by Angela Campiere
Last week McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house located in San Francisco, announced that they will officially transition to being a not-for-profit publisher within the next year. The publishing house, founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers, has published roughly 200 books since its inception. The company’s mission is centered around providing the literary world with niche, unique and quirky titles, a category that hasn't always coincided with large profits. Now that Eggers has made the decision to become a not-for-profit organization, his house’s ability to focus on those art-based pieces of work has become a viable possibility. “[The transition] will allow the company to be more ambitious in areas that traditional publishers have largely neglected because they hold little commercial promise, like poetry and foreign translations.” [1]
Eggers, a McSweeney's author himself, envisions a different route for McSweeney’s now that they are unburdened by financial success standards. “For certain independent publishers, operating as a nonprofit allows them to focus on sustaining the literary arts by taking risks on avant-garde books or edgy debut authors without financial distraction.” [2] New projects in the works for the publishing house include an expanded poetry series, a collection of stories written by South Sudanese women and a fiction anthology from Caribbean authors.
In addition to books, the house also publishes a quarterly journal, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and a monthly magazine, Believer. Believer is scheduled to become a bi-monthly magazine starting next January, though the pieces within the periodical will be more in-depth than they currently are.
McSweeney’s now has a much broader publishing capability and plans on getting it’s funding through various sources, including grant funding, private sponsorship and crowd funding. Overall, Eggers is excited about the direction that the publishing house is moving in and we will see more of the works that the house excels in – quirky, artistic pieces – emerging in the near future.
[1] NY Times “McSweeney’s Announces a Move to Nonprofit Status”
[2] Huffington Post “Independent Publisher McSweeney's To Go Nonprofit, Which Is Great For Publishing”
[3] SFGate “McSweeney’s to become nonprofit publishing house”
Image via SFGate
Last week McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house located in San Francisco, announced that they will officially transition to being a not-for-profit publisher within the next year. The publishing house, founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers, has published roughly 200 books since its inception. The company’s mission is centered around providing the literary world with niche, unique and quirky titles, a category that hasn't always coincided with large profits. Now that Eggers has made the decision to become a not-for-profit organization, his house’s ability to focus on those art-based pieces of work has become a viable possibility. “[The transition] will allow the company to be more ambitious in areas that traditional publishers have largely neglected because they hold little commercial promise, like poetry and foreign translations.” [1]
Eggers, a McSweeney's author himself, envisions a different route for McSweeney’s now that they are unburdened by financial success standards. “For certain independent publishers, operating as a nonprofit allows them to focus on sustaining the literary arts by taking risks on avant-garde books or edgy debut authors without financial distraction.” [2] New projects in the works for the publishing house include an expanded poetry series, a collection of stories written by South Sudanese women and a fiction anthology from Caribbean authors.
In addition to books, the house also publishes a quarterly journal, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and a monthly magazine, Believer. Believer is scheduled to become a bi-monthly magazine starting next January, though the pieces within the periodical will be more in-depth than they currently are.
McSweeney’s now has a much broader publishing capability and plans on getting it’s funding through various sources, including grant funding, private sponsorship and crowd funding. Overall, Eggers is excited about the direction that the publishing house is moving in and we will see more of the works that the house excels in – quirky, artistic pieces – emerging in the near future.
[1] NY Times “McSweeney’s Announces a Move to Nonprofit Status”
[2] Huffington Post “Independent Publisher McSweeney's To Go Nonprofit, Which Is Great For Publishing”
[3] SFGate “McSweeney’s to become nonprofit publishing house”
Image via SFGate