Non-Profit Presses

Good, but not de facto virtuous

I seem to have lost my passport. I need it by Thursday. This means tomorrow I need to drive to Detroit, 2 1/2 hours away by car, to get a new one. So, Sunday morning for the newsletter it is.

Recently, Haymarket Books tweeted something to the effect that for-profit publishers will always be concerned with profit above all. It was directed at the phenomenon of Big Five publishers putting out all these books by Trumpists (and Trump family members). I adore Haymarket, and look to them for all sorts of inspiration and succor: they do good work and they do it well. They are also one of America’s best non-profit presses. Non-profit presses have been killing it lately: Graywolf is arguably the most killing-it of them all. So have the other MPLS presses, Coffee House and Milkweed (love this Minneapolis trio!). McSweeney’s transitioned from for- to non-recently; Achipelago is a non-profit that has profited (figuratively!) from its publication of Knausgaard; Feminist Press and Island Press are…