Small Press Distribution Group 1

Small Press Distribution was a large-scale company that distributed books from small presses.

History

Founded in 1969, originally called Serendipity Books Distribution.

Turning Point

In December of 2020, an anonymous previous employee of SPD with the handle "Damaged Book Worker" made a blog post on Medium.com calling out the toxicity they experienced while working at SPD, titled "I was terrorized out of my job by Small Press Distribution." Some of the grievances this employee had included being manipulated into physical labor despite suffering from a pre-existing disability, forced into being a "captive audience" to the executive director's personal problems and racist comments, manipulated into cleaning the executive director's house while house sitting, and being underpaid thousands of dollars for a large amount of time while working at SPD without their knowledge.

Within the blog post, the author also mentioned that when they finally left SPD earlier in 2020, the board of directors offered them a $2,500 severance check only if they agreed to sign an NDA stating that they would pay a $500 fee for each negative comment they made about SPD after leaving the company. The employee did not sign the NDA.

The manipulation Damaged Book Worker faced while working at SPD was so severe that they were afraid to share their story even months after leaving the company because of the power SPD still held over them.

Responses

Staff and Executive

Attempts to Fix Problem

How SPD promised to change and SPD Next

Then they closed

Fallout

Then - today

We also need different positions on the issue (could either be staff experience vs board response or about the concern of destroying a toxic company and subsequently hurting lots of small presses) and possible solutions