1. Verso Books
“The essential job of a publishing house is curation.” Jacob Stevens, Managing Editor

2. “Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year.”

3. “Brand should evoke an immediate and clear response that’s not about sales, marketing, or promotion. The brand should evoke and emphasize the why–what the publication or publisher stands for. This takes time and is not an overnight process, and it’s partially built on what other people say about you or what they value you for.” Jane Friedman

5. Example Events
November 10: Joshua Clover on "Riot. Strike. Riot" with William Sewell
November 14: False Choices Election Debrief: What’s Next? - A roundtable discussion from False Choices contributors about how we can organize after Election Day
November 16: Four Futures: Life After Capitalism with Peter Frase
November 18: No Rescues, No Heroes: Sex Work, Carceral Feminism, and Rescue - Melissa Gira Grant joins a night of poetry and debate on the future of sex work
November 29: A World Without Borders? Author Daniel Trilling lectures with Mari Bastashevski at Yale University
Stephen Graham and Keller Easterling, in conversation - The Skyscraper Museum will host a conversation between author Stephen Graham and writer and architect Keller Easterling
“The publisher is an orchestrator in the world of book culture, not a machine for sorting manuscripts and supplying a small number of those manuscripts in improved and bound form to a large number of people via a retailer-based supply chain best suited for the distribution of cornflakes, not ideas.” Richard Nash

7. History Founded in 1970 as part of the New Left Review
Formerly called New Left Books
Originally focused on republishing Marx, reactions to Marx, and Marx exposition
Grew into translating works of critical European thought from the fields of political philosophy, social theory, and economics
Set up an office in New York during the nineties; developed work in established and emerging fields in historical sociology, literary theory, and political theory
Since 2000, they have been publishing critical titles against America’s long wars and started releasing fiction, biography, and memoir
Editors in Paris, London, and New York
Radical website redesign in 2010

8. Notable Authors
Authors: Tariq Ali, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said, Rebecca Solnit, Slavoj Žižek, John Berger, Angela Davis
New translations have included Jean Baudrillard, Régis Debray, André Gorz, Jürgen Habermas, Rigoberta Menchú, Roberto Schwarz and Paul Virilio
New editions: Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno, Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin
Tariq Ali: landmark critiques of American intervention in the Middle East; Judith Butler proposed gender performativity theory in the 90s and revolutionized feminism and queer studies; Noam Chomsky is one of the most famous intellectuals in the world; David Harvey has reinterpreted Marx for a new generation and written about the politics of geography; Fredric Jameson has been on the forefront of studies in modernism; Edward Said is one of the most influential writers on post colonialism ever; Rebecca Solnit writes beautifully about feminism and the nature of experience; Slavoj Zizek is one of the most controversial intellectuals of our time

9. Notable Series
Feminist Classics: Brings together foundational texts in the critical and left feminist traditions
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman by Michele Wallace
Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World by Kumari Jayawardena
Jacobin: Short interrogations of politics, economics, and culture from a socialist perspective
Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant
The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff

10. “Verso Futures is a forthcoming collection of contemporary theory
“Verso Futures is a forthcoming collection of contemporary theory. We wanted the cover system to be clearly distinct from the restrained Radical Thinkers series, a similar collection which focuses on older titles, so I asked Erik Carter to work on something lush and exaggerated. The result is dense, textural, and photographic. It’s an arrangement of contrasts that ends up feeling anxious more than anything else.” Andy Pressman, Art Director
“All books published by a certain publisher could be seen as links in a single chain, or segments in a serpentine progression of books, or fragments in a single book formed by all the books published by that publisher.” Roberto Calasso

11. Inventing the Future “A manifesto for life after capitalism”
What future can the left articulate?
How do we deal with increasing unemployment?
How can we establish a new hegemony?

12. Intern Nation
“The first no-holds-barred expose of the exploitative world of internships”
Profiles interns, analyzes labor history, studies job trends
Do internships provide real value?
Why the sudden popularity of internships now?
What do internships do to the economy?

13. Racecraft “Tackling the myth of a post-racial society.”
The practice of racism produces the conception of race, not the other way around
Why is race taken as fact?
What is the origin of racism?
How do daily actions reproduce race relations?

14. As Radical Publisher
Verso has radically transformed its online presence since 2010, creating a new website, establishing a social media program, and encouraging direct to consumer sales. 
“We took three decisions to try and make sure that [the website redesign] was a success and that it was noticed. The first one was to bundle ebooks with print. The second one was to offer discounts, and the third was to offer free shipping. Essentially, we were competing with Amazon.” Jacob Stevens, Managing Editor

15. Social Media Presence
Publicize books, authors, relationships, and ideas
Establish space for community around the mission their products are rooted in
They use social media both to publicize their sales and products but also to establish a space for community around the mission that said products are rooted in.
Casual, fun voice and presence
“To create a sort of club of kindred spirits, ready to give assistance in the most varied cases.” Roberto Calasso

17. Embracing the Digital Going where the people are Sample readers
From forums to Facebook; to Google, to Amazon
Sample readers
Bundled ebooks
"We had one lovely Tweet that said, ‘I like the way the publisher is bundling ebooks with print. This feels like the future.’ And I thought, ‘Yes. Good.’”
"Well we’re experimenting massively, and possibly wildly, at the moment.” Jacob Stevens, Managing Editor

18. Direct to Consumer Straightforward ordering process
Continuous content creation
Maintain relationships with bookstores
Free shipping and generous returns
Publisher as brand
Use sales to make a bang
“Publishers that survive, whether they focus on traditional publications or digital media, must become indispensable to the communities they serve… The literary publisher needs to be a beacon, to offer a strong signal amidst all the noise, and organize ideas, content, and stories within an identifiable and useful context.” Jane Friedman

19. The Future for Futurists
Continual redesign of the website
Make all books readable and searchable, accessible to Google; similar to Amazon’s Look Inside the Book feature
Digital methodology: "What I’ve been doing for seven years now, is that you break it down into small bits. And we do it bit by bit. I would’ve happily built the direct sales component in But it had to wait until we were able to do it in the right way and to roll it out stage by stage.” Jacob Stevens, Managing Editor