Publishing Talks: Ramsey Kanaan of PM Press

Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It has been an ongoing education talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. This latest episode features a recent conversation with Ramsey Kanaan about the anarchist publisher PM Press he founded in 2007, and his work in publishing, music and activism for the past many years. Ramsey has been a leader among the innovative, creative editors, publishers, and others in independent publishing and bookselling whose work is so important, especially now.

I met Ramsey years ago when he was working with activist AK Press he helped start in the UK. He later left AK, establishing PM Press in 2007 to focus on a wider range of literary publishing, and to reach a larger audience than AK nonfiction oriented publishing could do.

PM Press was originally based in the Bay Area and still maintains space there, but moved its main operations to Ithaca, New York in 2023, when it purchased the former Autumn Leaves bookstore space to establish its warehouse there. And there’s also a branch in the UK, so it’s pretty wide-reaching for an independent publisher. Publishing authors as varied as Ursula K. Le Guin, Peter Linebaugh, Silvia Federici, C.L.R. James, James Kelman, and Jonathan Lethem, as well as a plethora of newer and less well-known voices, PM has become one of the most successful radical publishers of modern times. Their list is impressive, including a range of books in fiction, art, music, politics, history, and culture in print, ebook, and audio formats.

PM’s publishes widely, including coloring books and cookbooks, polemics, memoirs, novels, pamphlets, treatises, manifestos, and comics in almost every topic imaginable – bicycles, vegetables, squatting, sex, sports, punks, Wobblies, self-defense, parenting, striking, and much more. PM brings tremendous energy to its publishing, reaching readers “by any means necessary” with unmatched creativity and gusto.

Aside from his work in books and publishing, Ramsey was also the vocalist of the Scottish punk band Political Asylum.

We had a great conversation about books, publishing, distribution and the current state of politics in America. Talking to Ramsey, it’s clear that the energy and strength of outsider publishing is stronger than ever, and that energy is needed now more than ever.

Check out the press and its books here.

You can join Friends of PM Press to support their work and get access to an array of essential books.

PM is an altogether terrific outfit keeping the flags flying – red, black, and rainbow.  What energy! What facts-on-the-ground! What excitement! What dreams!—Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All and coauthor of The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

If a revolutionary’s first weapon is a book, PM Press has the arsenal. Their texts are battle plans for a new world.—Peter Werbe, The Fifth Estate