About the director

John Oakes is the co-founder and co-publisher of OR Books, a company recognized as one of “the radical alternatives to conventional publishing” (The Guardian). He has published hundreds of books and negotiated hundreds of contracts with agents, authors, and translators. Oakes started in publishing with Barney Rosset’s legendary Grove Press. Among the authors he has published are Douglas Rushkoff, Medea Benjamin, Andrei Codrescu, Sue Coe, R. Crumb, Cory Doctorow, Andrea Dworkin, Abbie Hoffman, Jack Kerouac, Ross King, Gordon Lish, Eileen Myles, Harvey Pekar, Rudy Rucker, John Waters and Edmund White. Oakes is a former board member of P.E.N. American Center. He has written for a variety of publications, among them Publishers Weekly, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, the Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune, and The Huffington Post.

“Disintermediating Amazon”: Interview with John Oakes (an O’Reilly “Tools of Change for Publishing” video interview and podcast)


Podcast: Podcast