When Jodi Wille, founder of Dilettante Press, and Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey—two of Los Angeles’s best-known indie publishers—became a couple in 2005, it was easy to predict they’d do unusual things. First they launched another press, Process Media, focusing on titles about self-reliance, alternative spirituality and music. Now they’ve moved their living and publishing operations out of L.A. to a 4,000-square-foot compound in Port Townsend, Wash., a small town two hours from Seattle that’s surrounded by organic farms and old hippies.
Wille pointed to the growth of self-reliance titles at Process and a good year at Feral House and said together the two companies have grown about 20%. In fact, she added, the move to Port Townsend is an effort to “practice what we publish.” But she was quick to note that Process still holds events in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, and the house is hosting a party for Frezno, a book of photographs on “post-suburban trash culture,” in November at Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.
Process’s self-reliance titles include Mark Ehrman’s Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (2006), Aton Edward’s Preparedness Now: An Emergency Survival Guide (2006) and, in June, Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutsen’s The Urban Homestead (which is now being used as a textbook in an L.A. environmental charter school). Besides attracting young readers interested in conservation, Wille said the titles have gained popularity with unusual audiences, ranging from right-wing survivalists to FEMA officials; the titles have also created a special sales market for Process at outlets like Bed, Bath & Beyond and Discovery Channel stores. “Blogs like Boingboing.com mention our titles and are helping to bring self-reliance titles into the mainstream,” Wille said.
Process publishes four to five books a year, while Feral House, which focuses on alternative titles on politics, fringe cult phenomena, conspiracies and pop culture, publishes 10 to 12 books a year. Both houses are distributed by Consortium. The companies are run by a combined staff of four full timers and “one part-time Web guy, occasional interns and a bevy of freelance designers, copyeditors and proofers,” Wille said.
Process also publishes books on alternative spirituality, or “magic and mysticism,” said Wille, aimed at a pop-culture—informed audience. In fall 2007, she published The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, YaHoWha 13, and the Source Family by Isis Aquarian and Electricity Aquarian, the story of a legendary 1970s L.A. sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll cult, that has generated media attention and was an L.A. Times bestseller. Wille, who is also a filmmaker, is producing a documentary on the book, and actor Nick Nolte is attached to a possible TV project. On the music side, the house has big expectations for Pure Country: The Leon Kagarise Photo Archives 1958—1968, a trove of color photos of major country music stars taken by an obsessed fan in the 1950s, well before the musicians were nationally famous.
Parfrey said Feral House is riding a wave of sales from Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara, a book on the origins of NASA with info on unusual lunar discoveries provided to the authors by disaffected NASA employees. The book was published in fall 2007, sold more than 50,000 copies and spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Parfrey plans to publish an expanded edition in 2009. Several Feral House books have been optioned and are now in development for film and TV projects, among them American Hardcore, a history of punk rock, and The Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica. Parfrey also has big expectations for Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine by Tyler Boudreau, a 12-year marine and veteran of the Iraq War, who offers a powerful critique of both the marines and the war.
After years of specializing in eccentric topics, Wille and Parfrey said their brand of oddball publishing has gained respect. “When I started Feral House in the pre-Internet days, I was just trying to bring out important information that people thought was weird,” Parfrey said. “I’m still publishing the same kind of stuff, but people don’t think it’s weird anymore.”
