Small Press Perseverance
IN MOST years Kaya Press, a small publisher in Los Angeles that specializes in writing from the Asian and Pacific Islander diasporas, takes in $3,000 to $4,000 through traditional book sales for the month of March, along with another $1,000 via direct sales from its website. So it was a shock when managing editor Neelanjana Banerjee checked the sales figures from Kaya’s distributors for March 2020, the month the COVID-19 pandemic hit U.S. shores in full force, and learned that her press had earned a grand total of forty dollars.
The press offset some of this loss with sales at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in early March, but even there, Banerjee says, business was less brisk than usual after the pandemic forced many conference attendees to stay home.
“I think everybody everywhere went underground in March, made some bread, and then in April as we were coming back and we got those numbers, it was pretty frightening,” says Banerjee. “Luckily, after that, for April, May, and through August, sales have rebounded, but definitely not to the levels that they were. Discounting March, which I would consider pretty much a 100 percent revenue loss from book sales, after that it seems to be going from between 50 percent and 75 percent of our usual revenue.”
The case of Kaya Press may be
