Chelsea Green Publishing
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| Industry | Publishing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1984 in Chelsea, Vermont, USA |
| Founders | Ian Baldwin, Margo Baldwin |
| Headquarters | 85 North Main Street, White River Junction, Vermont, USA |
| Website | chelseagreen |
Chelsea Green Publishing is an American publishing company which specialises in non-fiction books on progressive politics and sustainable living. Based in Vermont, it has published over 400 books since it was founded in 1984, and now releases between 25 and 30 titles each year.
The company was started by Margo Baldwin and her husband Ian in 1984 two years after moving from New York City to Chelsea, Vermont. They initially published books that appealed to their own interests, which included fiction, nature, travel, and art. Their first books were published in 1985—In a Pig's Eye, small-scale farmer Karl Schwenke's observations on "the human qualities of pigs and the piglike qualities of humans," and the first trade edition of Jean Giono's The Man Who Planted Trees, with woodcut illustrations by Michael McCurdy. Among the books that followed in the next two years were Permanent Parisians (a guide to Paris cemeteries), Words and Images of Edvard Munch, and Steve Heller's novel The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman.
Not all of the books from their early, more eclectic range sold well, and the company was in financial difficulty by 1991. The Baldwins brought in Vermont business strategist Stephen Morris, who advised them to focus on a particular niche, sustainable living, and to build up a backlist that would keep selling over the years. He also negotiated a partnership with the Real Goods Trading Company, a California-based company whose customers were interested in living off the grid or with a low environmental impact, in which Real Goods bought Chelsea Green's books at steep discounts and then marketed them through their catalog, enabling them to reach a wider audience. Titles published by Chelsea Green in this area have included Alan Scott's The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens, Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation, and Athena Swentzell Steen, Bill Steen and David Bainbridge's The Straw Bale House. First published in 1994, The Straw Bale House proved to be one of the company's best-selling books in their sustainable living list, with 100,000 copies sold over the next five years, even though there were only between 1,000 and 2,000 straw bale houses in the United States at the time. Morris became Chelsea Green's CEO in 1998, as Ian Baldwin had begun pursuing a career as an artist and was increasingly involved in founding the non-profit Marion Institute. When Morris stepped down as CEO in 2002, Margo Baldwin took over the post.
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