You don’t have to look hard for predictions of the end of the publishing industry. Frightening stuff if you’re a book lover, especially one for whom a book still means paper and a spine. For now, however, presses continue to bring books to market. Here are six African-American publishers who remain in the trade, committed to sharing high-quality literature and non-fiction to challenge and inform.
Third World Press
Haki Madhubuti entered the world of book peddling on a Chicago street corner. At one dollar a pop he sold 600 copies of his poetry collection in a single day. When a $400 literary award came through, he formalized the enterprise, purchasing a mimeograph machine, and with the aid of two friends, set up shop in his basement apartment. The year was 1967 and it wasn’t long before Madhubuti, a lead figure in the Black Arts Movement, was distributing the work of his contemporaries — Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka among them. Scholarly works joined literary texts, the result of which is one of the most extensive rosters of progressive black thought in the world.
Black Classic Press
Similar to Haki Madhubuti Paul Coates got his start with a few hundred dollars and a basement location, this time in Baltimore. A former Black Panther, Coates has advertised, “We don’t publish best sellers. We just publish books essential to the black experience.” To that end the press is primarily concerned with uncovering forgotten gems of historical and social significance and making them available to new audiences. Coates’ publishing house drew national attention in 1996 when, in a show of solidarity with the independent press, Walter Mosley entrusted him with Gone Fishing. More recently, average readers may have become familiar with the man and his work through his son’s memoir. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a popular and engaging writer for The Atlantic Monthly, pays homage to his dad in The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.
Amber Communications Group
When Tony Rose founded Amber Books in 1998 he already knew what success looked liked. For twenty years he’d been in the music busness, producing and promoting acts in his native Boston and Los Angeles. He’d cashed out of the business and relocated to Phoenix when his wife wrote a book that prompted his next venture. Identifying and marketing talent are transferrable skills and it didn’t take long for the business to take off. Today Amber Communications Group is the largest publisher of African-American self-help books and music biographies with several imprints, one of which is a collaboration with Tom Joyner.
Africa World Press & The Red Sea Press
You might say that the immigrant dream is to reach a place where one can catch up with their imagination. So was the case for Kassahun Checole when he left Eritrea (then still a part of Ethiopia) for upstate New York. He eventually found his way to Rutgers University where he taught sociology and African studies. It was there that he discovered the need for more thoughtful texts on the history, politics and culture of the African diaspora. In 1983 he launched Africa World Press (AWP) with Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Two years later The Red Sea Press (RSP) was established to distribute AWP’s catalogue, a task it took on for other presses as well. Since then AWP/RSP has risen to international prominence, with satellite offices in England, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Ghana. Today over 100 titles are released each year, and while scholarly offerings remain its primary focus, poetry and international fiction have also found a home here.
RedBone Press
An acquaintance of Lisa C. Moore’s sister noticed the pink triangle on her bumper and followed her home. The girl was negotiating coming out and as with many life changes, was eager for literature to help with the journey. Having no fiction that focused on the experiences of blacks coming to terms with their sexuality, Moore set out to assemble her own collection. Shopping it around feminist presses she was told there was no market for her offering, does your mama know?. Not to be deterred she published the collection herself in 1997. Soon after Moore was asked to do the same for another writer, and thus RedBone Press born. Based in Washington, DC the catalogue has become a respected source of black queer fiction and poetry. Authors have been recognized by the Pen American Center, The Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Lambda Literary Foundation, honors that become even more impressive when one considers that RedBone operates as a one-woman show.
Just Us Books
When Wade and Cheryl Hudson started their family in the late 1970s African-American children’s books were few and far between. As their kids grew they decided they could do something to rectify this and collaborated on an alphabet reader. Publishers rejected it. If representatives bought into the idea that black children needed to read books that reflected their experience, they were unwilling to put resources behind it. It took only a few such encounters for the Hudsons to take on the bigger challenge. In 1987 they started Just Us Books which continues to thrive today as the leading provider of black youth literature.
