OR Books is a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

-based independent publishing house founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson in 2009. The company sells digital and

print-on-demand Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents, packaging or materials) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While oth ...

books directly to the customer and focuses on creative promotion through traditional media and the Internet. On its site, OR Books states that it "embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business." Not long after its founding in 2009, OR Books became known for publishing '' Going Rouge:

Sarah Palin Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 R ...

, An American Nightmare'', a parody of Palin's autobiography '' Going Rogue: An American Life''. ''Going Rouge'' became a

best-seller A bestseller is a book or other media noted for its top selling status, with bestseller lists published by newspapers, magazines, and book store chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and specialties (novel, nonfiction book, cook ...

as per ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. Since then the company has published books by

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army int ...

Moustafa Bayoumi Moustafa Bayoumi (born 1966) is an American writer, journalist, and professor. He is of Egyptian descent. He is based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Biography Moustafa Bayo ...

, Medea Benjamin, Patrick Cockburn, Sue Coe,

Simon Critchley Simon Critchley (born 27 February 1960) is an English philosopher and the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, USA. Challenging the ancient tradition that philosophy begins in wonder, Critchle ...

, Lisa Dierbeck,

Ariel Dorfman Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American ...

Norman Finkelstein Norman Gary Finkelstein (; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a g ...

Laura Flanders Laura Flanders (born 5 December 1961) is an English broadcast journalist living in the United States who presents the weekly, long-form interview show ''The Laura Flanders Show''. Flanders has described herself as a "lefty person". The brother ...

, Chris Lehmann,

Gordon Lish Gordon Lish (born February 11, 1934 in Hewlett, New York) is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of t ...

, Bill McKibben,

Eileen Myles Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. No ...

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

Barney Rosset Barnet Lee "Barney" Rosset, Jr. (May 28, 1922 – February 21, 2012) was a pioneering American book and magazine publisher. An avant-garde taste maker, he founded Grove Press in 1951 and ''Evergreen Review'' in 1957, both of which gave him platf ...

Douglas Rushkoff Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born February 18, 1961) is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open sourc ...

Elissa Shevinsky Elissa Shevinsky is an American technology executive, entrepreneur, cybersecurity expert, public speaker, and author. Education Shevinsky attended Benjamin Cardozo High School, before studying for a Political Theory major at Williams College ...

Burhan Sönmez Burhan Sönmez is a Kurdish prize-winning novelist from Turkey. He is the President of PEN International, elected at the Centennial Congress in 2021. Sönmez is the author of five novels. His first novel, ''North'' (Kuzey), was published in 200 ...

Jeanne Thornton Jeanne Thornton (born 1983) is an American writer and copublisher of Instar Books and Rocksalt Magazine. She has received the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers. Anthologies to which she has contributed to have won a Lambda Lite ...

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...

, and others.

Founders

According to OR's website, John Oakes co-founded the publishing company

Four Walls Eight Windows Four Walls Eight Windows was an American independent book publisher in New York City. Known as 4W8W or Four Walls, the company was notable for its dual commitment to progressive politics and adventurous, edgy literary fiction. History Four W ...

and was subsequently publisher of

Thunder's Mouth Press Perseus Books Group was an American publishing company founded in 1996 by investor Frank Pearl. Perseus acquired the trade publishing division of Addison-Wesley (including the Merloyd Lawrence imprint) in 1997. It was named Publisher of the Ye ...

and co-publisher of

Nation Books Type Media Center (formerly The Nation Institute) is a nonprofit media organization that was previously associated with ''The Nation'' magazine. It sponsors fellows, hosts forums, publishes books and investigative reporting, and awards several an ...

. He is publisher of the '' Evergreen Review''. Colin Robinson, a former senior editor at Scribner, was previously managing director of

Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of ''New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...

and publisher of

The New Press The New Press is an independent non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by André Schiffrin Dale Peck Dale Peck (born 1967) is an American novelist, literary critic, and columnist. His 2009 novel, '' Sprout'', won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children's/Young Adult literature, and was a finalist for the Stonewall Book Award in the Children's ...

, Lisa Dierbeck,

Joshua Furst Joshua Furst (born 1971) is an American fiction writer. He studied as an undergraduate at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, receiving a BFA in Dramatic Writing in 1993 and did graduate work at The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop ...

, DW Gibson, and

Choire Sicha Choire Sicha ( , born November 19, 1971) is an American writer and blogger. In June 2021, he became an editor-at-large at ''New York''; he had been the editor of ''The New York Times'' Style section since September 2017. Previously, he served as ...

. In what the industry newsblog

Shelf Awareness Shelf Awareness is an American publishing company that produces two electronic publications/newsletters focused on bookselling, books and book reviews. Overview With offices in Seattle, Washington, and Montclair, New Jersey, ''Shelf Awareness' ...

termed a "very significant...move," St. Mark’s Bookshop and OR Books announced a joint venture to enable the store’s customers to buy select books on OR’s list from the bookstore’s website. In April 2016, OR Books acquired UK publishing company

Serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

, following the death in 2015 of its founder Stephen Hayward, a former associate of Robinson's. In May 2016, OR Books and

Counterpoint Press Counterpoint LLC was a publishing company distributed by Perseus Books Group launched in 2007. It was formed from the consolidation of three presses: Perseus' Counterpoint Press, Avalon Publishing Group's Shoemaker & Hoard and the independent S ...

announced a partnership whereby Counterpoint would put several OR titles into stores."Counterpoint, OR Books Partner on New Fall List"
''Publishers Weekly'', May 5, 2016.

References

External links

Company site

OR Books
on Facebook. * John Oakes

''Publishers Weekly'', May 18, 2012. * Colin Robinson

''The New York Times'', January 4, 2014.
Mischief + Mayhem
* Kat Meyer

August 7, 2010. Interview with John Oakes on O'Reilly Media's TOC (Tools of Change for Publishing).

January 3, 2011. * Jim Barnes
"Indie Groundbreaking Publisher: OR Books — A Brave New Publishing Model"
''Independent Publisher'' article about the success of ''Going Rouge''.
Interview with Colin Robinson on NPR's On the Media
* Chad W. Post
"OR Books Preaches Elegant Direct Model"
''Publishing Perspectives'', October 6, 2010.

Nola.com, November 15, 2011 (showdown between OR co-publisher John Oakes and Random House editor). * Dennis Sweeney
"Interview with Colin Robinson, Co-Founder, OR Books"
''Entropy Magazine'', January 2014. {{Authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Political book publishing companies Publishing companies based in New York City Small press publishing companies Publishing companies established in 2009 2009 establishments in New York City American companies established in 2009