Latest News: Author Archive
Douglas Rushkoff talks at Pivot 2010
Friday, October 22nd, 2010OR Books Is One: The Video
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010“From Frankfurt: OR Books Preaches Elegant, Direct Model” in Publishing Perspectives
Saturday, October 9th, 2010Speaking at both Tools of Change and the International Digital Rights Symposium, John Oakes of the newly launched OR Books elucidated his business model. Compared to traditional publishing structures, its simplicity is quite revolutionary.
Read more in Publishing Perspectives.
A rave review for Eileen Myles‘ novel INFERNO in the current Bookforum
Friday, September 17th, 2010“It’s a novel in the way Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights and Renata Adler’s Speedboat are–that is to say, on its own terms. With Inferno, Myles has written…a meditation on hatching a writing life. …The book, in other words, is packed. Throughout, Myles moves smoothly between her numerous themes: discovery, emergence, memory, and, most important, the lurching ambition to have a life of the mind and the body.”
Read more at http://bookforum.com/inprint/017_03/6364
Mischief+Mayhem’s partnership with OR Books, starting with the launch of Lisa Dierbeck’s THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JENNY X: A NOVEL, is featured in the New York Observer.
Friday, September 10th, 2010“I think that we recognize that we’re way past the moment of panic,” said the novelist DW Gibson yesterday. “And it now sort of feels like a land of opportunity.”
Mr. Gibson was explaining why he and four of his friends— Choire Sicha of the Awl and fellow novelists Dale Peck, Lisa Dierbeck, and Joshua Furst— have decided to get into the book business.
“We’re a publishing collective,” Mr. Gibson said. “The motivation is to reinstall a notion of editorial process that’s all but vanished from the traditional corporate structure of publishing that’s out there now.”
(Read more in the New York Observer)
Moustafa Baymoui and Max Blumenthal discuss MIDNIGHT ON THE MAVI MARMARA during a press breifing on Blog Talk Radio
Monday, August 23rd, 2010Listen to the whole briefing on Blog Talk Radio.
Joe Woodward talks about working with OR Books, which will soon publish his literary biography of Nathanael West.
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010News of my death has been greatly exaggerated (and captured, fed, and hyper-linked). I’m talking here about the new author in the era of new media, but too, about literary agents, editors, publishers, readers, librarians — People of the Book. Every day the headlines trumpet our demise. Every day another shovel of dirt hits the crowns of our caskets, and so on. I’m here to say, don’t believe it.
Read more on Huffington Post.
OR Books is the inaugural interview for O’Reilly’s TOC Evolvers Series
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
ToC:What does OR Books do? When were you established? How many employees do you have?
John Oakes: OR Books is driven by two concepts. Well, three. One: the current system of distribution and production, returns and discounts, in publishing doesn’t work for stores, authors, or publishers. Two: we will publish politically progressive and culturally adventurous work. Three: the classic rules of publishing still hold true: you need good editing, design, and marketing.
To address the first concept, we decided to scratch the Byzantine rules that surround the distribution and production of books: we sell straight to consumers, do intensive marketing, and then license the book to “traditional publishers.” We generally do not sell to wholesalers or booksellers, be they independent, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. We are “platform agnostic,” offering consumers their books as ebooks or in physical, printed form. They choose.
We started operations in the fall of 2009, and had a riproaring debut with GOING ROUGE: Sarah Palin, an American Nightmare. Since then, we’ve signed up a number of really exciting authors, including Norman Finkelstein, Doug Rushkoff, Chris Lehmann, Eileen Myles, Bill McKibben, Laura Flanders, Sue Coe and others.
We’re a total of four people, plus one intern.
Read more at toc.oreilly.com.
Independent Publisher names OR Books an Indie Groundbreaking Publisher in IP feature
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010How did Robinson and co-founder John Oakes do it? By breaking all the rules of publishing, that’s how. OR Books is recognizing that the bookselling world has changed, and they are changing the way they do book business accordingly.
Utilizing print-on-demand technology and offering ebooks direct to the customer from their website allows them to opt out of an outdated distribution model. They are able to bypass the steep discounts that put publishers at a huge disadvantage, and avoid the return of unsold inventory — which can lead to pulped books — a complete waste of paper and energy used for shipping back and forth. This new system allows a rapid publishing turnaround and brings relevant books to the public and help them explore the issues of the day. And because Robinson and Oakes publish very selectively, they avoid adding to the glut of titles flooding the marketplace.
Read more at Independent Publisher
DEEPWATER HORIZON included in New York Times article on oil spill books.
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010OR Books, the publisher of “Going Rouge,” a book of critical essays about Sarah Palin, is rushing to produce what could be the first book on the disaster, “Deepwater Horizon: The Oil Disaster, Its Aftermath and Our Future,” by Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, written with Bob Deans.
Colin Robinson and John Oakes of OR signed the authors in mid-June and gave them about a month to finish writing and reporting. Mr. Oakes said he expected to have a finished manuscript in his hands this week, with a September publication date planned.
“It seemed essential to get a book out,” Mr. Oakes said. “We’ll have the take on what’s happened and how we got to this point. A book that encapsulates, that does an overview of the issues, could be of utility to someone.”
Read more in The New York Times.
Why Amazon Is Bad for Publishers, Bookstores, Authors and, Yes, Readers Too.
Friday, July 16th, 2010Jeff Bezos loves numbers. In a speech in May to graduates at his alma mater, Princeton University, he recounted a childhood memory: when, driving with his grandmother, a heavy smoker, he calculated by how many years her addiction would reduce her life expectancy. Announcing the result from the back seat, he expected praise for his deft math. But his grandmother just burst into tears.
Read more on The Nation
OR Books co-publisher Colin Robinson discusses Amazon on GRITtv with Laura Flanders
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010GOING ROUGE is one of Huffington Post’s “9 Big Books From Small Publishers.”
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010Vote for GOING ROUGE in the slideshow.
“Going Rouge” was the first book published by the new independent press OR Books, and the timing for the Sarah Palin satire was perfect. Because OR Books’ model is to publish books very quickly for release primarily as eBooks and through Print-on-Demand, they were able to make the cover and title of the book deviously similar to Sarah Palin’s memoir “Going Rogue,” which came out the same day. The book, which primarily features critical essays about the former Vice Presidential candidate, rode on Palin’s waves of success and made headlines with its clever premise.
(via Huffington Post)
DEEPWATER HORIZON is featured in Publishers Weekly
Friday, July 2nd, 2010OR Books, the start-up behind last fall’s Sarah Palin spoof Going Rouge, is crashing another timely title, Deepwater Horizon: The Oil Disaster, Its Aftermath and Our Future by Peter Lehner with Bob Deans.
Read more in Publishers Weekly.
Moustafa Bayoumi Interviewed by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010Read the interview with Moustafa Bayoumi, author of Midnight on the Mavi Marama, in The Chronicle.
Next month, OR books will publish Midnight on the Mavi Marmara, a collection of essays about Israel’s recent raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla. The book will be edited by Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College. Bayoumi is the author of How Does it Feel to be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin Press, 2008).
I caught up with Bayoumi, who is currently in Seoul, and he answered my questions by e-mail.
DEEPWATER HORIZON: NRDC’s press release
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010NEW YORK (June 29, 2010) — NRDC Executive Director Peter Lehner, together with Bob Deans, will author the first book on the Gulf oil spill entitled Deepwater Horizon: The Oil Disaster, Its Aftermath, and Our Future.
Published by OR Books, Deepwater Horizon provides a brief account of the disaster as well as the conditions that made it possible — and lays out a blueprint to avoid similar catastrophes in the future.
“The book is not so much about BP as it is about how we got to the point where drilling in inaccessible spots became hugely profitable for oil companies,” said Peter Lehner. “There is a real need for an assessment of the situation that goes beyond criticizing one company’s incompetence. Our oil addiction and how we get rid of it has to be at the heart of these discussions.”
Since the spill occurred, NRDC has been at the forefront of efforts of efforts to ensure this type of catastrophe never happens again. NRDC has had a rapid-response team on the ground in the Gulf documenting the environmental impacts of the oil spill and advocating for local communities. NRDC attorneys and scientists are working to hold BP accountable for the damage it is causing. The organization is also working to make sure the Obama Administration and Congress is doing everything possible to create tough new safeguards that will defend our coastal waters from more disasters and rein in damaging practices by the oil industry.
Prior to becoming NRDC executive director,Peter Lehnerserved as chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s office for eight years. He spent five years with NRDC leading its water program in the 1990s and before that created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City. He currently teaches environmental law at Columbia University.
Bob Deans is NRDC’s associate communications director and author of the 2007 book The River Where America Began: A Journey Along the James. He is a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and spent eight years covering the White House for Cox newspapers. With NRDC President Frances Beinecke, he co-authored the 2009 book Clean Energy Common Sense: An American Call to Action on Global Climate Change.
Paperback copies and e-books of Deepwater Horizon will ship August 9, 2010 with publication September 20, 2010. The book will initially be available only direct from the OR Books website, www.wp.orbooks.com.
(via NRDC)
In collaboration with the NRDC, OR will release the first book on the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster
Monday, June 28th, 2010
DEEPWATER HORIZON
The Oil Disaster, Its Aftermath and Our Future
Peter Lehner with Bob Deans
For more information, please download the press release.
Watch the MIDNIGHT ON THE MAVI MARMARA trailer
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010OR Books in the New York Times for our upcoming title MIDNIGHT ON THE MAVI MARMARA
Friday, June 18th, 2010From the June 11, 2010 New York Times:
The publisher of “Going Rouge,” a Sarah Palin parody book, is turning to Israel’s recent raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza as its next subject.
