Publishing 50 books a year with eight full-time staff members, the Dalkey Archive Press at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has managed to escape the worst effects of the publishing recession.
According to the Chicago Tribune‘s recent profile of the company, the publisher used to focus mainly on reprints, but now 70 percent of the list are original titles. In addition, the press just entered a partnership with W.W. Norton & Co.–bringing the larger publisher’s distribution channels and marketing teams working for Dalkey.
Here’s more about sales-driving titles at Dalkey: “After writers of the TV series ‘Lost’ mentioned a Dalkey title — the late Flann O’Brien’s novel “The Third Policeman” — on an episode, some 14,000 copies sold in two weeks. Three years ago, ‘Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster’ by Svetlana Alexievich won the National Book Critics Circle prize for non-fiction. And the 2006 film ‘The Illusionist,’ which starred Edward Norton, was based on a 1997 story collection by Steven Millhauser that Dalkey published.” (Via Publishers Lunch)