In the Spotlight: Two Dollar Radio
We spoke with Eric Obenauf co-founder with his wife, Eliza, of Two Dollar Radio. This independent press and bookstore began in 2005 and has since been behind amazing novels like The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina, and works of nonfiction like Andre Perry’s Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib.
Eric took time out of his busy schedule to speak with us about the publishing industry, “books too loud to ignore” and what to expect from Two Dollar Radio in 2020.
Eric—I read that you and your wife, Eliza, started Two Dollar Radio in 2005 after being inspired by an Andre Schiffrin’s book on the publishing industry. What drove you to create your own publishing organization as opposed to working for an already established house? What did you feel was lacking that you wanted to bring to the forefront?
Mostly, we were young, idealistic, ambitious, and didn't know any better. We imagined that if we were to work for another outfit, it'd be several years before we'd be doing the work we really wanted to be doing. At the time, we were devouring books, mostly from independent presses. I'd go to the bookstore and look for publisher logos and find new books that way. But we did feel that it was becoming harder to find the books that we were most attracted to: bold, literary, quirky, distinctive.
We started at a really opportune time, on the heels of several decades of consolidation under only a handful of corporate umbrellas, which cut loose a lot of writers who didn't have what the powers-that-be deem to be substantial sales history. Also, the internet. The way that the internet fragmented society made it easier to reach a niche audience and harder to tap into the mainstream. So corporate consolidation and the internet made it possible to come out of nowhere with no industry connections and make an impact from the get-go.
I love Two Dollar Radio’s slogan “books too loud to ignore.” How do you stick to this ideology? What does your process look like for accepting submissions?
Thanks! I'm really proud of the fact that we never had to sacrifice our ideals or our vision in order to grow or succeed as a press. We stick to the ideology by publishing work from writers who subscribe to our ethos, and if we aren't getting submissions that we feel align, then we take it upon ourselves to solicit work from writers who are taking risks.
We do accept unsolicited submissions, and each year anywhere between 40 - 60% of our releases were plucked from the slush pile. A big reason why we do this, is because a lot of manuscripts we're attracted to are from edgier voices with edgier visions, which agents might be less inclined to take on if they don't believe they can sell the project.
How have books and literature impacted your own lives? What are some titles that have inspired or shaped you as writers?
Books and literature are our lives. We had just gotten major distribution in 2008 when everyone was saying that print was dying, and then the recession hit. We were so hard-headed and unwilling to even consider that books might be dying and that we wouldn't get our chance to contribute to literary culture. We've always brought a DIY approach to Two Dollar Radio, doing all the editing, design, and web-maintenance ourselves. It's a lot of work, but that's how you get by on a modest budget.
Our authors inspire and shape us constantly. Presently, I'm hyped on our current list of books: writers like Andre Perry, Yelena Moskovich, Tariq Shah, Dima Alzayat, and Billy-Ray Belcourt.
Since this is a series highlighting independent presses, what do you think smaller publishing houses like your own can offer that larger or more mainstream ones can’t?
The personal touch. It happens constantly with large presses where an editor acquires a project, then leaves. Or, if they don't leave, as an author you have to hope that their excitement is matched on down the line, by the publicist, sales reps, and marketing folk. We have a small staff that handles everything from acquisition to design, editing to sales and publicity.
What advice would you give to writers who are beginning to seek to get their work published—as writers yourselves and as members of the publishing industry?
Read a whole lot. Treat finding a publisher like a job, and do your research. Then, when you do submit, let the agent or editor or publisher know why you feel as though your work is a perfect match for their needs. That extra effort shines through, and lets us know when we consider your manuscript that you've actually put thought into the process before clicking submit.
What can we expect from Two Dollar radio in the coming months and into the new year?
We have some really adventurous work from brilliant writers coming out. It's going to be an exceptional year.
Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, an essay collection by Andre Perry, uses personal reflection to explore issues of national and individual identity as a black man coming of age in America.
Virtuoso, the second novel by Yelena Moskovich, is like if Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend were a song by Lana del Rey with a music video directed by David Lynch: it's wild, and stunning.
Whiteout Conditions by Tariq Shah is literary noir that explores grief and toxic masculinity, taking place on the heels of the holidays during dramatic winter weather in Chicago, when a man who is strangely attracted to funerals attends the funeral of a much younger boy that he grew up with.
We rarely publish story collections, but Dima Alzayat's Alligator is more ambitious than most novels I've read, and grapples with issues of displacement — among Syrian immigrants, or within the confines of religion or sexuality.
And then next summer, we're out with a memoir-in-essays by Billy-Ray Belcourt called A History of My Brief Body. Billy-Ray is one of the most brilliant minds I've encountered, and is the youngest-ever winner of Canada's Griffin Prize for Poetry and the first First Nations Rhodes Scholar. A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw work that follows the author from his childhood with his grandmother on the Driftpile First Nation in Alberta, Canada, to coming out as gay within his community, to finding and falling out of love on Grindr, to the rigidity of his time as a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford.
