Publisher has specialty of saving local history
In this age of rising mobility, giddy gentrification and shrinking attention spans, historical amnesia spreads like an epidemic: It may be asymptomatic for years, but eventually it’s fatal to our respect for bygone days.
Ironically, the web, that infinite repository, may exacerbate our sense of alienation from the history all around us. Not only does the internet lure us to distant places, but it draws our eyes away from the storied sites and crumbling buildings we pass every day while tripping along the street staring at our phones.
For more than two decades, one small publisher has been quietly rescuing remnants of history from the flames of oblivion. You may have seen the trim, sepia-toned books from Arcadia Publishing or its imprint, the History Press.
From an office in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Arcadia releases almost 500 new titles a year. They’re available in bookstores, but you’re more likely to have noticed them in history museums, parks, diners, hardware stores and beauty parlors in small towns throughout America.
Written neither for a general audience nor an academic one, each title is conceived with a fanatically specific market in mind. “Barberton Fried Chicken,” for instance, celebrates the tastiest meal in Barberton, Ohio. (It involves frying in lard and then chilling overnight.) “Ukrainians of Metropolitan Detroit” describes the contributions Ukrainians have made to that Midwestern city since the late 1800s.
Among the many titles related to central Ohio are “Aviation in Columbus,” “Columbus Italians” • “Columbus Italians” (Arcadia, 128 pages, $21.99) by Andy and Erin Dominianni
and “Railroad Depots of Central Ohio.”
Arcadia’s business turns the traditional publishing model on its head. Big New York publishers are looking for the next blockbuster to sell 2 million copies across the English-speaking world in a month. Arcadia wants to find a book that will sell 1,000 copies this year in, say, Mcmullen Valley, Arizona.
“It’s a unique publishing approach,” said Arcadia president and CEO David Steinberger. “The books are completely evergreen. Once you publish them, they sell forever. So even though the initial numbers are modest, you’re creating a kind of annuity.”
That’s not to say there aren’t any hits. The press’ best-selling title, “Biltmore Estate,” about George Washington Vanderbilt II’S mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, has sold 80,000 copies since it was published in 2005.
Enter your hometown ZIP code on the Arcadia website (arcadiapublishing. com), and you’ll be offered a selection of books on the minutiae of your early life.
Now, Arcadia Publishing is reinforcing its foundation. Last year, two publishing heavyweights — Michael Lynton, the former CEO of Penguin, and Steinberger, the former CEO of Perseus Books, along with a group of investors they organized — bought the press along with its 14,000-title backlist. And this week, biographer Walter Isaacson is joining them as an editor-at-large and senior adviser. He is the first big-name author to get involved with Arcadia but said that won’t change its small-town focus.
“It’s important for people to know not only world history but the history of their communities, especially the inspiring things in their community,” he said by phone. “At a certain point, you’ve really got to focus on your roots and home. And especially during troubled times, there’s a stability that comes from being connected.”
Isaacson, who has published celebrated biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and others, sees these tightly focused history books responding to a national thirst for local products and experiences, from artisanal teas to farmers markets. He said he wants to recruit new authors to the series.
“Getting a younger group of writers to understand the joy of producing a book is part of my mission,” he said.
In the end, it’s the passion of hundreds of local writers throughout the country that has produced thousands of books that Arcadia keeps permanently in print, typically selling a few dozen or a few hundred copies per year.
Paul Secord is a retired environmental planner now living in Albuquerque, near where his grandfather once worked in the mines. He has written several books for Arcadia.
“About the most fun you can have outside of sex is doing research,” he said, “and when you get to be my age, well ... it’s pretty much research.”