ABOUT US
Ask 30-year-old Jason Claiborne what it takes to run an independent publishing company and you’ll get an unexpected answer. “It’s like swimming with sharks,” Claiborne says with a laugh. “We’ve been through some near-death experiences, but we keep coming back.”
The metaphor is surprising, but eerily appropriate. Similar to the laws of the jungle, the book publishing industry is an environment where taking the initiative can mean the difference between success and failure. That’s a life lesson that Claiborne’s business partner, Anthony Whyte, had to learn the hard way. Twice.
In 1996, Whyte, a hip-hop journalist, was actively trying to sell his gritty novel about three inner-city high school girls to publishers. “They basically said my fiction didn’t fit,” he says, describing the publishing industry’s refusal to accept his hard-core story as a legitimate form of fiction. “They suggested I get an agent, but the agents I talked to lacked vision. No one wanted to touch tales from the ‘hood.”
It was when Whyte finally decided to take a gamble and self-publish his novel that he learned there was an even greater demand for his stories than he realized. After selling 4,000 copies independently, Ghetto Girls was promptly acquired by another imprint and went on to sell nearly 100,000 copies. When his new publisher went bankrupt, however, 40-year-old Whyte decided to take what he’d learned and go back to doing it for himself. This time, Whyte reached out to Claiborne, a creative director (and childhood friend) who had been designing groundbreaking book covers for independent publishing houses like Urban Books, Melodrama Publishing, and Q-Boro. What began as a friendly request for graphic design help quickly evolved into a formal partnership and the two founded Augustus Publishing in 2005.
Since its humble beginnings in Claiborne’s living room, Augustus has consistently helped define the genre that major publishers once refused to believe there was an audience for. With the commercial successes of Augustus and other independent publishers of urban novels, mainstream publishing houses were no longer able to ignore public demand, but there was a new problem. “These titles were being labeled ‘street fiction,’” explains Whyte. Wary of being given a tag with negative connotations, Whyte and Claiborne coined the term “Hip-Hop Literature” and a new literary genre was born.
It’s been busy for the “Hip Hop Lit” duo ever since. In addition to amassing a catalogue of ten novels, selling over 75,000 books, and creating a new magazine SLR (Street Literature Review), Augustus recently teamed up with Billboard Books to release In Ya Grill, a pictorial history of hip-hop. “We’re attempting to expand the genre,” explains Claiborne of their ever-increasing catalogue of products. With six new titles on tap for the fall and a second edition of SLR magazine in the works, Augustus Publishing is definitely taking the genre that they helped create to a higher level than even they imagined.
“This is just like hip-hop music in the early eighties,” says Whyte. “We’re helping the nurturing process.” And similar to the hip-hop movement that went on to span the globe and change the scope of music forever, Claiborne and Whyte have big plans for Hip Hop Literature. Soon, they intend to try their hand at publishing graphic novels and partnering with film producers to convert some of their books for the silver screen.
“Everyday we’re hustling,” says Claiborne with conviction, indicating that Augustus’ days of near-death business experiences are far behind them. –K. Boxer
C 2009 Augustus Publishing