VERMONT'S NEWSPAPER FOR LESBIANS, GAY MEN, AND Bi15EltUALS

 

Volume VI, Number 7

September 1991

 

New Victoria Publishers: Riding a Flevol io

Five or six years ago, one of New Victor-
ia Publishers' distributors addressed a
meeting of the New England Booksellers
Association. He predicted a very big
market for lesbian books, and said that if
he were going into publishing, he would
be a lesbian publisher - if he could.

According to Claudia Lamperti and Beth
Dingman, who together make up most of
New Victoria Publishers, he was right.
New Victoria,~located in Norwich, Ver-
mont, is one of a handful of small, pre-
dominantly lesbian-feminist publishing
houses, currently riding the wave of the
revolution in consciousness brought
about by the gay/lesbian and women's
movements. Lesbians like to read about
lesbians; and these publishers, which in-
clude Naiad, Firebrand, Seal, Spinsters
and Aunt Lute, are meeting a rapidly
growing demand. (Spinsters/Aunt Lute,
which operated jointly for a time, re-
cently separated back into its component
parts.) Of these, Naiad is the only one
publishing lesbian titles exclusively, al-
though New Victoria comes very close.

New Victoria's identification with a long
feminist tradition is symbolized by its
name. In England in the 1860s, a woman
named Emily Faithful owned and oper-
ated a printshop and magazine, staffed
entirely by women, which she called Vic-
toria Press, because it published by ap-
pointment to the Queen. New Victoria
began in 1975 in Lebanon, New Hamp-
shire, as a women's printshop collective.
Lamperti wanted to go into publishing
though, and after ten years, they sold the
printshop, moved the business across the
river to Dingman's house, and began.
According to Lamperti, “We didn't have
any manuscripts to publish, so I said,
'Let's write some."' And so she and two
of her friends did. Once the first three

Claudia Lamperti l) & Beth Dingman (r) New Victoria Publishers

AUG  1

2‘

    
  

books were published, other manuscripts
began arriving. Dingman and Lamperti
were lucky enough to get Sarah Dreher's
first Stoner McTavish mystery, which
put them on the map.

They learned their new trade as they
went along, and got lots of advice and
help from other lesbian-feminist publish-
ers, especially Barbara Grier of Naiad.
Lesbian publishers place a high value on
working cooperatively, rather than com-
petitively, meeting once a year at the
American Booksellers Convention to ex-
change ideas and compare notes on the
state of lesbian publishing. (One of the
group's recent observations is that main-
stream publishers, always alive to new
markets, are starting to move into lesbian
publishing.)

New Victoria is still small. They publish
six books a year, and have published
about 27 titles since they began. ‘Lam-

P

perti is the only full-time employee;
Dingman and another editor work part-
time. They have found a variety of ways
to maximize their efforts. They do the
type-setting themselves on a desktop sys-
tem with a new laser printer, and send
books to the printer camera-ready. The
cover design is contracted out to a lesbian
designer; some editing is contracted to
outside editors (also lesbians). Much of
the marketing is handled by their dis-
tributors.

New Victoria is true to its feminist prin-
ciples, both in the way it operates and the
books it publishes. Dingman and Lam-
perti like to publish local authors. The
majority of their authors come from New
England and several, including Rebecca
Beguin, Ellen Frye, and Morgan Grey,
are from Vermont. The designer and the
outside editors live in the Norwich area.

Continued on page 9