ABSTRACT

X X Press Founded by Steve Pope and Diran Adebayo in 1992, X Press began after the two left their jobs at the Voice newspaper and were pursuing other ideas. Together they published Victor Headley's Yardie on a home computer. The novel gained both interest and a market, and Pope and Adebayo sold the rights to Pan enabling them to set up a publishing house specifically for black popular fiction. Many of their tides are on subjects that have a good PR angle, such as Patrick Augustus's Baby Father and Yvette Richards's Single Black Female, but this concentration on issues associated with sex and violence has left X Press open to accusations of negative profiling. At the beginning of the venture, they consciously courted publicity and notoriously

mailed bullets as part of their marketing campaign for Gorgon's Cop Killer. They have now focused more on the l i terature itself and have diversified their market with three more lists: X Press Black Classics, which reprints classic African American texts and is commercially strong; 20/20 for speculative fiction, not exclusively by black writers; and Nia for their literary (rather than popular fiction) authors. The Press has made several charitable donations, including to SCAR, the sickle cell charity, and the Stephen Lawrence Fund. With a strong and diverse list X Press has both proven the market for black fiction in Britain and has also helped to lead and shape it.