As any self-respecting book lover knows, picking a favorite title is damn near impossible, but if forced to choose from Two Dollar Radio's catalog, I'd have to pick Hanif Abdurraqib's legendary They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Abdurraqib told a story on Instagram about a couple who both had tattoos of lines from the book, met after noticing each other's tattoos at a concert, and ended up getting married. Talk about a powerful book.
When we launched this series, I knew I wanted to feature Two Dollar Radio because Abdurraqib's book is one of many of their books I've loved. I was happy to get the opportunity to interview Eric Obenauf to learn more about the press and some of their 2024 titles.
Two Dollar Radio is a small but mighty family-run publisher, founded in 2005 by Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf. In addition to the press, which publishes six books a year, they run a brick-and-mortar indie bookstore and cafe, Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, which will make you want to plan a trip to Columbus, Ohio for vegan brunch before an afternoon of book browsing. And Two Dollar Radio recently collaborated with Chicago-indie bookstore, Exile in Bookville, to bring exclusive Exile Radio merch.
Back to its might: Two Dollar Radio not only publishes groundbreaking work larger presses might not take a chance on, but they're also helping to broaden and diversify the publishing landscape through their Publishing Mentorship Program. "I don't want to feel like I work in an industry of rich kids," Eric Obenauf said. "If you want to start your own press, I'll give you everything I know for free."
THE BEGINNING
Obenauf and Wood-Obenauf have credited The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read for inspiring their leap into book publishing. Obenauf reached out to John Martin, the founder of Black Sparrow Press, and determined they'd probably need $300,000 to get off the ground. "In the spirit of transparency, once we received major distribution, we realized we definitely needed at least $50,000. We were faced with either leveraging our first home as collateral and receiving a bank loan, or Rudy Wurlitzer wanted me to bring on an investor. By that point, we had either been turned down or discouraged from asking for financial support by family (who, I should add, were generous and incredibly supportive in other ways). I didn't want anyone to tell us what to do, so while I had conversations with potential investors, I decided to talk to an old family friend because I knew he wouldn't meddle with what we were doing. So, we did have that lifeline for financial support that I realize not everyone has, and thankfully we didn't have to put up our house, which was the first thing Eliza and I ever owned. It still feels like magic that we ever reached the point where we could make a living running Two Dollar Radio."
Obenauf added, "I'm very proud of the fact that we're still here. The thing I'm realizing about the publishing industry is that there aren't many people like us in it. Eliza and I don't come from money. I grew up in central Ohio in my dad's greasy spoon diner, and my mom ran a dance company that performed dances and music from the former Yugoslavia. I've sat on panels with individuals who don't bat an eye saying that they wanted to work in publishing, so their dad bought them a publishing company. And then when they realized they needed a backlist of titles in order to stay afloat, their dad bought them a second publishing company. Some of the presses that have emerged in the last two decades are heirs to conservative media empires and Belgian diamond companies."
NONFICTION
Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity
By Ellen van Neerven
Published April 2024
"We just came out with an essay collection called Personal Score by award-winning Aboriginal poet, Ellen van Neerven, about relationship to land, community, Indigenous rights, trans inclusion in sport, and soccer. One of our sales reps said that what Hanif's new book is to basketball, Ellen's is to soccer. Which means it's about sports, but so much more."
THE TEAM
"The thing about running a small press," said Obenauf, "is you have to wear a lot of hats out of necessity. I acquire manuscripts, edit them, do cover design, present them to sales reps, and help out with other tasks. Eliza and I started the press together and will have been married 20 years this fall. Eliza handles interior layout, royalties, databasing, print-buying, and plenty more."
Rounding out the team is Brett Gregory, their publicity, marketing, and social media guru. He schedules events, author tours, and pitches books for coverage—while also juggling other responsibilities as needed. And recently Ivan Davenny came aboard to help sift through the massive stack of submissions the press receives.
FICTION
Pages of Mourning
By Diego Gerald Morrison
Published May 2024
"Pages of Mourning confronts the crisis of forced disappearances in Mexico through Magical Realism by a wonderful talent in Diego Gerard Morrison. Fernando A. Flores said that 'If The Savage Detectives had a younger, rowdier sibling, this is it.' Spot on."
SUBMITTING TO TWO DOLLAR RADIO
Two Dollar Radio tries not to repeat themselves as a press. Sometimes they turn down excellent books they believe deserve a home, but are too relative to another book they already published in subject, setting, tone, or voice.
They accept both agented and unagented work, though Obenauf shared he prefers accepting the latter. He noted, "Agents can serve a purpose, but a lot of times it starts our relationship out on an adversarial note, rather than a positive and enthusiastic one. We're a small business, and agents are engineered to haggle against multinational corporations."
Obenauf is committed to publishing as a collaborative process, from acceptance all the way until after publication. Two Dollar Radio expects their authors to weigh in on cover design, push themselves hard during the editorial process, chip in on publicity research, and talk about the book once it's been released.
SATOR NEW WORKS AWARD
Two Dollar Radio and Sator Press came together several years ago to create the Sator New Works Award for an author who identifies as trans or nonbinary. The inaugural selection was My Volcano by John Elizabeth Stintzi, an ambitious, wildly creative novel.
The award was originally the idea of Ken Baumann, who founded and ran Sator Press for a decade. Two Dollar Radio's aim is to provide a platform to writers who might not already have one. Obenauf noted, "As an editor, if you aren't receiving submissions from voices that speak to issues of concern, then the onus is on you to seek them out. An award is one way to throw up a flag and solicit work, but I've also reached out directly to writers in the past like Hanif Abdurraqib and Billy-Ray Belcourt, because I felt like their voices are so necessary to engage and challenge us as readers, and to help inform how we look at the world."
FICTION
Us Fools
By Nora Lange
Will be published September 2024
"In the fall, we're out with a fierce, rambunctious, hilarious novel called Us Fools, by Nora Lange, about two sisters coming of age during the Midwest farm crisis in the 1980s. Bernadette and Joanne struggle to assimilate their feminist worldviews within the framework of American complacency and the patriarchy."
LOOKING AHEAD
As Two Dollar Radio begins its next decade of operation, its presence in the changing publishing landscape is especially important. Obenauf believes that "with corporate consolidation, indie publishing is more vital than ever. It is where some of our boldest and most engaging new voices can be found. Some of the biggest writers working today, like Hanif Abdurraqib, Kaveh Akbar, Roxane Gay, Marlon James, and Ocean Vuong all got their start publishing with small presses. Indie presses take chances on new voices. Once writers enjoy some success and connect with readers, then the big presses swoop in and capitalize. At its best, indie publishing can be fresh and vibrant and thrilling."
He continued, "It's just as important, I feel, that we not only publish a diversity of voices, but also that publishing companies employ individuals from a diversity of backgrounds. What I want more than anything, is for people who aspire to work in publishing to have that opportunity, not just an incestuous lineage of families based in New York City. We'll get a wider variety of stories that way."
No comments:
Post a Comment