Friday, October 17, 2014

McSweeney's to Become Nonprofit

Shelf Awareness

Founded by Dave Eggers in 1998, McSweeney's is becoming a nonprofit organization, which will allow the publisher to take on "projects that don't necessarily make money," Eggers told the San Francisco Chronicle.

"We've always been a hand-to-mouth operation, and every year it gets just a little harder to be an independent publisher," Eggers said. "An independent literary title that might have sold 10,000 copies 10 years ago might sell 6,000 now, for example."

For now, McSweeney's is a "fiscally sponsored project" of SOMArts, a nonprofit that runs the South of Market Cultural Center in San Francisco. Beginning today, McSweeney's is asking for donations for several projects on its website, mcsweeneys.net. The company plans to apply to be a free-standing nonprofit in the next month.

McSweeney's publishes the journals the Believer and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, as well as a range of adult and children's books, including the McSweeney's Poetry Series and the Collins Library. Besides Eggers, its authors include Michael Chabon, Nick Hornby and David Foster Wallace.

The nonprofit approach will allow McSweeney's to publish some projects that it had to pass on earlier, including an expanded poetry series, a collection of fiction by South Sudanese women and more in the Collins Library.

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