Brannon Avenue Press was founded in 2016 by Danny Lunsford in a two-room office in Jacksonville, Florida. The idea was small and stubborn: publish a handful of books each year, edit them carefully, print them beautifully, and mail them to readers who wanted to keep them.
Before opening the house, Danny worked for fifteen years as an acquisitions editor for a mid-sized trade publisher in the northeast. He came home to Jacksonville in 2015 with a small inheritance, a Vandercook proof press, and a manuscript from a writer he'd known since college — John Jason Phillips.
That manuscript became the first title on our list. The press is still small on purpose. "We are trying to build a place," Danny writes in our annual letter, "not a pipeline."
Danny reads every submission personally. He answers his own phone most afternoons.
A working pageTwo rooms above a hardware store on Brannon Avenue. First title published in November.
Three hundred readers sign on in the first month. The model becomes the backbone of the press.
The restored 1912 clapboard on Brannon Avenue becomes the permanent home of the press and its reading room.
John Jason Phillips's The Long Field reaches independent bestseller lists in seven states.
We celebrate the fortieth book on our list with a public reading in the Jacksonville Public Library.
Six to eight books a year. Every one edited by hand, every one still worth the wait.
We believe a book is a physical object first and an argument second. We believe that a page well-typeset is an act of respect toward the reader. We believe that a writer is best served by an editor who reads the manuscript four times before saying anything at all.
We do not chase trends. We do not publish more than we can carefully make. We answer our correspondence. We keep our books in print for as long as anyone wants to read them.
Every title spends at least eighteen months in editorial. Nothing here is rushed to press.
Paper stock, typeface, endpaper — every choice is part of what a book says.
Every note sent to the house is answered by a person, usually the person who edited the book you wrote about.
