OR Books
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| Founded | 2009 |
|---|---|
| Founder | John Oakes and Colin Robinson |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City, New York |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | www |
OR Books is a New York-based independent publishing house founded by two veterans of the publishing industry, John Oakes and Colin Robinson, in 2009.[1] The company, a "digital upstart",[2] claims to offer a revolutionary approach to publishing by printing on demand, selling directly to the customer, and focusing on creative promotion through traditional media and the Internet. OR generally does not sell its books through stores or wholesalers: it "sells directly to customers who order from the OR Books website, eliminating unsold inventory, doing away with deep discounts to retailers, and sharing more of the profit with authors. Customers may order print copies or digital versions; OR Books prints and delivers copies only when they are ordered."[3]
On its site, OR Books states that it "embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business." By selling directly to the reader, and avoiding large discount chains, it says substantial resources are made available for marketing and promotion. "At OR Books, our calculation is that, for the amount of money we would have to give Amazon, we can do a better job finding customers ourselves. We know who our audience is, we share their interests, we visit the same websites and read the same writers," wrote company co-founder Robinson.[4] Elsewhere, Oakes has said: "People call OR a 'radical alternative' or an 'experiment,' but in many ways we're a throwback: we advocate a process wherein the publisher focuses on developing ideas into workable manuscripts, carefully editing them, and, above all, devoting substantial resources to marketing the finished product."[5]
OR Books is best known for publishing Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare, a parody of the Sarah Palin biography, which went on to become a New York Times Best Seller in 2009. Since then the company has published books by Julian Assange, Moustafa Bayoumi, Medea Benjamin, Sue Coe, Simon Critchley, Lisa Dierbeck, Norman Finkelstein, Laura Flanders, Chris Lehmann, Gordon Lish, Bill McKibben, Eileen Myles, Yoko Ono, Douglas Rushkoff, Jeanne Thornton, and others.
Founders
According to OR's website, John Oakes co-founded the publishing company Four Walls Eight Windows. When his company was purchased by the Avalon Publishing Group, he became publisher of Thunder's Mouth Press, co-publisher of Nation Books, and vice president of Avalon. Colin Robinson, a former senior editor at Scribner, was previously managing director of Verso Books and publisher of The New Press.
Joint ventures
In September 2010, OR Books announced a partnership with a writers' collective known as Mischief & Mayhem, whose members include Dale Peck, Lisa Dierbeck, Joshua Furst, DW Gibson, and Choire Sicha.[6]
In what the industry newsblog Shelf Awareness termed a "very significant...move," St. Mark’s Bookshop and OR Books announced a joint venture to enable the store’s customers to buy select books on OR’s list from the bookstore’s website.[7]
References
- ↑ Crain's New York Business on the founding of OR Books
- ↑ "What's Ahead in 2011", Publishers Weekly.
- ↑ Oakes ’83 connects readers directly to a publisher
- ↑ Colin Robinson, "Bedtime for Bezos: OR Books Says 'Thanks, But No Thanks' to Amazon", Huffington Post, May 22, 2010.
- ↑ John Oakes, "Pain and its Alleviation", Pressbooks.
- ↑ Leon Neyfakh, "Dale Peck, Choire Sicha and Friends Start a Book Publishing Collective; First Title Out Next Month", New York Observer, September 10, 2010.
- ↑ "St. Mark's/OR Alliance", Shelf Awareness.
External links
- Company site
- OR Books on Facebook.
- John Oakes, "Disintermediating Amazon", Publishers Weekly, May 18, 2012.
- Colin Robinson, "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reader", The New York Times, January 4, 2014.
- Mischief + Mayhem
- "TOC Evolvers: OR Books". Interview with John Oakes on O'Reilly Media's "Tools of Change for Publishing".
- Publishers Weekly discusses OR Books in its 2010 roundup, January 3, 2011.
- Jim Barnes, "Indie Groundbreaking Publisher: OR Books — A Brave New Publishing Model", Independent Publisher article about the success of Going Rouge.
- Interview with Colin Robinson on NPR's On the Media
- Chad W. Post, "OR Books Preaches Elegant Direct Model", Publishing Perspectives, October 6, 2010.
- "Words & Music Festival 2011 featured fireworks, and a little sadness", Nola.com, November 15, 2011 (showdown between OR co-publisher John Oakes and Random House editor).
- Dennis Sweeney, "Interview with Colin Robinson, Co-Founder, OR Books", Entropy Magazine, January, 2014.
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