You know, the typical publishing story. I was sitting in a bar in the year 2000 with some freak I knew from a miserable job I had at the time and he turned to me and said, “I want to start a press and you should be the editor because you are very outgoing.” I downed my tenth or so beer and told him that was a great idea and he could count me in. At this miserable job, I had written a novel called For Fucks Sake, and we decided to launch the press with my book. At the same time, I started dating my future wife Elizabeth, who already worked in publishing, at a literary agency. The three of us spent the next two years meeting at the freak’s apartment with occasional assorted other freaks making detailed plans on how we would publish our one book; after the meetings, we would all go to dinner and get drunk.
Small Press
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I’ve never wanted to outwardly define Penny-Ante beyond the obvious: “Penny-Ante is a book publisher and an art-based project company.” It’s fairly simple. The press acts in earnest to develop projects we feel deserve an audience. I don’t think a further directive would do any service to the authors. All our authors are independent thinkers and unique personalities who speak boldly for their oeuvre; one of many reasons the press serves their efforts.
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Sylvère Lotringer started Semiotext(e) with a group of friends and grad students at Columbia University in 1974. It quickly evolved from a journal of semiotic theory to a popular magazine, juxtaposing high theory and underground culture, after the publication of the “Schizo-Culture” issue in 1978. The issue brought together artists and thinkers as diverse as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, William Burroughs, and Lee Breuer.
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In 1956, City Lights published Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem “Howl” and became the lightning rod for a new generation of untamed poets. This rare combination of bookstore and publishing house battles on as one of the increasingly rare, un-chained independent book enterprises in America. Expert bookworms stock a comprehensive selection of the best books in every field…