PM Press launched in 2007, on the eve of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The urgency and audacity of starting a radical publishing house amid a collapsing book trade, endless wars, economic freefall, and global social unraveling struck a deep chord with those who still believed both that ideas matter and that such ideas are crucial in helping us create a better world for all amidst the shambles of this current one.
Cofounders Ramsey Kanaan and Craig O’Hara brought decades of experience building some of the left’s most enduring institutions. At just fifteen, Ramsey founded AK Press (named after his mother, Ann Kanaan) in his bedroom in Stirling, Scotland. After moving to San Francisco in the early 1990s, he recruited Craig, and together they successfully built the North American wing of AK Press, an important publishing house thriving beyond any expectations.
Eager to move beyond even that ambitious project, the two expanded their vision of what the dissemination of ideas could and might be, and PM Press was born. They gathered a crew of misfits, miscreants, and malcontents, veterans of publishing, media, and organizing. After maxing out a couple of credit cards, within a year they had filled multiple homes floor to ceiling with books.
In the early days of PM Press, we walked dogs, repaired bikes, laid asphalt, and did whatever else it took to keep the press alive. We volunteered our time while paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in author royalties. We crisscrossed the country sleeping in parking lots, crashing on couches, and hand-selling hundreds of thousands of books at radical gatherings, punk shows, and anywhere and everywhere that would have us.
In 2010, most of our books were warehoused in the home of PM Press stalwart Dan Fedorenko. While Dan was battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and weathering the fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis, his home was foreclosed on. He beat cancer and moved our stock into a shared warehouse space that, bizarrely enough, had appeared in an episode of Sons of Anarchy.
Publishing, like other cultural industries, is often driven by pressure to produce celebrity-centered content as quickly and cheaply as possible. Many publishers pursue fleeting trends in the hope of striking financial gold, outsourcing parts of the process along the way. At PM Press, we have chosen a different path, one rooted in integrity, independence, and care. As much as possible, we keep our editorial, production, marketing, and distribution in-house, ensuring our books reflect the values of the communities we serve and of the social movements we contribute to and draw from.
We have never sought New York Times bestsellers, nor do we measure success by mainstream recognition. For small presses like ours, sustainability comes not from one blockbuster title but from the steady accumulation of trust, relationships, and ideas shared. Over the years, we have sold millions of books, often one at a time, hand to hand.
From the beginning, running our own warehouse has been central to this mission, allowing us to connect directly with readers who are searching for something more meaningful than what the mainstream offers. On our 13th anniversary, a global pandemic brought business as usual to a grinding halt. Books weren’t deemed essential, and most publishers lost their sales channels overnight. But PM had something many didn’t: a modest warehouse rental. Masked up and socially distanced, we kept the books moving. Warehousing our own stock wasn’t just a smart choice, it was a lifeline.
But with Bay Area rents skyrocketing, we knew we needed a building of our own. In 2021 we took out a large loan on an empty 18,000 square foot warehouse across the country in Binghamton, NY, a space with rust, dust, and potential. It now houses what is likely the world’s largest independently owned collection of radical books for sale.
The warehouse has allowed PM Press to expand our reach and deepen our community involvement in ways that weren’t previously possible. In addition to distributing our own materials via mail order, as well as having the logistical ability to ensure that books are always present at the 150-plus events a year we table at across the country, we now provide warehousing and order fulfillment for organizations like Labor Notes, Working Class History, and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC). The extra space also enables us to produce merchandise that has raised tens of thousands of dollars for nonprofits such as the National Lawyers Guild, Palestine Legal, and No More Deaths.
More than just a logistical hub, we’ve begun opening the warehouse for community events, from hosting the Upstate Anarchist Book Fair to fundraising for local LGBTQ groups, as well as providing a physical space for important work such as the CARES backpack and school supplies giveaway. Building lasting alternatives to capitalism, and providing the infrastructural wherewithal for them, is what we have to do, not just sell books. The ideas and examples contained in these books must inspire the doers who create community lending libraries, rank-and-file labor caucuses, food growing and sharing co-ops, noncapitalist child and elder care, prisoner support networks, and so much more.
And here we are closing in on our 20th anniversary with a pseudo-fascist back in the White House, an ongoing genocide, and a book trade clawing its way back from near collapse.
We now have 18 staff members, all earning a living wage (literally double the staff we had pre-Covid). We’ve ramped up production, publishing close to 700 titles to date. We have paid out over $2 million in royalties to roughly 400 authors, including Silvia Federici, N.O. Bonzo, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Hillary King, Zane McNeill, James Kelman, Abdullah Öcalan, Victoria Law, Andrej Grubacic, Peter Linebaugh, Akila Richards, Cory Doctorow, Tomoyuki Hoshino, Jonathan Lethem, Nisi Shawl, Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall, and more. We endeavor to keep important works in circulation, from those of recently deceased authors like Russell Maroon Shoatz and Staughton Lynd to enduring classics like Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid and C.L.R. James’s A History of Pan-African Revolt. We’ve also released a number of CDs, vinyl, and cassettes highlighting a diverse array of music, from folk legend Utah Phillips to pop-punk innovators Chumbawamba. Seeking every medium possible to spread radical ideas, PM has released a large number of DVDs as well, partnering with groups such as Positive Force and Big Noise.
PM Press has offices across the US and in the UK. To enhance our on-the-ground presence and further facilitate direct engagement with ideas, in January 2023 we acquired Autumn Leaves, a beloved bookstore in downtown Ithaca, NY. Now boasting over 60,000 used and new titles over two floors and almost 6,000 square feet, Autumn Leaves houses one of the biggest collections of radical literature in the English-speaking world, while masquerading as a rather fantastic general interest bookstore.
In late summer 2025 PM Press was honored and energized to become the new home of Just World Books, a publisher founded in 2010 with a strong focus on Palestinian liberation, the Middle East, and the broader issues of war and peace, and to welcome such writers as Laila El-Haddad, Leila Abdelrazaq, Mohammad Sabaaneh, Susan Abulhawa, and the late Refaat Alareer into the PM family.
Our reach is global, but we’ve remained grounded: 100% independent, with no corporate or institutional backing, just the strength of the books and merch we make and sell.
Now, we’re asking for your help.
Our warehouse, PM Press’s heart and hub, was purchased with a substantial mortgage. We’ve paid down $250,000, half of the original loan. The mortgage was split between the Small Business Administration and a private bank, and when we secured it five years ago, we locked in a favorable five-year interest rate. Unfortunately, as we approach our 20th anniversary, that rate is now set to nearly double.
To be clear: This isn’t a crisis. PM Press is fiscally sound and continues to grow sustainably. But paying off the balance now, before the interest rate spike, makes long-term financial sense and frees up resources for our core mission, rather than lining the pockets of banks. Your support today will help us lay a stronger foundation, literally and figuratively, for the long road ahead.
And in the spirit of bread and roses, to help celebrate both our 20 years (to date) and finally owning outright the means of dissemination, we’ve commissioned a mural from the artist N.O. Bonzo for the public-facing wall of the warehouse.
If you believe in what we do—delivering bold political ideas and vital stories to all walks of life—this is your moment to help sustain and grow our work. We are not asking for a bailout. We are asking for you to invest in our future. Your financial contribution, whether large or small, will give us the stability we need to deepen our impact as we continue to navigate the world we are forced to live in and strive to create a better world for all.
Together, let’s secure a permanent home for PM Press and continue pushing the boundaries of radical publishing for the next 20 years—book by book, brick by brick.
Yours in Solidarity and Struggle,
PM Press
