New publisher Assembly Press signals belief in books industry: ‘People still want books. I think the demand is still there’

In an era of multinational conglomeration, Hollywood-type blockbuster mentality, and the TikTokification of literature, it might seem a bit strange to consider launching a new independent literary publisher. But that is just what Leigh Nash is doing.

Less than half a year after stepping down as publisher at House of Anansi Press, Nash is partnering with Andrew Faulkner and Debby de Groot on the newly created Assembly Press. Nash will take the role of publisher, with Faulkner working as strategist and de Groot in charge of communications. (Anansi announced Tuesday afternoon that current vice president of sales and marketing, Karen Brochu, would be promoted to publisher to replace Nash.)

The press, which is entirely self-funded, at least for the time being, will focus on literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The trio has already secured a distribution deal with Publishers Group Canada in this country, and will have their printing done by Gatineau, Quebec’s Imprimerie Gauvin.

“We’ll print in Canada; that’s important to us,” says Nash. “Sustainability is a big passion of mine, so I want to put that at the forefront of what we do. And accessibility: we’ll be making accessible ebooks and ultimately pursuing that certification too.”

The name Assembly Press is meant to indicate co-operation, inclusiveness and community, according to Nash. “Also, the best parts of school were the assemblies,” she says. “We’re running with that metaphor of bringing people who would not otherwise be together into community and conversation.”

All three of the major players in the new house have extensive experience in the industry. Nash worked at Coach House Books before becoming publisher at the small press Invisible Publishing, a position she left in 2022 to join Anansi. Faulkner, a published poet and nonfiction author, worked as managing editor at Invisible, as well as co-founding (with Nash) the chapbook publisher The Emergency Response Unit. De Groot has been a fixture on the publicity scene since the 1980s, having worked at Stoddart Publishing and Anansi, in addition to spearheading the PR company Meisner, de Groot, and Associates.

When Nash and de Groot left Anansi, the two of them (who, according to Nash, got along “like peas in a pod”) and Faulkner began talking about the future and started kicking around the idea of going into business for themselves. “As we kept circling back around it, it kind of began to take shape,” says Nash. “We started to have real conversations about what it would look like.”

Some of those conversations were natural topics around the dinner table; in addition to being former colleagues, Nash and Faulkner are married. “Leigh and I have long been book-making collaborators,” Faulkner says. “Once Leigh started to consider what her future was going to be, it was just really natural for me to be involved and it kind of clicked into place.”

For the moment, Faulkner expects to be working behind the scenes in an operational capacity, though he also has his eye on acquiring nonfiction and poetry, as he did when he served as managing editor at Invisible. “I’ll be doing a lot of operations and marketing,” he says. “Finding ways we can adopt our model of the way things used to be done, then adapting and improving them.”

As for whether it’s comfortable to be working with his wife full-time, Faulkner says it’s a no-brainer. “You’re either built for it or not,” he says. “We really are. When we sit down at our desks, the switch flicks and we’re in work mode. At the end of the day, we turn the switch off. And we do it really well.”

One of the first books on the Assembly Press list will be Nash’s follow-up to 2020’s “County Heirlooms,” a book she co-wrote with Natalie Wollenberg when Nash was publisher at Invisible. She had already agreed to work with Wollenberg on a second title, which was meant to be a summer project, but has since become a perfect book with which to help launch the new publishing house.

The focus is on Prince Edward County, the Ontario region where Nash and Faulkner live and which is the base of operations, along with Mississauga, for Assembly Press.

“We’ve got a couple of other titles that we’ve ‘signed,’ in quotation marks, but we’re still finalizing the incorporation [of the company],” says Nash. “We wanted to make it public because it will make it so much easier for us to do business. And if the whole point of it is building community, we wanted people to feel a part of it from the start.”

For the moment, Nash, Faulkner, and de Groot want to retain the ability to be nimble as publishers, so they are curtailing any major ambitions as to the numbers of books they expect to publish each year. Nash suggests that the “sweet spot” is likely to be around 15 books annually, or about five books per season. “Our strength is finding books that are just a little bit outside what would work at a multinational, mainstream publisher,” Nash says. “But we can still see a clear audience for them.”

As for what made Nash feel like this was a good time to start a new independent publisher in the first place, she is equal parts optimistic and rueful. “I don’t think there’s ever a good time,” she says. “The industry is in a lot of flux right now. But people are still reading, people still want books. I think the demand is still there.”

For Nash herself, as for Faulkner and de Groot, the impulse also stems from having publishing in the blood, from wanting to connect writers with appreciative readers, and incorporating new ideas and voices into the publishing ecosystem. All of those play into the formation of the new press, as does another, no less important motivating factor. “Having fun,” Nash says. “We just want to have fun.”

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