Generosity Based Publishing
Biff Barnes
We have written a lot in this blog about new directions in publishing. “Now,” as they used to say on Monty Python, “for something completely different.”
The Concord Free Pressinvites readers to, "Be part of our revolutionary experiment in generosity-based publishing."
Concord’s business model is simple. “We publish great books and give them away. All we ask is that you make a voluntary donation to a charity or someone in need. Tell us about it. Then pass your book along so others can give. It’s a new kind of publishing, one based purely on generosity, and it’s changing the way people think about books.”
Concord has generated $155,000 in donations to a broad spectrum of individuals and causes with its first four titles.
The publisher is overseen by an advisory board which includes literary heavyweights Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Megan Abbott and Gregory Maguire.
Novelist Stona Fitch founded Concord. “Give + Take , my fourth novel, inspired the idea,” she said. “It’s about a jazz pianist who steals diamonds and BMWs and gives away the money – in short, a modern retelling of the Robin Hood fable. But it’s also about the limits of generosity and the slippery nature of value. When the book ran into classic delay at a major New York publishing house, I decided to start the Concord Free Press and give it away, asking only that readers give some money to a charity they believed in or someone in need.”
The Concord Free Press List currently includes five titles:
- IOU: New Writing on Money edited by Ron Slate
- The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire
- Push Comes to Shove by Wesley Brown
- Give and Take by Stona Fitch
- Rut by Scott Phillips
“I’m the Robin Hood of publishing,” Fitch laughs. “Or the Guy Fawkes of publishing. Or the death of publishing. The best phrase anyone has come up with to describe what we’re doing is ‘a grand experiment in subversive altruism’.
“Our approach is certainly unusual and against the grain. But noble? Let’s just say that I’d rather make trouble than money.”
Click here to visit the Concord Free Press website.
Click here to read more about Concord Free Press in the IrishTimes.com