John Hunt Publishing is a publishing company founded in the United Kingdomin 2001, initially named O Books. The publisher has 24 active autonomous imprints, with the largest of these being the Zero Booksimprint founded in 2009. The Zero Books imprint was founded with the objective being to combat what they viewed as a trend of anti-intellectualism in contemporary culture.
History
John Hunt Publishing was founded in the United Kingdom in 2001, originally named O Books, a name which it continues to use as one of its imprints, in the "mind, body, and spirit" market. Its Zero Books imprint was founded by Tariq Goddard and Mark Fisher in 2009. John Hunt Publishing then underwent a major reorganization in 2010. In 2014, Goddard and Fisher left Zero Books to found another publishing house, Repeater Books. Since 2014 the imprint has been run by Douglas Lain along with Ashley Frawley and C Derick Varn and has published critically acclaimed books such as Kill All Normies and Zen City. The imprint began publishing a series called Neglected or Misunderstood in 2017 with the aim of covering "neglected or misunderstood" left-wing theorists such as Shulamith Firestone and Theodor Adorno. Zero Books states that their goal is to utilize critical theory to "publish books that make our readers uncomfortable" in order to "reinvent the left". John Hunt Publishing "deals directly with authors" and does not require they have an agent. However, "because they are a small publisher, they are unable to pay advances, so have to wait for the royalties to roll in". Imprints of John Hunt Publishing offer four “levels” of publishing based on the likely popularity of the book, with both “traditional publishing deals and what it describes as co-operative publishing for authors,” with about a quarter of books, most prevalently those in fiction, being published “under co-operative terms,” though this will vary by imprint. The company also says that "every title gets treated the same. No bookshop or reviewer is going to know if one title or another has had a subsidy." As with other imprints operations are controlled by authors themselves, who "have gravitated to being involved in publishing, whether coming up through editing, design or marketing." This multiple-imprint author-centric style has been described as, "It can’t work. It shouldn’t work. Yet, somehow, John Hunt Publishing is making it work." A central corporate office continues to manage sales, accounts, and royalties for all imprints. As of 2014, the company was publishing "approximately 300 titles per year with global sales and a focus on physical stores."
Imprints
As of 2018, the active imprints of John Hunt Publishing are described as: Former or inactive imprints are:
