This year sees the significant milestone of 20 years of independent, feminist publishing with Spinifex Press’ 20 year anniversary.

From a ‘publishing experiment’ in 1991, to an internationally connected publisher of over 200 print and eBooks, Spinifex Press is celebrating 20 years in 2011. Founded by Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein in March 1991, Spinifex is Australia’s only feminist publisher. Susan and Renate recognised a gap in the market after the financial squeeze of 1990 which saw publishing cut back on risk: ‘Feminist publishing and literary publishing are both risky and the two areas we were interested in. We’d also seen an explosion of post modern publishing and feminist voices were being drowned out by that.’

Early success
Early success spurred them on: ‘In our first year we had four books: three were shortlisted for prizes; three were translated; two were reprinted. We had distribution set up in the USA within three months of publishing our first book.’

And Spinifex has been at the forefront of independent publishing ever since, maintaining a strong focus on export and co-productions with like-minded publishers internationally and as early adapters of technology. ‘We were the first Australian publisher to offer a web-based catalogue and the third to have our full catalogue available for purchase from our website. In 2006 Spinifex was the first small press in Australia to release eBooks through an eBookstore attached to our website.’

Spinifex has continued to innovate in this area, contributing to industry discussion and development and now has close to 100 eBooks available in four formats through the Spnifex eBookstore as well as eRetailers and libraries.

Other significant changes over the past two decades include the decimation of the international feminist publishing scene since the late 1990s (mostly due to the advent of superstores), and the severe backlash against feminisim. ‘Feminism was depoliticised with postmodernism, queer and bureaucratic/liberal/corporate/libertarian “feminisms” - a kind of anything goes, meaning nothing counts. We hope we’ve created an alternative to this kind of “nothing feminism” through publishing important writing about women’s health, violence against women, racism and cultural opportunism, ecology and economics, war and exile, sexualisation of girls, prostitution and pornography.’

‘Surviving is the biggest challenge’
In looking ahead, Susan and Renate look challenges in the eye, citing the digital shift as the biggest test of the coming years. Optimism is a constant at Spinifex: ‘Remaining fresh, interesting, keeping the quality of the work high and breaking new ground are all critical in keeping us going. Keeping our passions alive, keeping our connections with authors and all the other people in the book industry remains critical.’