John Martin (born 1930) is an American publisher who founded the

Black Sparrow Press Black Sparrow Press is a New England based independent book publisher, known for literary fiction and poetry. History Black Sparrow was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1966 by John Martin in order to publish the works of Charles Bukowski ...

. As a publisher, he is best known for his work with

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...

John Fante John Fante (April 8, 1909 – May 8, 1983) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel ''Ask the Dust'' (1939) about the life of Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in Depre ...

, and

Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...

. He is based in

Santa Rosa, California Santa Rosa ( Spanish for " Saint Rose") is a city and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its estimated 2019 population was 178,127. It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and ...

. Martin built a successful office supply business in Los Angeles in the 1960s, eventually becoming the manager of a forty-person operation. He had been a book collector since the age of twenty, eventually amassing a collection of

D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...

first editions, which he sold to

UC Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

for $50,000 to fund the founding of Black Sparrow Press.

Work with Charles Bukowski

Martin considered Bukowski “the new Walt Whitman” and founded Black Sparrow Press explicitly to publish Bukowski's work. At the time, Bukowski was mostly publishing small chapbooks, essentially pamphlets in small, cheap editions. Martin's office supply business gave him access to a printing press, and his first publication under the Black Sparrow imprint was a 1966 Bukowski broadside for the poem “True Story,” which was printed in an edition of 30. In 1969, Martin offered Bukowski a $100 per month salary to quit his job and write full-time, which Bukowski accepted. Martin suggested a novel would be easier to sell than a collection of poems. A month later, Bukowski submitted his first novel, ''Post Office''. Martin was frequently referenced as a character in Bukowski's work, including appearing as the character John Barton in the author's final novel, ''Pulp''.

Work with other authors

In his career, Martin was known as a champion of underground or avant-garde literature. Under Martin's watch, Black Sparrow went on to publish works by many prominent literary figures such as Robert Duncan,

Denise Levertov Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. Early life and influences Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Ess ...

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...

Diane Wakoski Diane Wakoski (born August 3, 1937) is an American poet. Wakoski is primarily associated with the deep image poets, as well as the confessional and Beat poets of the 1960s. She received considerable attention in the 1980s for controversial comm ...

David Bromige David Mansfield Bromige (October 22, 1933 – June 3, 2009) was a Canadians, Canadian-American poet who resided in northern California from 1962 onward. Bromige published thirty books, many so different from one another as to appear to be t ...

, Joyce Carol Oates, John Ashbery, Wanda Coleman,

Charles Reznikoff Charles Reznikoff (August 31, 1894 – January 22, 1976) was an American poet best known for his long work, ''Testimony: The United States (1885–1915), Recitative'' (1934–1979). The term Objectivist was coined for him. The multi-volume ''Test ...

Kenneth Koch Kenneth Koch ( ; 27 February 1925 – 6 July 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77. He was a prominent poet of the New York School of poetry. This was a loose group of poets includ ...

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...

Fielding Dawson Fielding Dawson (August 2, 1930 – January 5, 2002, aged 71) was a Beat-era author of short stories and novels, and a student at Black Mountain College. He was also a painter and collagist whose works were seen in several books of poetry and ...

, and

Ed Sanders Edward Sanders (born August 17, 1939) is an American poet, singer, activist, author, publisher and longtime member of the rock band the Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and hippie generations. Sanders is considered to have be ...

. Black Sparrow's books were known for several unique design features, which Martin adopted to make his books noticeable on bookshelves. He made his books 6 inches by 9 inches, which was larger-than-standard at the time; he also used textured matte paper and bold, colorful

letterpress Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker com ...

printing. After the end of the 1960s, all of the press's covers were designed by Martin's wife, Barbara.

Sale of Black Sparrow

Aside from Bukowski, the publisher's two best-selling authors were Paul Bowles and John Fante. In 2002,

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...

imprint

Ecco Press Ecco is a New York-based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquire ...

purchased the rights to Black Sparrow authors Bukowski, Bowles, and Fante for a "seven-figure" deal brokered by Ecco founder Dan Halpern; the rest of Black Sparrow's backlist was sold to Boston-based publisher David R. Godine for $1.Rutten, Tim (August 21, 2002)
"Plot in the Black Sparrow Saga Takes Unexpected Turn"
''Los Angeles Times''. This sale price included all of Black Sparrow's remaining inventory, in order to continue providing royalty income to the publisher's authors.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, John 1930 births Living people People from Santa Rosa, California American publishers (people)