- OR Books
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OR Books 
Type Private Industry Books, printing and publishing Founded 2010 Founder(s) John Oakes and Colin Robinson Headquarters New York City, New York, United States Website orbooks.com 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. It 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]
OR Books is best known for publishing Going Rouge, a parody of the Sarah Palin biography, which went on to become a New York Times Best Seller in 2009. Since then they have published books by Norman Finkelstein, Gordon Lish, Moustafa Bayoumi, Bill McKibben, Eileen Myles, Douglas Rushkoff, Laura Flanders, Chris Lehmann, and Lisa Dierbeck.
Contents
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.[5]
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.[6]
References
- ^ Crain's New York Business on the founding of OR Books
- ^ Publishers Weekly, What's Ahead in 2011
- ^ Oakes ’83 connects readers directly to a publisher
- ^ Huffington Post, Colin Robinson on OR Books and Amazon
- ^ New York Observer, "Dale Peck, Choire Sicha and Friends Start a Book Publishing Collective; First Title Out Next Month"
- ^ Shelf Awareness, "St. Mark's/OR Alliance"
External links
- Books
- Mischief + Mayhem
- Interview with John Oakes on O'Reilly Media's "Tools of Change for Publishing"
- Publishers Weekly discusses OR Books in its 2010 roundup
- "Independent Publisher" article about the success of Going Rouge
- Interview with Colin Robinson on NPR's On the Media
- "Publishing Perspectives": "OR Books Preaches Elegant Direct Model"
Categories:- Small press publishers
- American publishers
- Book publishing companies based in New York
- Political book publishing companies
- Publishing companies established in 2009
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