When Sebastian Clark founded Isolarii in September 2020, he had no publishing experience. Five years later, the publisher has 3,000 subscribers in 50 countries, a catalog of nearly 20 titles, and is now making its move into the traditional trade with a new line of full-sized paperbacks—dubbed Isobacks—and a co-publication deal in the works with Penguin Press.
Isolarii takes its name from the Renaissance Venetian tradition of illustrated island books—elaborate volumes mapping real and imagined archipelagos—and the imprint's catalog is conceived in the same spirit, each title its own island, the whole a connected body of work. But Clark, who lives in London, is quick to correct anyone who takes the analogy too literally. "People really lean into this 'reviving Renaissance island book' kind of thing," he said. "It's more about just finding the global avant-garde." The palm-sized books are formatted to be a tactile alternative to picking up your phone.
Isolarii has built a cult following by operating almost entirely outside conventional publishing channels, selling its distinctive books directly to subscribers at $15 per release, with free international shipping, and placing titles in roughly 200 independent bookstores worldwide, where they are often displayed near the cash wrap as an in-the-know impulse buy. They've partnered with Motto Distribution, Perimeter Distribution, and Dolce Publishing for international sales.
The publisher's catalog includes Street Cop, a collaboration between Robert Coover and Art Spiegelman that drew praise from NPR and the New York Times; F Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry, edited by Galina Rymbu, which became a symbol of protest in Russia; and In the Face of War: Ukraine 2022 by Yevgenia Belorusets, a war diary co-published with Der Spiegel. Other notable titles include Salmon: A Red Herring by Cooking Sections, which was adapted into the Turner Prize-nominated exhibition at Tate Britain, and Ever Gaia, featuring scientist James Lovelock and art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist discussing the Gaia hypothesis.
"Subscription has been this amazing thing because you have five times the margins," Clark said, noting the imprint operates without a warehouse or returns. "Selling three thousand books is like selling fifteen thousand books."
The company's new Isobacks line launches in September and will have more conventional bookstore distribution, yet to be announced. The inaugural titles include The World Is Mine for the Taking, the memoir of Letizia Battaglia, the Palermo photographer who documented the Sicilian Mafia across four decades; On the Run by Astrid Proll, a co-founder of the Red Army Faction who recounts years as a fugitive in London before her extradition to Germany and prison; and an expanded edition of Modern Animal by Belorusets, a surreal chronicle of life in the Donbas co-written with her subjects, which Isolarii originally commissioned in 2019.
Isolarii previously co-published Belorusets's war diary with New Directions and has a new co-publication planned with Penguin Press in the U.K. and Open Letter in the U.S. for Gift of the Dark Mother Earth by Can Xue. "It's her magnum opus, her life's work," Clark said, noting Isolarii published a collection of Xue's short stories, Purple Perilla.
In addition to publishing, Clark has been establishing a film and television pipeline, presenting titles for possible adaptation at Cannes and the New York Film Festival. He is also representing the David Graeber estate for all non-literary projects, including a possible stage musical adaptation of Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs.
Finally, Isolarii has been working with a cryptography lab on a project called ISBN 2.0, a new book licensing identifier built on fully homomorphic encryption, a technique that allows computation over encrypted data without reading it, stemming from Isolarii's publication of My Techno-Optimism by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Clearly, Isolarii has ambitions well beyond the mini-editions on which it has made its name. "We're making small books, but that doesn't necessarily mean we need to be a small press. It starts with the ideas and the ideas are are not small," Clark said.
