From her offices in White River Junction, Vt., Chelsea Green president and publisher Margo Baldwin says she has every reason to be pleased. To date, sales are up 40% this year over the same time last year. The company did more than $1 million in sales in April and again in May. Nor is one category thriving more than others. Every genre, from health books to cooking, gardening, health, and politics, is up.
But as the publisher prepares to release a highly controversial title later this week, it's the politics of American publishing that worries Baldwin, and are driving a radical edge at the 36-year-old publishing house. The title in question is Naomi Wolf's Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love (Oct. 9), which was previously acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and canceled amid a firestorm of allegations about inaccuracies in 2019.
