Today virtually all publishers, from the smallest indie press to large
general trade book publishers — with the very interesting exception of the Hachette Book Group — sell directly to consumers in some fashion.
Schaffner Press is an independent publisher of
general trade books in the area of fiction, and non-fiction with a particular focus on mysteries, literary fiction, memoir, biography and autobiography.
Challenge: Create a book that, if possible,
surpassed general trade book standards, while at the same time communicating Professor Barry's forceful argument for a «politics of empathy.»
It was financed with the help of three major UK publishers who, like the American companies that have financed Bookish, believe that online discovery
for general trade books has to be improved for everybody's sake.
In the 1940s it was a widely respected source of
both general trade books and works of liberal philosophy and religion, publishing figures like Albert Schweitzer, James Baldwin and Arnold Toynbee.