City Lights Publishers is one of the few successful publishing houses to emerge from a bookstore. Now two stores, Commonwealth Books in Boston and Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., are trying to emulate the model City Lights created 53 years ago.
In 2005, almost two decades after he started a quartet of used, rare and scholarly bookstores, Joseph Phillips launched Black Widow Press out of his Commonwealth store on the Boston Common. (His other stores are a second Commonwealth location in Boston; A. Parkers Books, in Sarasota, Fla.; and Crescent City Books in New Orleans' French Quarter.) Like City Lights, Black Widow publishes some poetry, but overall its backlist of 17 books is much narrower in scope. That's because Phillips prefers to focus on books in translation and new and classic works of 20th-century surrealism and Dada. “While City Lights and Black Widow both publish incredible work,” said Chris Faatz, a bookseller at Powell's Books in Portland, Ore., “I really can't think of anyone who publishes like Black Widow. And for that, I salute them.”
For Phillips, the decision to create a publishing program grew out of his growing frustration over not being able to get the books his customers wanted, either because they were out-of-print or too expensive to stock. His first book, Lee Harwood's translation of Tristan Tzara's poetry collection Chanson Dada, for example, had previously been available only as a $60 or $75 paperback from the 1970s. Black Widow also publishes contemporary poets like Clayton Eshleman, whose The Grindstone of Rapport is just out. Other recent releases include Essential Poems and Writings of Robert Desnos, edited by Mary Ann Caws, and a revised edition of Mark Polizzotti's Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton.
Phillips does much of his market research at his own bookstore counters, and he sells his books along with a smattering of new titles from other small presses, like Black Sparrow, at all four of his antiquarian stores. He cross-promotes Black Widow titles at antiquarian book fairs, where the books are shelved alongside related rare books. However, despite his own grassroots efforts and the inroads made into the book trade by distributor National Book Network, Phillips acknowledged, “Black Widow is definitely not sustaining moneywise; it's supported by the stores.” Phillips is hoping the program moves into the black within the next few years, and he plans to release six books over the next six months.
Nor is the Washington, D.C.—based bookstore, restaurant, performance space and bar Busboys and Poets, with two locations in the District and one in Shirlington, Va., looking to get rich through the publishing program it is launching this spring in collaboration with year-old PM Press. Pamela Pinnock, director of marketing and events at Busboys and Poets, who is overseeing the program, regards it as an extension of the store's charitable work. So far this year, she said, Busboys and Poets has donated more than $400,000 in cash and in-kind donations.
“We've been thinking about publishing for a while,” said Pinnock. “When we talked with Craig O'Hara at PM we thought, we're not in the book business, we're in the restaurant business.” As an imprint, Busboys and Poets will be able to focus on editorial, while PM handles production, sales and marketing.
The first book to come out under the Busboys and Poets name will be a memoir by E. Ethelbert Miller, The Fifth Inning. In his sequel to Fathering Words, the poet and director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University uses the game of baseball as a metaphor for life. Also due out in 2009 is a coffee-table book of photos, poetry and essays related to the store's literary presentations, and a poetry anthology edited by Derrick Weston Brown, poet-in-residence at Busboys and Poet's flagship store. Future titles, said Pinnock, will likely come from the established writers who read in the performance space as well as self-published authors. O'Hara views the arrangement with Busboys and Poets as an opportunity to introduce readers outside the D.C. area to the store, as well as to introduce PM, which is based in Oakland, Calif., to Busboys and Poets' customers.
