ZED

and Dreams of My Indie Press

Cover art by me. Photograph by Atrem Malushenko.

At 27, I resolved to dedicate my life to become a writer and quit my corporate DEI job. I decided what my contribution would be to the world, or at the very least my community. I tried being a teacher, I’ve worked in nonprofits, and I’ve also worked a corporate job in an effort to find something I could settle on as my future. I found myself constantly compromising what I wanted for myself with what I felt were safe and secure career options. I compromised what my contribution to the collective would be with the visions of institutions that were not mine or for me.

After quitting my job, I went on a self-funded sabbatical for a year with the money I had previously saved to buy a house. When friends asked me what my plan was, I told them that I wanted to be a self-published author and help other people share their stories. I became an editor, taking on odd jobs and supporting my friends’ writing. But I noticed that amongst the writers I knew, many of them had great stories to tell that languished in the purgatory of querying agents. Querying agents is only a step towards getting traditionally published with a major publisher because even after getting an agent they still have to find a publisher willing to take a chance on them.

I asked myself multiple times over the past several years if I wanted to create an indie publisher. The answer would be ‘yes,’ but it would bring up another daunting question.

How?

When I was typing up this note and trying to figure out how to cite the passage in it, I saw that the first edition of Assata Shakur’s autobiography was published by Zed Books Ltd. I was curious to find out what kind of publisher would print the autobiography of someone who is to this day on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list. While I’m still figuring out what would be the mission and vision of my indie press, I wanted to learn what it takes for an indie press to push the envelope as far as publishing the writing of a wanted revolutionary.

As I should have known by its name, Zed Books Ltd. was a British independent publisher. It was founded in 1976¹ by Roger van Zwanenberg, who was a lecturer in African history at Sussex University and the University of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

In an 1984 article published in The African Book Publishing Record², van Zwanenberg said that the then-private venture “set out to produce books within a broadly Marxist frame of reference, written by Africans and others concerned about Africa.” They wanted to publish “the writing of revolutionaries” and “reflect the ideas of some of the most profound thinkers” in Africa. Zed Books also would cover “problems of development, of culture, trades unionism, of agriculture…the broader questions of politics and economics.”

Roger van Zwanenberg took a nine-month course at the London Business school “to marry their intellectual ideas of Marxism with the cold reaches of the marketplace.”³ He said that the “uneasy marriage generated two contradictory pressures: the demand for cheap and accessible books against the problems of survival and growth in a capitalist oriented world.” They lacked knowledge of the publishing industry to start out, but estimated that they needed to publish a minimum of 30 titles a year within three years in order build up a backlist strong enough to sustain the business.

It took five years to get to 30 titles a year. Zed Books had underestimated the amount of time it would take to actually generate a profit, let alone break even. It also took longer than expected to develop the skills and systems required to get manuscripts reliably through the production process. By 1984, however, the indie press grew from a two-person operation to nine people publishing 50 books a year.

As much as I would like to be led solely by my creative whims, I still have to keep an eye on the market and where I fit within it. Being an author, as well as running an indie press is a business: both must provide a service or and product to thrive. A reader has to trust that their money will buy them a good story and experience. An author has to trust that in exchange for rights to publish their manuscript, the publisher can sell their books better than they can. Promises are accepted when an author or publisher proves themselves reliable, and that takes time.

The question of how I was going to make money as a writer was one that stopped me from pursuing my chosen art form sooner. Especially as a self-published writer, I gathered from multiple videos and articles that I should be prepared to publish my own book at a loss. Profit from my work would most likely come with a healthy backlist of books earning money over a longer period of time. I’ve accepted this as a high possibility, but I only have to consider myself. To create a sustainable indie press that could accommodate another author, I would need to think of things systemically and structurally to produce reliable results.

Zed Books started as a private venture, but became a cooperatively owned press in 1989 as Roger van Zwanenberg transitioned to Pluto Press. As a cooperative, there was an elected board of members and equal ownership amongst members. There were also pay grades and an internal structure similar to that of other publishers. These similarities would disappear when 26 years later, in 2015, the indie press would transition into a collective model to eliminate hierarchy to better reflect the radical politic of its books and writers.

In this model, all eleven members were a Director, with no hierarchy and an equal pay of £40,000 (the equivalent of about $68,821.23 today). According to a 2015 interview with two of the Directors, Huw Lemmey and Jonathan Maunder, there was one formal meeting a month to go over finances and business strategy. Otherwise, there was a greater reliance on informal meetings and discussions amongst the everyone. Decisions were made collectively, from acquisitions and finances to communications and human resources. You can listen to the 20-minute interview below.

I love to see a business’s model reflect its politic because I want my business to reflect mine as well; what they did was wild, though. There’s nothing wrong with a horizontal business structure for a small operation, but the part that got me was the reliance on informal meetings and discussions. In business, always keep a paper trail and a formal means of communication. It never happened if it didn’t happen on paper. It doesn’t matter who the other person is/people are, your relationships change when you share at least one of these three things:

1. Money

2. Living space

3. Fluids

Maybe I’m reading a bit far into limited information, but that level of informality in a business is a recipe for disorganization and disaster.

Five years after the change, Zed Books would be purchased by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.* In the March 2020 announcement published on Zed’s website, Kika Sroka-Miller, a Co-owner and Director at Zed, stated that:

“Bloomsbury’s recognition of the value of Zed’s Global South focus comes at a pivotal historical moment. Moving the Zed list to Bloomsbury not only secures its long-term future and development, but greatly increases the global reach of the Africa and Development lists in particular, which has always been Zed’s primary goal.”

Zed Books published 130 books from 2015 to 2020, which sits at 26 books a year. They had published 51 the year before their transition into the collective model.⁴ Not to define anyone or anything’s success by production alone, but there’s a stark difference. I can imagine how hard it is to clock out when things are that amorphous and without rigid boundaries. It would be exhausting trying to maintain a business with eleven people relying upon informal expectations, shared roles, and responsibilities. I’d sell the damn thing too.

I don’t mean for this to be a cautionary tale. Zed Books’ catalog is aspirational for anyone trying to start their own indie press, let alone someone with a radical politic. It saw a need, and provided solution when there was no guarantee things would work out. 44 years is a successful run, and while the press doesn’t exist anymore, its legacy still carries on through its collection of published books. In exploring the history of Zed Books, I have learned that a strong vision and mission mixed with savvy and patience can go a long way (as does money) for any publisher.

Almost four years ago now, I resolved to dedicate my life to become a writer. While that is still true today, I know that I want to go beyond my writing to make an impact and help other people make theirs. I don’t want to run a business that exploits me or anyone else. I want to run a sustainable business that is a reflection of my values as a human and political being. I don’t know what it looks like yet, but as I continue to work on myself and my craft, the vision of what I am to build will make itself known to me.

And I look forward to sharing it with you when it arrives.

1. Without the Internet Archive, all traces of their website would be gone. If you try to enter zedbooks.net now, it will redirect you to Bloomsbury’s Politics & International Relations page.

2. I tried to find the particular volume in full using someone else’s academic email, but to no avail. I even tried looking for an electronic copy that fell off the back of a truck online, but I couldn’t find it there either.

3. van Zwanenberg mentions another cofounder, but they remained unnamed in the excerpt I had access to.

4. This is based on a listing of their ebooks, which seem to have been updated consistently from 2008 to 2019. There could have been books that were print-only, but I find that doubtful since accessibility was an important focus for them. They were relatively quick to offer ebooks of their titles consistently compared to other publishers.