Boston Independent Activist Publishing: A History

The way I envision doing this blog for now is focusing on different presses across different posts, which is to say that I will focus on the South End Press now but return to it in other posts, rather than covering all of it in one post. That is where I see the blog as specifically useful as a platform, rather than a book manuscript which needs more cohesion (says the book editor). This will ultimately stitch together, I hope, but I want to put things out as I research and write them up, so it may have the stops-and-starts of research; the meandering path; the return to, the course correction, the reversals? We'll see. I'm also going to feel free to include autobiography without being self-indulgent. I moved to the South End after living in Boston for a bit under two years, and I really didn't know much about the neighborhood. I knew it had a reputation for being gay, and I was moving with a male partner. I had lived in London for three years and the South End's roots i...

 I haven't blogged in many years. I kept an old blog somewhat anonymously, with a colleague, back when we were all nervous about printed books becoming obsolete. The blog ended up tracking, in real time, how that fear got tamed, as we realized that there is enough interest in books to sustain multiple formats, with some readers even moving between formats for the same text. In keeping that blog going for a couple of years, including for a year when I stepped out of publishing (because $$) and got a job that did not have enough work for me, to keep me busy, I became committed to keeping up with the industry. In addition to calming my nerves about the end of the printed book, it also strengthened my interest in and support for independent publishing.  I am using this term to mean presses that are not owned by corporate entities. Many of them are non-profit, though I do not believe that alone determines their eligibility for this category. Some are very tiny and may have short li...