Looking for a Publisher

[ecosophia]

Well, that's done -- one of the three writing projects I hoped to complete during my January break is finished in draft. The project? A summing up of the themes of magical politics and class prejudice in the United States I've been discussing since early in 2016, and pretty much wrapped up last year. The challenge now is finding a publisher for the project. 

Since it's a book on US politics, I want to find an American publisher, and since it stands the acceptable tropes of contemporary politics on their heads and talks at length about some of the most strictly tabooed topics of our time -- for example, the role of class interests and class prejudice in the rise and fall of the privileged progressivism of the recent past, and the rise of the populist backlash that's shaping the present and future -- I need to find a publisher who can handle extreme political heresy. Oh, and the book also talks about magic, so it should be a publisher whose tolerance for heresy isn't limited to the political realm. 

Of course the usual issues also apply: it would be nice to find a publisher that has decent marketing and a reputation as a source for outsider viewpoints, etc. 

I've begun looking around for options, but it occurs to me that my readers are an impressively diverse and well-read bunch of people, the kind of readers who have books full of weird alternative views sitting on their shelves right now. If you do, and happen to have a spare moment, could you let me know who published the weirdest of those weird alternative views? Many thanks, and may shoggoths surrepititiously do your dishes for you. 

Comments

Shoggoths

[sea_spray]

Now I just have to read the shoggoth concerto. Looking forward to it!
Thanks

[aldabra]

I have a bunch of Derrick Jensen from Seven Stories Press in New York. AIUI they ditched him when he went fully-fledged high-profile TERF, but had stuck with him for years before that while he was advocating paramilitary industrial sabotage and human extinction in favour of the salmon.

I think you're on the right side of the TERF boundary.

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! I'll check them out.

I hadn't heard that about Jensen. It makes sense, actually -- as far as I know, he's always been sharply opposed to technological interference with nature, and I can see how gender reassignment surgery would fall into that category...

Re: Shoggoths

[ecosophia]

Oddly enough, shoggoths doing dishes does actually come into The Shoggoth Concerto. They feed by absorbing and engulfing organic matter, right?

[(Anonymous)]

Not a publisher suggestion, but on the topic of your book, did you ever read this? It's an article on "white bashing" rhetoric as a form of social climbing on the left, by a South Asian American conservative, who went to elite colleges. I've never seen the details of it described so well anywhere else.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-utility-of-white-bashing/566846/

[aldabra]

I also have No More Prisons by William Upski Wimsatt, from Soft Skull Press in New York, which appears to have ceased to exist and then relaunched since. I confess I haven't read this, and the publishing looks more amateur than your books usually do (like, no publishing date), but it has come recommended for its weird alternative views.

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, you might want to write Ron Unz (unz@unz.com) and see if he has any suggestions, as his web site exists to provide a place to read taboo viewpoints.

[violetcabra]

I read an engrossing book on the internet wars called _Kill All Normies_. The author is an oldtimey, unfashionable British Socialist with a lot of very unfashionable talk on class warfare. The publisher can be accessed through this link, which discusses the book in question which has some similarities to the book you wish to publish: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/kill-all-normies

Also, they accept unsolicited manuscripts, and has one title I saw that concerns "how the left can't meme"!

They also put out a bunch of books on occultism! on their manuscript submission page one of their basic categories is "pagan" books. They are a member of the "Association of American Publishers" which I think means they are based in the United States. Their information on publishing with them can be found here: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/publishing-guide/chapter-1-the-proposal/publishing-guide-introduction/

Various though not very weird

[(Anonymous)]

A Distant Mirror - Barbara Tuchman , 1978 Ballantine Books
The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs , 1992 Vintage Books
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth - Ina Gaskin , 2003 Bantam Dell
The Urban Farm Handbook - Annette Cottrell , 2011 Skipstone
Limits to Growth: the 30 year update - Dennis Meadows , 2004 Chelsea Green Publishing

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps Inner Traditions? They are based in Vermont.

Sentinel Publishing

[(Anonymous)]

When you mentioned a publishing house, I thought of the imprint of Penguin that did Chris Arnade's Dignity (amazing book on back row America) which is called Sentinel: https://www.penguin.com/publishers/sentinel/

It's a long shot but the main editor, Bria Sandford, does say:
"Fascinated by shifting political coalitions, she is drawn to counterintuitive takedowns of conventional wisdom. She enjoys editing a wide range of idea-driven nonfiction, with a focus on history, sociology, economics, and good old-fashioned polemic. Her bestselling and critically acclaimed authors include Brian Kilmeade, Rod Dreher, Reihan Salam, Ken Starr, and Senator Mike Lee. She tweets at blsandford."

The link to Dreher also peaked my interest considering your recent interactions.

Good luck!

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this. Their website says they're currently closed to unsolicited submissions, but I'll see if that changes while I gear up to edit the first draft.

[ecosophia]

Glad to see it. I've been watching that process at work for a while now, but it's good to have something to cite, so thank you.

[ecosophia]

Thanks for this! I'll check out his site and consider it.

[ecosophia]

Interesting! Okay, I've bookmarked the site.

[ecosophia]

Hmm -- a real possibility. I'll have to see if they do books on politics.

Re: Sentinel Publishing

[ecosophia]

Thank you! Unfortunately Penguin, like most of the big corporate publishers, refuses to look at manuscripts unless they're submitted by a literary agent. I don't have an agent -- the two times I've tried to work with one, early on in my career, it proved to be an utter waste of my time, and when I attempted to interest some agents in making easy money now that I'm an established author with a large and not well marketed backlist, I didn't get a single reply. So I'm sorry to say Sentinel isn't in the running.

This goes somewhere...

[(Anonymous)]

Upper and lower whites? On the one hand, nailed it. On the other... this rhetoric goes somewhere... and that's not good. Rusty

Publishers

[(Anonymous)]

Some of the best titles I own were knocked out by local printers in the 1960s and 1970s. There must be one of those somewhere...

Delivery of the latest tract in the series by brush-pass on a busy sidewalk, of course.

John Hunt Publishing

[(Anonymous)]

John Hunt Publishing through their various imprints are massively into alternative spirituality and cover Paganism under their Moon Books imprint, which includes quite a few Druids amongst its authors. Their politically oriented imprint is Zer0 Books (https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/).

If you have heard of him, Bernardo Kastrup - the idealist philosopher - also publishes with John Hunt under their Iff Books imprint and his take on Schopenhauer is out next (https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/iff-books/our-books/decoding-schopenhauers-metaphysics).

Re: Sentinel Publishing

[(Anonymous)]

It would be career suicide: the job relies on ties with the big companies. Needless to say, they won't be happy to see an agent working with a writer who writes on the topics you do....

Re: Publishers

[ecosophia]

Or a dead drop in a hollow tree. Gotcha!

My five cents and good wishes

[(Anonymous)]

As the author of several books myself, I do appreciate the value of a good publisher, however for a niche book that will sell primarily on amazon and when you already have two blogs with large and loyal followings, plus a raft of other books published, why? I don't see that it would necessarily in this instance make sense to bother with trying to find a publisher for this book.

If you want to get your own imprint, I would suggest getting your ISBNs directly from Bowker and then using both amazon's CreateSpace/Kindle AND Ingram Spark (rather than just going directly through amazon). One does then need to pay for a freelance copyeditor and freelance book designer (when authors don't, it shows), but this isn't like the cost of casting bronze sculpture, and anyway your royalties will much higher for having skipped the publisher.

Of course, self-publishing may not necessarily make sense for another author, or for another of your works, however.

And of course, I could be wrong. Wacky things happen all the time in the publishing world. There just might be the perfect publisher, ready to pounce. I cannot think of one at the moment, however.

Ah, no, what about White Crow?

Re: Sentinel Publishing

[(Anonymous)]

They may also fear the Twitter mob.

Re: Sentinel Publishing

[neonvincent]

Would Regnery, which publishes books for conservatives, be in the same boat? They would like the criticism of liberals, but I don't know if they'd be into the magical dimension. Their spirituality might run to evangelical Christianity. BTW, would this be the book with the working title "The King in Orange"?