AK Press

AK Press is a worker-managed, independent publisher and book distributor that specializes in publishing books about anarchism and the radical left. Operated out of Chico, California, the company is collectively owned. They describe their mission as: A key component of our struggle is the sharing of knowledge, history, and information. Through our publishing and distribution efforts, we see ourselves as part of a long tradition of getting the word out by any means necessary. In many historical periods, books, pamphlets, and other forms of written communication were clandestine, relying on networks of individuals keeping revolutionary ideas alive with secret printing presses, tattered facsimiles, and underground distribution systems. Our mission is to keep circulating these important texts, while producing new analyses and documenting the history of our struggle as it unfolds. We’re proud to call ourselves propagandists and hope that the materials we provide both agitate and provoke. AK was founded in Stirling, Scotland by Ramsey Kanaan in 1987 as a small mail-order distribution outlet, eventually expanding into independent publishing and moving the Scotland base of operations to Edinburgh, Scotland and opening a US base of operations in Oakland, California. The press was named for Kanaan's mother, Ann Kanaan. Kanaan and several other members of AK Press left in 2007 to form PM Press. After operating out of the Bay Area for decades, in March 2015, a deadly fire at a warehouse complex in West Oakland, California, damaged AK Press' warehouse and prompted the press to relocate to their present base in Chico. In 2020, AK Press joined as a founding member of the Radical Publishers' Alliance, a group of politically oriented book and magazine publishers around the world. AK Press is organized as a workers' co-operative. The press is owned by all members of the collective, works without bosses or hierarchy, and uses collective decision-making processes, following anarchist principles.