includes reprints)
Major Categories: Literary fiction, short story collections, nonfiction (history, biography, essays)
Employees: 12
Founded: 1998
Notable Books:The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger; The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger
One of the West Coast's most literary indies, MacAdam/Cage was established on lofty ideals: David Poindexter wanted to establish a business that would put publishing quality literature above its bottom line. To help in that goal, Poindexter acquired the Denver, Colo.—based literary press MacMurray & Beck in 2000. The deal brought MacAdam/Cage an impressive backlist that included such bestsellers as Susan Vreeland's The Girl in Hyacinth Blue and William Gay's The Long Home. Cultivating some bestsellers of its own, including Niffenegger's hit, MacAdam/Cage is, as publicist Julie Burton notes, still dedicated to “the idea of publishing authors, not books.” This means the house aims to build careers, as opposed to bestsellers. To that end, Burton says, MacAdam/Cage offers more than the average publisher in the way of marketing support, building author campaigns that extend beyond the standard three- to four-month cycle and remaining in close contact long after books have shipped.
With a new distribution partner in place—PGW will take over in January 2008—the press is looking to the future. There are plans to relaunch the publisher's dormant children's list. The house has acquired six children's books by Pippi Longstocking creator Astrid Lindgren and will release the first title, Emil, in fall 2008.
New Harbinger Publications
Oakland
Company Head: Matthew McKay, publisher and general manager
Titles Published Annually: 50
Major Categories: Self-help, psychology, health
Employees: 42
Founded: 1973
Notable Books:The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook; The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook; Fibromyalgia & Chronic Myofascial Pain Syndrome: A Survival Manual; Get Out of Your Mind and into Your Life
Since its beginning, New Harbinger has offered “scientifically based self-help programs” that offer step-by-step guides to readers seeking to resolve personal problems, be they psychological or physical. Cofounder Matthew McKay, who remains with the company, is credited with coauthoring two titles that established the company's reputation: The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook in 1980 and Self-Esteem in 1987. Both books have sold more than 500,000 copies each.
The company expanded into health titles in 1996 and has since added a broad range of personal growth and self-help books, covering the gamut from divorce and marriage to sexuality and anger management. “At the same time, we are expanding out of our niche,” McKay says. “We're developing an e-publishing program, developing lines of books that include self-help for children and adolescents, gift books, placing a new emphasis on professional books, producing cutting-edge new concept books with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and memoirs.”
Among the latest additions are books in the area of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and mindfulness.
Nolo
Berkeley
Company Head: Ralph “Jake” Warner, cofounder, CEO
Titles Published Annually: 80
Major Categories: Do-it-yourself law, business
Employees: 100+
Founded: 1971
Notable Books:Willmaker; Patent It Yourself; Make Your Own Living Trust; Legal Guide for Starting and Running a Business
The company that is synonymous with do-it-yourself legal work got its start in 1971, when Ralph “Jake” Warner; his wife, Toni Ihara; and attorney Ed Sherman decided to offer people an alternative to high-priced attorneys for conducting routine legal business, from writing wills to setting up leases. Nolo—which today operates out of a former clock factory in Berkeley and calls its employees “Noloids”—was an early champion of the Web, going online in 1994. It received a big boost when the Internet made it possible for customers to fill out forms online.
Warner has been in semiretirement for the last decade and spent the past three years building TallTales Audio, a children's audiobook production company. He returned to Nolo in September with plans to “aggressively expand” the company's Web offerings, which now include state-by-state legal information and a database of attorneys.
“The need for Web-based, plain English legal information and applications, including links to attorneys, will grow rapidly in the next few years, giving Nolo the chance to become a far more significant and valuable company by filling this need,” Warner says.
Nolo continues to provide legal forms and services in a variety of formats, from books and guides to online and stand-alone software.
North Atlantic Books, Frog Ltd., Blue Snake Books
Berkeley
Company Head: Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough, publishers
Titles Published Annually: 80
Major Categories: Alternative health, somatics, spiritual topics, martial arts, fiction and literature, world affairs
Employees: 20
Founded: 1974
Notable Books:Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray; Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford; Pronoia Is the Antidote to Paranoia by Rob Brezsny; Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
North Atlantic Books emerged out of the literary magazine Io, started at Amherst and Smith College in Massachusetts by Grossinger and Hough in the mid-1960s. The publishing company was subsequently founded in 1974 in Vermont, moved to San Francisco in 1977 and eventually turned into a nonprofit, incorporated within the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, where it remains today.
North Atlantic Books says its mission is “to develop new ideas, nurture practical education, spread timeless wisdom and help turn destructive energies into positive forces.” The focus is on publishing nonfiction, with subjects ranging from tai chi, homeopathy and deep-tissue massage to raw food dieting, yoga and somatic leadership.
The Frog imprint was launched in 1993 and produced the unexpected children's bestseller Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle. In 2006, Frog added Blue Snake Books, an imprint dedicated to books about martial arts.
No Starch Press
San Francisco
Company Head: William Pollock
Titles Published Annually: 20
Major Categories: Technology, with a focus on Open Source, security, hacking and programming
Employees: 8
Founded: 1994
Notable Books:Steal This Computer Book; How Linux Works
“Geek entertainment” is what No Starch claims to specialize in. Pollock, who cofounded the computer publisher Apress before starting No Starch, founded the San Francisco—based indie after years of, as colleague Leigh Poehler puts it, “publishing computer books for noncomputer people.” Distributed by O'Reilly, No Starch continues Pollock's vision of doing tech-heavy texts for not-so-tech-savvy readers. In addition to publishing computer guides with attitude, the press also developed a signature style in the new millennium. In 2000, it began focusing on technical books and, that year, introduced a retro, color-block cover design that has become its visual calling card. One of the few independent computer book publishers in the country, the press, in 2007, commemorated two of its bestsellers with second editions: Hacking: The Art of Exploitation and Absolute FreeBSD.
O'Reilly Media
Sebastopol
Company Head: Tim O'Reilly, CEO and founder
Titles Published Annually: 100
Major Categories: Technology, software
Employees: 188 in the U.S.; 55 international
Founded: 1978
Notable Books: Missing Manual series by David Pogue; The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun; Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think; Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders from Novice to Master Observer by Robert Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson
Since Tim O'Reilly founded the company as a technology writing and consulting business, O'Reilly Media has aimed to bring tech information and resources to consumers in its books and periodicals (available online and in print) and through its conferences, most recently the Tools of Change for Publishing conference launched this summer in Northern California.
Tim O'Reilly's official bio describes him as an “activist for open source, open standards and sensible intellectual property laws,” and he has developed a company that has tried to offer products with this goal. O'Reilly—both the person and the media company—aims to home in on technology trends from the “alpha geeks who are creating the future.”
Publisher of the “animal books” for software developers (the series features animals on the covers), O'Reilly organized a summit in 1998 that coined the “open source” name.
Since its 2000 partnership with Pearson Publishing, O'Reilly has made the complete texts of more than 4,000 books available online in its Safari Books Online program. Books published by Adobe, Microsoft Press, Cisco Press, the Financial Times and other publishers are included in Safari Online. O'Reilly's Safari U allows educators to compile custom texts from books in the Safari Bookshelf.
Red Wheel/Weiser
San Francisco
Company Heads: Michael Kerber, president; Jan Johnson, publisher
Titles Published Annually: 55—60
Major Categories: Spirituality, personal growth, occult, inspiration, recovery
Employees: 20
Founded: Weiser Books: 1957; Conari Press: 1987; RW/W: 2000
Notable Books:Coming Apart by Daphne Rose Kingma; The Art & Practice of Astral Projection by Ophiel; books by Aleister Crowley
Red Wheel/Weiser was created in Newburyport, Mass., in 2000 when Red Wheel acquired Weiser Books. In 2002, Red Wheel purchased Conari Press, which has the strongest ties to California. Founded in 1987 in Berkeley, Conari moved east in 2002 to join Red Wheel and Weiser Books, then back to San Francisco in 2006. Its focus has been on mind, body, spirit titles, with a particular emphasis on books for women.
The press's first book, Coming Apart by Daphne Rose Kingma, remains a backlist bestseller, while its Wild Women series—with the intention of writing women “back into history”—has proved a hit with librarians. Recent titles of interest include We Carry Each Other: Getting Through Life's Toughest Times by Eric & Sharon Langshur, the founders of CarePages, and recovery titles by Karen Casey.
Sunset Books
Menlo Park
Company Head: Brian Carnahan, publisher, Oxmoor House
Titles Published Annually: 25
Major Categories: Home improvement & decorating, gardening & landscaping, outdoor building
Employees: 20
Founded: 1928 as Lane Publishing
Notable Books:Western Garden Book, Western Landscaping, Complete Deck, Building Barbecues&Outdoor Kitchens
Sunset Books is the publishing offshoot of Sunset magazine, founded in 1898 by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company to promoted westward travel and named for the Sunset Limited train. It was later sold to a group of railroad employees who aimed to make it a premier literary magazine, and subsequently published Jack London and Zane Grey. Laurence Lane bought Sunset in 1928 and began publishing books in 1931. His son Mel Lane ran the company as a family business from the 1950s until it was sold to Time Warner in 1990. It is now a brand of TW's Oxmoor House division.
To date, Sunset Books has published some 800 titles in the areas of home improvement, gardening, cooking and travel, nearly all focused on the western U.S. Sunset's best-known book is the now-classic Sunset Western Garden Book, which originally appeared in 1995 and has sold 5.8 million copies. Bestsellers Western Landscaping and Building Barbecues have moved more than 400,000 copies each.
Bob Doyle, v-p and editorial director for Sunset Books, says that in the coming years Sunset will expand its list of titles that cater to a national audience, particularly cobranded cookbooks. One example, Weber's Real Grilling, has sold some 900,000 copies in the two years since it was published.
Ten Speed Press
Berkeley
Company Head: Philip Wood
Titles Published Annually: 150
Major Categories: Nonfiction
Employees: 80
Founded: 1971
Notable Books:What Color Is Your Parachute?; Cannabible; How to Sh*t in the Woods
It was a single book that launched this indie press more than 30 years ago: Tom Cutherbertson's Anybody's Bike Book. The manual, for cycling enthusiasts as well as the casual biker, initially was published out of founder Wood's tiny Berkeley apartment. Wood, who gambled that the book would be a hit—he'd left his sales job at Penguin to release it—made the right call. Today the title has more than a million copies in print; it also, rightfully, inspired the bicycle-themed name of Wood's operation. Today Ten Speed is a bigger business, with a children's division (Tricycle Press, founded in 2003); a division devoted to metaphysical books (Crossing Press, acquired in 2002); and a poster-retailing and New Age publishing division (Celestial Arts, acquired in 1983). And, while Ten Speed has had a number of major successes over the years—among them the bestselling job-hunting book of all time, What Color Is Your Parachute?, and the enduring cooking classic The Moosewood Cookbook—the company never lost its sense of play. Publisher Lorena Jones says that, despite its “international reputation” for commercial nonfiction, Ten Speed never abandoned the quirky books it built its reputation on. “We still have the unconventional, adventurous spirit of a truly independent press,” she says. “Other publishers ultimately leave behind the risk-taking phase as they grow, but we retained our alternative nature. We still publish unusual books that strike our fancy.”
Ulysses Press
Berkeley
Company Head: Ray Riegert, publisher
Titles Published Annually: 50
Major Categories: Health, fitness, travel, spirituality, martial arts
Employees: 12
Founded: 1983
Notable Books:Mugglenet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7?; Hidden Hawaii by Ray Riegert; Complete Krav Maga; Atheist Universe
Riegert founded Ulysses Press with his wife, Leslie Henriques, to publish his book Hidden Hawaii, which remains one of the press's bestselling titles. Ulysses now has 35 titles in the hidden travel series. The company's mission is to “foster new ideas through books that inspire, educate and challenge readers to uncover the wisdom of the past and chart a path to the future,” in its specialty areas of travel, health, spirituality, martial arts—and, apparently at Hogwarts.
So far Ulysses's top title—more than 165,000 copies sold—is Mugglenet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7?, which came out last fall. The title is an example of what Ulysses calls “auteur publishing,” matching a trend that seems underpublished with expert authors to write related books. In martial arts, a Ulysses editor believed Israeli fighting techniques might make a good book topic, the bestselling Complete Krav Maga is only the first title the company will publish on it. Ulysses is looking to do the same in travel, spirituality, fitness and health.
Univ. of California Press
Berkeley
Company Head: Lynne Withey, director
Titles Published Annually: 200 books, 35 journals
Major Categories: Art, music, cinema and media studies, history, classics, wine, poetry
Employees: 140
Founded: 1893
Notable Books:Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer; Food Politics by Marion Nestle
One of the six largest university presses in the country, this nonprofit arm of the University of California system publishes work by both local professors and national scholars. (About a quarter of the UC Press's output is by professors who work in the UC system.) It's also the only university press of its size associated with a public institution; its hefty peers, all east of the Mississippi, include Yale University Press, MIT Press and Harvard University Press.
Active in digitizing its library—all of its journals are available in digital format, along with 2,000 titles from its backlist—the press is also involved in an ambitious tech project around its recently published Mark Twain Project. Withey, who became director in 2002 (after joining the press in 1986), has helped spearhead new digital initiatives like this one. The collection of Twain's writing, which is grouped into four different book series, has been available online in a beta version since November. The Mark Twain Project Online, funded in part by an NEA grant, offers a searchable database of Twain's extensive body of work, including access to exclusive copyright-protected writings by the author. UC Press hopes the project, which stands as an interactive example of scholarly work being put online with free access, will set a standard for future digitization efforts.
Viz Media
San Francisco
Company Head: Hidemi Fukuhara, president and publisher
Titles Published Annually: 420
Major Categories: Manga/graphic novels, novels, picture books, art books, magazines
Employees: 167
Founded: 1986
Notable Books:Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto; Bleach by Tite Kubo; Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata; Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino; and Inuyasha by Rumiko Takahashi.
Viz Media is one of the largest U.S.-based publishers in the field of manga, anime and other licensed Japanese content. It is owned by the three largest companies that create manga and anime in Japan, giving the American company a wealth of material to publish and license in the U.S.
Viz's goal is to make manga a universal entertainment medium. Its bestselling Naruto illustrates this. The Naruto books—there are now 24 volumes—led to a license with the Cartoon Network for a TV series. Now Viz licenses all sorts of Naruto products, from key chains to Halloween costumes. Viz even publishes a Naruto prose novel. Evelyn Dubocoq, Viz's PR director, says the company looks at the book or animated video as the beginning of a variety of entertainment products based on the property. “It's like Disney,” she says.
Although Viz does not generally release original manga, in recent years, Viz worked with the World Bank to create One World Manga, a series of six manga titles on topics of global interest, including HIV, homelessness and poverty, with proceeds going to Reading Is Fundamental.
Weldon Owen
San Francisco
Company Head: Terry Newell, CEO and president
Titles Published Annually: 75
Major Categories: Cooking, wine, family reference, children's reference, lifestyle
Employees: 75
Founded: 1984
Notable Books: Williams-Sonoma Collection series; Mayo Clinic Cookbook; Gymboree Baby Play
—Reported by Rachel Deahl, Bridget Kinsella and Edward Nawotka
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