John Martin (publisher)

John Martin (born 1930) is an American publisher who founded the renowned Black Sparrow Press. As a publisher, he is best known for his work with Charles Bukowski, John Fante and Paul Bowles. He is based in Santa Rosa, California.

Martin built a successful office supply business in Los Angeles in the 1960s, eventually becoming the manager of a forty-person operation. He was not a “mere stationary salesman”, as his detractors have falsely stated.^[1] He had been a book collector since the age of twenty, eventually amassing a collection of D. H. Lawrence first editions, which he sold to UC Santa Barbara for $50,000 to fund the founding of Black Sparrow Press.^[2][1]

Work with Charles Bukowski

Martin considered Bukowski “the new Walt Whitman” and founded Black Sparrow Press explicitly to publish Bukowski’s work.^[3]

At the time, Bukowski was mostly publishing small chapbooks, essentially pamphlets in small, cheap editions.^[3] Martin’s office supply business gave him access to a printing press,^[1] and his first publication under the Black Sparrow imprint was a 1966 Bukowski broadside for the poem “True Story,” which was printed in an edition of 30.^[2]

In 1969, Martin offered Bukowski a $100 per month salary to quit his job and write full-time, which Bukowski accepted.^[4] In 1971, Martin suggested a novel would be easier to sell than a collection of poems; a month later, Bukowski submitted his first novel, Post Office.^[3] Martin was frequently referenced as a character in Bukowski’s work, a sign of Bukowski’s deep and lasting respect, including appearing as the character John Barton in the author's final novel, Pulp.^[5]

Work with other authors

In his career, Martin was known as a champion of underground or avant-garde literature.^[6] Under Martin’s watch, Black Sparrow went on to publish works by many prominent literary figures such as Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Diane Wakoski, David Bromige, Joyce Carol Oates, John Ashbery, Wanda Coleman, Charles Reznikoff, Kenneth Koch and Ed Sanders.^[3][2][7]

Black Sparrow’s books were known for several unique design features, which Martin adopted to make his books noticeable on bookshelves.^[8] He made his books 6 inches by 9 inches, which was larger-than-standard at the time; he also used textured matte paper letterpress printing.^[8] Most of the covers were designed by Martin’s wife, Barbara.^[8][9]

Sale of Black Sparrow

Aside from Bukowski, the publisher’s two best-selling authors were Paul Bowles and John Fante. In 2002, HarperCollins imprint Ecco Press purchased the rights to Black Sparrow’s authors Bukowski, Bowles and Fante for just under two-million dollars; the rest of Black Sparrow’s backlist was sold to Boston-based publisher David R. Godine for $1.^[10] This sale price included all of Black Sparrow’s remaining inventory, in order to continue providing royalty income to the publisher’s authors.^[6] This laudatory action has been chronicled thus: “...Now Wakoski, Halpern, Godine, and many others are lauding Martin as a one-of-a-kind publisher—one whose editorial motives remained unchanged throughout three and a half decades in business. “He's one of the great iconoclastic and individualistic acts in American publishing," Godine says. "He was looking for voices and he found them. You could rip the cover off, rip the title page, read five or six pages, and you'd know who wrote that book. He's going out in glory, as far as I'm concerned...”(Johnny Converso, personal interviews, self-published blog, upcoming issue, September 1st, 2018.)

References