Cover Story: Publishers' Outlook 2012: The Industry's Next Bold Move
Temple: Oh, it's a whole different ballpark than any other books we've ever published. It's sold exponentially more than any of our previous books.
Howard: What challenges does a press like Akashic face when a book essentially goes viral like that?
Temple: I think one of the biggest challenges is managing the process with a small staff. It's a huge amount of work, and I've seen other small companies eaten up and essentially destroyed by success. One [problem] is that the company suddenly thinks that it's this big, successful company, and so it hires staff and starts expanding, only to find out that the success was kind of a rare thing. … So I'm trying very hard to basically grow very little and to be very conservative about how we're spending the money that we're making this year. We published our first book in 1997, and now we publish 25 to 30 books a year. And like almost any other independent company, we've been sort of chronically unstable the whole time. What I would like to do is stabilize the company. … It's [all] been very welcome and very exciting, but also with some pretty significant challenges along the way.