Zed Books is an independent non-fiction publishing company based in London, UK. It was founded in 1977 under the name Zed Press by Roger van Zwanenberg. Zed publishes books for an international audience of both general and academic readers, covering areas such as politics and global current affairs, economics,

gender studies Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field ...

and sexualities, development studies and the environment.

Zed today

Zed Books' business model and structure are unique to the publishing industry. It is the world's largest English-language publishing collective. The company is owned and managed as a non-hierarchical

co-operative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

by its workers, without any

shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal own ...

s. It publishes around 70 books per year, providing many to the academic market and to university courses. In 2019, Zed received the

Independent Publishers Guild The Independent Publishers Guild (IPG), founded in 1962, is an association set up to support the needs of independent firms in the publishing industry in the United Kingdom, with a current membership of more than 600 companies. The IPG is a not-for ...

Alison Morrison Diversity Award. In March 2020, it was announced that "certain assets of Zed Books Limited" had been acquired by

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a ...

. and that Zed would operate within Bloomsbury's Academic & Professional division as "a good strategic fit with Bloomsbury's existing publishing lists".

Authors

Zed's authors include

Nawal El Saadawi Nawal El Saadawi ( ar, نوال السعداوي, , 22 October 1931 – 21 March 2021) was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. She wrote many books on the subject of women in Islam, paying particular attention to the practice of ...

Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...

Assata Shakur Assata Olugbala Shakur (born JoAnne Deborah Byron; July 16, 1947; also married name, JoAnne Chesimard) is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1977, she was convicted in the first-degree murder ...

Yanis Varoufakis Ioannis "Yanis" Varoufakis ( el, Ιωάννης Γεωργίου "Γιάνης" Βαρουφάκης, Ioánnis Georgíou "Giánis" Varoufákis, ; born 24 March 1961) is a Greek economist and politician. A former academic, he served as the Gree ...

Vandana Shiva Vandana Shiva (born 5 November 1952) is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalisation author. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as "Gandhi ...

Maggie Nelson Maggie Nelson (born 1973) is an American writer. She has been described as a genre-busting writer defying classification, working in autobiography, art criticism, theory, feminism, queerness, sexual violence, the history of the avant-garde, aes ...

Ece Temelkuran Ece Temelkuran (born 22 July 1973, in Izmir"About"
ecetemelkuran.com ) is a Turkish journalist and author. She was ...

and Paul French, as well as hundreds of internationally respected journalists and academics.

References

External links

Zed Books Official Website

Zed Books on Library Thing
Book publishing companies based in London Publishing companies established in 1977 Environmental publishers {{UK-publish-company-stub