Melville House Books

Akashic publisher Johnny Temple in his Brooklyn office

It’s become a truism of the book business: anthologies don’t sell. But somehow Brooklyn indie Akashic has managed to make a hit out of not just one but a whole series of anthologies. Akashic’s Noir series — collections of stories all centered on one locale — was launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. There have been three more volumes of Brooklyn Noir since then, and the series has gone on to also include volumes set in Dublin, London, Istanbul, Paris, Trinidad and Toronto with Delhi, Lagos, Copenhagen, Barcelona and Moscow on the way. Publisher Johnny Temple seems to have broken the anthology curse by not only getting smart content and selecting a hot genre, but by a brilliant international marketing scheme that uses well-known and intelligent editors for each volume — to wit, a PW report by Calvin Reid says that “Temple has announced that acclaimed novelists Edwidge Danticat and Dennis Lehane have agreed to guest edit upcoming Noir volumes set in Haiti and Boston, respectively.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.