I did an article for Lambda Book Report about the closing of Naiad Press. They asked for 1,000 words, and I submitted both a thousand-word story, and a three-thousand-word story, since I didn't think a thousand words were enough and wanted them to see that.

If I find the issue with the article in it, I'll include issue info and such here.

Here are both stories:

 

Legendary Publisher Writes
Her Own Happily Ever After...

Looking To The Future Of Lesbian Publishing

The upcoming retirement of Barbara Grier and Donna McBride is practically the plot for one of the hundreds of mysteries they have published—while their very lives could still inspire any untold numbers of romances.

Having been out since the age of twelve, Grier has spent the past 56 years as a proud member of the lesbian community, living through times many of us can only imagine—including once-upon-a-time when the only lesbian books to be found mostly ended with the heroine being committed or committing suicide because she knew there was something wrong with her.

In 1956, Grier began working at the lesbian publication of the time, The Ladder. Throughout the sixteen years Grier worked there, she slowly rose through the ranks until she was, for the last four years of its run, the publisher. (The Ladder printed its last issue in October 1972, topping out at 3800 paid subscriptions.)

Shortly after The Ladder’s demise, a lesbian author approached Grier and McBride, willing to put up some money to help them publish books. “I was 40 in ‘73. The right age to begin to change the world,” Grier recalls.

Since that time, Naiad has had its share of success stories. In 1981 Jane Rule’s Outlander sold spectacularly well. In 1982 Sheila Ortiz Taylor’s Faultline was a 30,000 copy bestseller, and while on tour with the author, Grier and McBride arrived at Sisterhood books in Los Angeles. “A tall, white woman with a blonde afro came out of crowd and said she had written a novel, and asked if she could she send it to me. I was cross and tired, so I replied, ‘And tell me, does anything happen in this novel of yours?’ That book sold a couple of hundred thousand copies.” That book was, obviously, Katherine V. Forrest’s ground-breaking Curious Wine, a much-beloved favorite among lesbians world-wide.

But, against what many lesbians probably think, Curious Wine was not Naiad’s best-selling book. “About two years later, along came Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence. It became, overnight, an international bestseller—sales were immediately in the 100,000 range, and it was even translated into Flemish. The authors were on every talk show, and were paid to do so. It was the only book we ever sold the paperback rights to.”

“We went on publishing all kinds of wonderful romances and mysteries... We kept publishing, growing bigger, meeting the growing demand.” A lot of other publishing companies began joining Naiad in the growing market of lesbian publishing, and Grier and McBride did something to help all of them exist—from Cleis and New Victoria, to Firebrand and Spinster’s Ink—right down to teaching them the “rules” of the market.

“Publishing, like every other discipline has rules, a kind of gentlemen’s agreement. You must do this, you must not do that. You must be seen and heard whenever possible. If you want people to pay attention to you, you say something so funny you get a lead. I know how to talk, and get attention talking. Attention and publicity are one of the few ways a small publishing company can get the attention it needs. I’ve only bought a few paid ads, but for the most part, we’ve traded space in our mailings for space in periodicals.”

“A great many publishing companies do nothing to promote themselves. Jane Doe lesbian is who we are trying to reach, and she does not live in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. She is just as likely to live in Dropshoe, Fishhead, or some other place no one has ever heard of.”

“One thing that’s not happening now, which does not bode well for the future, is that we’re not having a lot of communication between the stores and the publishers. And within the publishers,” Grier says, remarking on the fact that, in times past, she used to speak to every other lesbian publisher on a monthly basis.

“I was early enough so that I was there before the distributor ate the communication between the bookstores and publisher,” Grier says, stressing the importance of knowing customers and booksellers. This rule of community is one that Grier lives by—in fact, she can identify most of her booksellers by the sound of their voice over their phone. “Those things have something to do with community and continuity. And that those are going away worries me.”

Grier’s dedication to customer service and devotion is unquestionable. “Do you know you can answer the phone at three a.m. and take an order cohesively?” she asks, before remarking that, at 68, it’s become a bit more difficult for her to jump over tables and grab a ringing phone that might have a customer at the other end.

But it isn’t all just a business to Grier and McBride. They have much more invested in it than that—their hearts.

“Customers tell you that there are no other lesbians where they live, but you look at your mailing list when taking the order and know that there are other lesbians in their zip code.” And then one day, these same women will write and give a brief history of their lives, saying, “You won’t remember this, but nine years ago you spent 20 minutes talking to me, and I was in a really bad place. Or that ‘Without you I don’t think I could’ve survived/gone on living/made it.’ I don’t think any other publishing company has spent so much time cultivating loyalty.”

Many women who asked to remain on her mailing list apologized because they never purchased directly from Naiad. Instead, they’d buy Naiad’s books directly from their local bookstores. “We used to tell people to go to their stores, if they had one. In our earlier catalogues, we had zip listings of stores who carried us.”

And now, all these books and authors later, the woman who, for more than 25 years stood at the helm of the world’s oldest and largest lesbian publishing company looks back and says, “I’d do it over again. I’d do some things differently, of course. There are some things I’d not do.”

When asked for examples, she continues, “I might not publish quite as heavily, as fast as I was. But that wasn’t something I could control. Bookstores were begging for books.” She mentions that the Feminist Bookstore News surveyed their stores on their biggest distributors, and almost every store listed Ingram, Naiad, and another distributor, “...as if we were a distributor, not a publisher... We were always there, showing up in their store room. We made our books indispensable. And trained our readers. We made popsicles. We trained them to eat popsicles, and then we froze a lot and made a lot of popsicles.”

Additionally, Grier says that if she had it all over to do again, she would not do videos. “It took away from the primary focus.” (And she says this even though in her various talks around the country, she’s mentioned that video sales have ended up paying the costs for her hobby—publishing.)

When asked about how Naiad got into selling, and sometimes producing, videos, Grier says, with her infamous straight-faced humour, “We fell into it. We were walking down the street and didn’t notice there was a pit there. We started doing videos by accident. Desert of the Heart, by Jane Rule, was made into a movie in ’85. In ’86 it came out in video from Goldwyn. Because I had been helpful to Goldwyn, rather than being a pain, they did kind things for us—including giving us the camera-ready art, and arranging for us to get a really good discount. So we were able to get videos of the movie and sell them.”

From there, very small video makers started approaching Naiad, so they began carrying more and more videos—up to 200 at their heyday. From there, Naiad became the producer of a handful of videos, which they now hold the rights on. (And if one watches carefully, Grier and McBride themselves show up in at least one of these movies.)

But of course, there have been some movies that seem to have made it worthwhile. “There’s a magic cult around Claire of the Moon. The double-DVD with Moments will be hot. This film was produced with no money—but it had gorgeous scenery of the Oregon coast, and... Trisha’s gorgeous. The music is beautiful. And of Trisha Todd and Karen Trumbo, one or the other is the epitome of what most women want.”

When asked about upcoming trends in the GLBT publishing industry, Grier nonchalantly remarks, “Yes, everybody’s going to publish books only about sex. Sex is it. Out in the streets trying desperately to frighten the horses. It will be absolutely the only subject in books.” But on a more realistic note she thinks that romances are coming back into style—especially since “even boys are writing them... It’s about time Lambda Book Report decided to have a romance category [in their annual Lambda Literary Awards]. So many people love them.”

“Years ago, maybe 1% of our readers were men. And they read the romances—the real romances, and they would say, ‘I wish someone would write some of these books for me and my kind.’”

Additionally, Grier predicts, “45,003 gender variations, that tendency is losing its steam. It rose to and culminated with Boys Don’t Cry, and is much more passé and less earnestly pursued.” She likens the transgender trend with butch/femme. “It is a cyclical passion. There are times when butch/femme is a genre to watch closely and study, examined at length under a microscope. There are eras when it is completely out of fashion, and there are eras that it is so completely in fashion that people strive to fit into whatever category they try to be in. It goes away/comes back/goes away/comes back.”

She notes that she has recently seen a greater concern with marriage and family than ever in the GLBT community. “There used to not be a thought of the production of human life. It’s been possible, and folks did do it, but it wasn’t such an end-all be-all.” And even now, these increasing concerns are not so big in our literature, but she thinks this is going to change. “Marriage and family is in a big way going to be an issue.” In real-life, it has become a preoccupation for a great many lesbians, and to the gay male community to a lesser degree, but it’s on the way up. “Forming stable relationships that last forever is becoming more important. I’ve always thought stable marriages were good for people—they bring about stability of life, and are financially and emotionally good for you. I’m interested in that and glad about this trend.”

And Grier also remarks, with pride, that although bookstores keep closing (a topic that comes up throughout conversation with her, which she remarks upon with great sadness) new publishing companies coming up.

“Naiad was born on January 1, 1973. In the beginning it took us a full year to learn how to put out a single book. So the first book came out in early 1974... it took from January 1, 1973 until spring 1981 to publish 20 books at Naiad Press. By the 20th book, we had a couple of decent sellers,” Grier says, and then continues, with a note of pride, “Here is Bella Books at the end of two years with twenty books. They had help, and stores to carry the books. When we started out we didn’t have the remotest idea what we were doing. Some of the books were good, some were so bad they were funny.”

Many bookstore owners have not taken kindly to the news of Grier’s imminent retirement—they seem to insist that she is not allowed to do so, because so many GLBT bookstore sales come from Naiad Press books. And this is why Grier is happy to pass along the top writers of her current line-up, Claire McNab and Karin Kallmaker, to Kelly Smith of Bella Books. “Claire and Karin will be an enormous financial stipend for Kelly. These are reliable authors.” After all, Grier must do all she can to ensure that Bella Books can continue to survive.

“Some day people will say, ‘My goodness, I wonder where Barbara Grier is.’”

But before that day, there’s still a lot of work to be done. In fact, Grier hesitantly admits, “I now sometimes get tired. People used to say they were tired, and I couldn’t understand it. The only reason to excuse the presence of human beings on this planet is to assign them duties and make sure they do them. Now I occasionally get tired. I never knew what it was to be tired. But I still don’t approve of it, I want you to know that.”

“There’s a real pattern and program to what we’re doing. We’re slowly but surely letting books [by the end of 2005] go out of print. Naiad will get smaller and smaller, with fewer reprints,” Grier says, talking about passing along her legacy to Bella Books. Naiad will let more and more books go out of print, but some authors will sign with Bella Books and get reprinted there—as Bella is able to afford to reprint them. (Because most books, with each reprinting, lose more and more sales, reprinting is not a profitable option.) “In the best of all possible worlds, the goddess of money would rain down on Kelly. But Kelly must pick and choose what to reprint.”

Grier hopes that people won’t take advantage of Smith in their requests for reprints. “Keep the goose alive—the goose cannot continue to lay golden eggs if you kill it and have it for dinner. Don’t flounder her because she’s a nice person.” Grier knows that with reprints, “You undercut your money. The only way a reprint is valuable is if you’re a mystery writer, and the novels are intertwined.”

But nonetheless, Grier says that she still has hope for the future of lesbian publishing. “[Bella Books has] the Naiad Army behind them. I had a great time at BEA showing people their new mommy,” she says remarking on the fact that with the exception of a few writers, like Jaye Maiman, Catherine Ennis and Julia Watts, the latter of whom has gone over to Alyson, almost all Naiad writers are now with Bella.

To understand Grier’s pride in Bella Books’ success thus far, one has to understand Grier, to some extent.

When asked about her proudest moment, this bold, frank woman, who has lived through so much, experienced so much, must understandably pause to consider, “It’s funny. I suppose my proudest moment precedes all of this. It was the catalyst that made everything after possible.” She then explains that while she was at The Ladder, “We were alone. All communication was non-verbal. We didn’t say, ‘You’re important to me.’ I did not know that I was important to them.”

But in 1976, she and McBride went to the first Women in Publishing Conference on the banks of the Platt River outside Omaha, Nebraska. “I met for the first time in person with a hundred or more women. Some were very famous women. Early political figures, working for women and lesbian rights. 150 women on the banks of the Platt. It all began there.”

At this point in the conversation, Grier has already had to call over to McBride, who is with her in their Tallahassee, Florida, office to check on a few facts. Yet it is apparent that this is woman has an incredible memory for women—throughout our entire conversation, she is exactingly correct with each memory, down to the names of bookstores, locations, and owners. Through it all, it is apparent to even the weakest link that she is a woman who loves women and sisterhood.

During this first women in publishing conference, Naiad was three years old, but Grier and McBride were still hoping to restart The Ladder. But as everyone took her turn introducing herself and her work, it became obvious to some attendees that this portion of the program would take so long that they would never get into the real business of the meeting, so Charlotte Bunch, a real VIP at the time, leaned down to tell Grier to only talk about Naiad, not The Ladder. “Everyone listened to Charlotte, she was a god,” Grier recalls, the fondness and admiration in her voice apparent.

And Grier, wanting to follow Bunch’s orders, downplayed The Ladder when she got up to introduce herself, even though she wanted to reestablish this lesbian institution. So when she introduced herself, she said merely, “I am Barbara Grier. I represent Naiad and I guess The Ladder.” And then... all the women stood and clapped and clapped for twenty minutes. “And that’s when I knew all those years were worthwhile,” Grier remembers with tears in her voice.

“That was the proudest moment. Discovering that there were lines between the islands. Discovering that what went out actually went somewhere and was read.”

But now Grier laughs, almost a little disbelievingly, at the thought of retirement and what she’ll do then. “If ever I do that, huh?” she says about the upcoming event. “Despite all my belief in hard work, I like to do things,” she says, before launching into a lengthy list of what dynamic women such as she and McBride do in their spare time.

Both she and McBride, her partner of more than a quarter century, avidly follow basketball and football, as well as enjoy travelling, beachcombing, gardening, and crafts. “Donna’s one of those people who can do everything. She has 4444 craft plans for the future.” Of course, they also plan to keep on exercising, to which she attributes much of their overall health and longevity. She might also eventually start doing a column, and might even start reading for pleasure again, having, during Naiad’s downsizing, learned to read again as other than a process. “When I didn’t wear trifocals, I averaged 15 books a week. 325 pages an hour with total retention.”

And anyone who knows the dynamic duo of lesbian publishing knows that one of their pet projects in the past few years are the houses they rent out to vacationers, Simple Pleasure and Simple Addition. Both houses are immaculately cleaned and furnished with gourmet kitchens, and thousands of books and videos. “We work at making them perfect. We work to an ideal. People play, ‘Do you suppose they have...’ and wonder if we have different things. Of course we do! Toys, games, all the junk in the world. The larger house even has a pool table.”

Anyone who thinks running such houses sounds more like a job than a retirement doesn’t know Barbara and Donna very well at all.

_______________

Legendary Publisher Writes
Her Own Happily Ever After...

The upcoming retirement of Barbara Grier and Donna McBride is practically the plot for one of the many mysteries they have published—while their very lives could still inspire untold numbers of romances.

For nearly 30 years the two women have stood at the helm of the world’s oldest and largest lesbian publishing company, Naiad Press, with they started in 1973. “I was 40 in ‘73. The right age to begin to change the world,” Grier recalls. “Naiad was born on January first, 1973. In the beginning it took us a full year to learn how to put out a single book. So the first book came out in early 1974... it took from January first, 1973 until spring 1981 to publish 20 books at Naiad Press. By the 20th book, we had a couple of decent sellers,” Grier says, and then continues, with a note of pride, “Here is Bella Books at the end of two years with twenty books.”

Looking back, she says, “I’d do it over again. I’d do some things differently, of course. There are some things I’d not do.”

When asked for examples, she continues, “I might not publish quite as heavily, as fast as I was. But that wasn’t something I could control. Bookstores were begging for books... We made our books indispensable. And trained our readers. We trained them to eat popsicles, and then we froze a lot of popsicles.”

When asked about upcoming trends in the GLBT publishing industry, Grier nonchalantly remarks, “Yes, everybody’s going to publish books only about sex. Sex is it. Out in the streets trying desperately to frighten the horses. It will be absolutely the only subject in books.” But on a more realistic note she thinks that romances are coming back into style—especially since “even boys are writing them... It’s about time Lambda Book Report decided to have a romance category [in their annual Lambda Literary Awards]. So many people love them.”

“Years ago, maybe one-percent of our readers were men. And they read the romances—the real romances, and they would say, ‘I wish someone would write some of these books for me and my kind.’”

Additionally, Grier predicts, “The tendency toward 45,003 gender variations is losing its steam. It rose to and culminated with Boys Don’t Cry, and is now much more passé and less earnestly pursued.” She likens the transgender trend with butch/femme. “It is a cyclical passion. There are times when butch/femme is a genre to watch closely and study, examined at length under a microscope. There are eras when it is completely out of fashion, and there are eras that it is so completely in fashion that people strive to fit into whatever category they try to be in. It goes away/comes back/goes away/comes back.”

She notes that she has recently seen a greater concern with marriage and family than ever in the GLBT community. “There used to not be a thought of the production of human life. It’s been possible, and folks did do it, but it wasn’t such an end-all be-all.” And even now, these increasing concerns are not so big in our literature, but she thinks this is going to change. “Marriage and family is in a big way going to be an issue... Forming stable relationships that last forever is becoming more important. I’ve always thought stable marriages were good for people—they bring about stability of life, and are financially and emotionally good for you.”

“One thing that’s not happening now, which does not bode well for the future, is that we’re not having a lot of communication between the stores and the publishers. And within the publishers,” Grier says, remarking on the fact that, in times past, she used to speak to every other lesbian publisher on a monthly basis.

“I was early enough so that I was there before the distributor ate the communication between the bookstores and publisher,” Grier says, stressing the importance of knowing your customers and booksellers. This rule of community is one that Grier lives by—in fact, she can identify most of her booksellers by the sound of their voice over their phone. “Those things have something to do with community and continuity. And that those are going away worries me.”

Many bookstore owners have not taken kindly to the news of Grier’s imminent retirement—because so many of their sales come from Naiad Press books. And this is why Grier is happy to pass along all the writers of her current line-up to Kelly Smith of Bella Books. After all, Grier must do all she can to ensure that Bella Books can continue to survive.

“There’s a real pattern and program to what we’re doing. We’re slowly but surely letting books [by the end of 2005] go out of print. Naiad will get smaller and smaller, with fewer reprints,” Grier says, talking about the passing along of her legacy to Bella Books. Naiad will let more and more books go out of print, but some authors will sign with Bella Books and get reprinted there—as Bella is able to afford to reprint them. (Most books, with each reprinting, lose more and more sales, so that reprinting is not a profitable option.) “In the best of all possible worlds, the goddess of money would rain down on Kelly. But Kelly must pick and choose what to reprint.”

Nonetheless, Grier says that she still has hope for the future of lesbian publishing. “[Bella Books has] the Naiad Army behind them. I had a great time at BEA showing people their new mommy,” she says remarking on the fact that with few exceptions, almost all Naiad writers are now with Bella.

“Some day people will say, ‘My goodness, I wonder where Barbara Grier is.’”

But now Grier laughs, almost a little disbelievingly, at the thought of retirement and what she’ll do then. “If ever I do that, huh?” she says about the upcoming event. “Despite all my belief in hard work, I like to do other things,” she says, before launching into a lengthy list of what dynamic women such as she and McBride do in their “spare” time. “Donna’s one of those people who can do everything. She has 4,444 craft plans for the future.”

And anyone who knows the dynamic duo of lesbian publishing knows that a retirement that sounds like a job is just what to expect of Barbara and Donna.

Other Writing: