AK Publishing: A Day (or so) in the Life
We thought people might be interested in having a behind-the-scenes peek at the things that go on at AK Press. (It’s not all as glamorous as you?d imagine!) What follows is a little window into the world of publishing at AK Press. I (Zach) will try to give occasional updates that will give you folks an idea of what sort of things we do in order to work with the book trade.
AK Publishing: A Day (or so) in the Life
By Zach
January 28, 2009
Revolution by the Book (blog)
AK Press is both a publisher and a distributor. For books that we publish, we use another distributor to handle direct distribution to booksellers and wholesalers: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, who are based in Minneapolis. We’ve been with them for about eight years. The publishing world has two "seasons," Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter, and for Consortium these are from April–August and September–March. Each January and July we begin the process of announcing books for the following season. We’ve got a number of deadlines coming up in the next five weeks, including tipsheets (which function as a quick reference sheet for each book); a sales call (where we try to excite the crew at Consortium with our latest foray into anarchist publishing. “Honest, it’ll sell!”); then descriptions and cover art for Consortium’s seasonal catalogs; and shortly afterward, the sales conference, where we put on our chinos and penny loafers and WOW the sales reps. All of this, at least six months before the season’s first books are ready.
