Thursday, January 10, 2019

BRONZEVILLE BOOKS: There's a new publishing house in town!

Here's some good news about Bronzeville Books. Information on new publishers is always good news, and when the publishing house includes many of my friends, it's even better. Congrats, Bronzeville Books!
Bronzeville Books is a reader-focused publisher of crime, science, fantasy, and literary fiction.

From Danny Gardner:

In Q3 2018, after an eighteen-month start-up phase, I quietly founded a publishing house with a brand-centric focus, rather than genre-centric, to respond to readers’ desire for stories that are told according to the blended lives of mystery, crime, suspense, romance, and adventure we’re already living. To publish at a standard high enough to earn our readers’ respect and dollars, and return them to the creators they admire, all so the magic continues. A publisher of the people, for the people, publishing books for the children of the woods, mountains, desert, and concrete, delivering them to bookstores other folks wouldn’t, handing them to readers many think we shouldn’t. To start conversations across oceans of perception, we’ve chosen to be a publisher that brings people closer together, so the gaps may be crossed within the span of a few good stories, and if not, then we’ll print more, as long as folks keep crossing.

The going canard is we’re a diversity player, which is one way of viewing the venture. Bronzeville Books’ founder is African American. Women such as Renee Pickup, Sara J. Henry, and Erin Mitchell make up its publishing leadership. Our inaugural class of authors reflects much of this diversity, thus, “we good,” as we say out Sout’.

A publisher of the people, for the people, publishing books for the children of the woods, mountains, desert, and concrete, delivering them to bookstores other folks wouldn’t, handing them to readers many think we shouldn’t. 

We’re excited to present to our readers the results of diversity, in function. You’ll feel it in our choice of books to bring to market. Hooking up readers with great stories and the folks who create them, irrespective of the limits in perception, is what we do. Selling great books. Loving those who read them. Honoring and supporting those who write them. It’s as old as publishing. Nothing untried and untested about it.

The seven of us who lead Bronzeville are in it for the work. We want the responsibility for rewarding readers and the authors who work hard for them. It’s why I sacrificed personal possibilities in artistic merit to shift focus on the community. Our business intent is to establish new metrics based upon a commitment to not only write of a better world but contribute actively in creating it, a mission we’ll achieve as long as we pluck the best and the brightest from the places where they’re overlooked and place them upon our platform.

We want Bronzeville Books to make reading come alive for you. 

If you’re a writer, watch for our submission announcements. If you bring your best work and your courage, you just may achieve your dreams. To be an author is to have a hand in shaping folks’ lives. A better person has a better bookshelf, and we want you on that better person’s bookshelf, with the Bronzeville “B” on the spine.

Bronzeville was the neighborhood of my birth, and the place books first came alive for me. We want Bronzeville Books to make reading come alive for you. If you’re a reader or a writer, and you feel ghettoized by those who currently set the tone, roll through Bronzeville. You’ll see how beautiful the ghetto can be.

Danny Gardner, 
Founder Bronzeville Books 
An Allied Gardner Company

No comments: