Why Disability-Centered Publishers are Needed
by Corbett Joan OToole
Welcome to the very first blog of Reclamation Press, a project of Elizabeth “Ibby” Grace and Corbett Joan OToole.
I honestly don’t know where to start. Should I start by telling you why we launched? Why we need more books by disabled authors? Or about the fabulous books we have already?
Let me start with the books.
Reclamation Press has four amazing books ready to be published as soon as we have enough money. Should you be someone with money to spare, you can donate here. (See how I snuck that in? I learned that at indie book publisher’s camp.)
We are launching with two fiction and two nonfiction books.
Our Fiction books are: Troubleshooting: Book One, Glitch in the System series by Selene dePackh. A dystopian science fiction novel in the Neuropunk/cyberpunk genre, Selene’s created a powerful Autistic female/gender queer protagonist trying to survive in a harsh authoritarian world.
Raymond Luczak’s written The Kinda Fella I Am, 15 short stories all with a lead disabled queer character. As one of his reviewers said “This book will turn you on.”
On the nonfiction side Naomi Ortiz wrote the book we all need to read right now, Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice. In these very trying times, she reminds us that we need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of our social justice movements.
Corbett Joan OToole retooled her classic Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History to give us a second edition of her wise storytelling.
We guarantee that these books are well-written, well edited, and have beautiful covers. We’re proud of each and everyone of them and can’t wait to get them in your hands. [Another hint to DONATE here!]
THE ORIGIN
Reclamation Press is the brainchild of Elizabeth (“Ibby”) Grace and Corbett Joan OToole. We created Reclamation Press so that we can, as our tagline says, publish “Wisdom from Disability Communities.”
Reclamation Press focuses on authors who write from the first hand knowledge of living with disability. We are particularly interested in disabled writers at multiple intersections such as race, class, queer, and disability.
Researching disability in books we discovered that less than one third of 1% of the 22 million books on Amazon are in anyway connected to any topic on disability. Since disabled people are at least 19% of U.S. population that’s a huge gap. We want to support disabled writers to get their books published.
GOING FORWARD
Over the next few months we’ll be online a lot. We’re launching two social media campaigns, one focused on letting people know about Reclamation Press and one focused on fundraising to get these fabulous books published.
We’ll also be doing a series of blogs sharing the knowledge we’ve learned about independent book publishing and starting conversations about disability topics near and dear to our hearts.
Perhaps most importantly we’ll be introducing you to our talented team of authors, editors, and artists.
As we step forward on this great adventure, we’re excited to meet new people and have new conversations.
Please support Reclamation Press by tell your communities about our books. Here are our social media links:
Twitter: @RecLaPress
Facebook: www.facebook.com/RecLaPress
As always we welcome your input.
We invite you to continue the conversation in the comments.
I work with a similar publishing house, it’s not just for disabled writers but we require manuscripts featuring disabled characters.
I’m really excited to see more from your company and would love to help promote it. Would it be possible if I could interview someone, through email is fine, so I can do a segment about it on our podcast or at least the blogs?
Good luck and thank you for your work, I’m so excited to be getting books about disabled people that I didn’t have to pay for or write myself 🙂
– Christy Leigh Stewart
I’d love to talk with you. I looked at your website and the books seem really interesting. The book about accessible love talks about people who are “wheelchair-bound” which is a very different perspective from ours. I am interested in how you decided to frame the marketing for that book in that way.
Corbett
RecLaPress@gmail.com