Benay Client, Soho Press Launches a Revamped Website

There’s some more breaking news regarding Soho Press this week. According to an article in Publisher’s Weekly, they've just launched their website with a new goal in mind. The site now allows users to buy titles, sign up for subscription services, and even includes an interactive map with the featured locations in their crime series.

“The new hub was created, the publisher said, ‘with an eye toward direct-to-consumer digital sales,’ and is offering titles at a discount.” Purchased individually, the books are at a discounted price of 30%, with the subscription service, the titles are 50% off retail and arrive monthly. The subscriptions are available for their Soho Teen and Soho Crime imprints.

Brick and mortar stores will still be supported says publisher Bronwen Hruska. “’We will continue to maintain a strong presence in traditional retail markets and libraries, supporting our books there any way we can,’ she said. ‘We will always continue to print galleys for trade shows, mail books to booksellers and librarians, and regularly tour our authors.’”

You can check out their website and newly discounted books here.

- Marcie Gainer

Another Big Congrats to Soho Press

At this point, it’s not as much of a surprise as it is a pleasure for us at Benay to see our client, Soho Press in the New York Times Book Review. Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press, has recently released The Monster of Florence to American audiences. Written by Magdalen Nabb about several double homicides in Florence, Italy from 1968-1985, The Monster of Florence was published in Britain in 1996 but never made its way to American audiences.

The story revolves around the intuitive detective, Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia. Guarnaccia may not be the brightest detective but he understands people on a deeper level than most. “He watches, he listens, he asks discreet questions, and his intuitive intelligence (‘He either knew things or he didn’t) gives him insight into minds closed to reason.” The book is written in Nabb’s “expressive style” and “is one of [her] darkest novels, almost shocking in its disenchanted acknowledgement of human brutality.”

Another exciting win for Soho Press. You can read an excerpt of the book on their website.

Akashic Books and Tin House Make Flavorwire's "25 Independent Presses That Prove This Is the Golden Age of Indie Publishing"

We just wanted to give a big congratulations to Benay clients, Akashic Books and Tin House for their feature in Flavorwire’s 25 Independent Presses That Prove This Is the Golden Age of Indie Publishing. With all of the publishing doomsayers, it’s nice to see the little engines-that-could pulling strong.

Independent publishing — that is, publishing whatever an individual or small group think is worthy of dumping their time and money into — is nothing new. From Virginia and Leonard Woolf starting up Hogarth Press to the early days of Farrar, Straus and Giroux championing now-iconic authors that other publishers wouldn’t touch, DIY publishing has long been responsible for some of our best literature.

 Here’s what Jason Diamond from Flavorwire had to say about Akashic:

Literature lovers smiled when Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep became a massive bestseller — not just because of the clever title, but because it was awesome to see this fearless publisher get the mainstream recognition it deserves. And with a mission statement that emphasizes its intention of forever remaining a “independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers,” Akashic is pretty much the ultimate indie. From its acclaimed Noir series to books on punk-rock history to publishing Melvin Van Peebles, Akashic is doing it on its own terms.

And here’s what he had to say about Tin House:

Going strong as a literary magazine since 1999, this operation based in both Portland, Oregon and Brooklyn has seen its book-publishing wing getting bigger and better with every new book, including titles by Christopher Beha, Lucy Corin, and Matthew Specktor, as well as Zak Smith’s We Did Porn. 

Congratulations to them both! We love to see our clients get the recognition we know they deserve. Here’s to many more years of continued success!

Lee Montgomery's Fall Master Writer's Workshop

Former Tin House editor, Lee Montgomery is teaching an intermediate advanced “master” writer’s workshop in Portland, OR: The Fall Master Writer’s Workshop. The class begins on October 8th and will be held Tuesdays 6-8pm. Tuition is $600 and enrollment is limited to ten people.

“Designed to combine seminar and workshop methodologies, Montgomery employs in-class exercises, outside reading, as well as the classic workshop format. Students can expect to present new work at least twice during the session in addition to a private consultation with Lee during the final weeks of class. For those students who are interested in presenting their work to a broader audience, the class will culminate with a public reading.”

Montgomery has extensive experience as an editor and author. She is the author of The Things Between Us, A Memoir (Free Press, August 2006), Whose World Is This? Stories (University of Iowa Press, September 2007), and Searching for Emily: Illustrated (Nothing Moments Press, October 2007). The Things Between Us received the 2007 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction and Whose World Is This? received the 2007 John Simmons Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Ken Kesey Award in Fiction in 2008.

Click here to download the flyer for further information on signing up. We’re sure that this will be a fun and exciting experience for the students (I’d consider signing up if I was in OR) and wish Lee the best of luck in this and future endeavors.