Chelsea Green Publishing Company: An Overview

Chelsea Green Publishing Company: An Overview

Book publishing enjoys a certain social prestige—it can be both moderately profitable and extremely rewarding in psychological benefits. The odds that a publishing entrepreneur will succeed at this business seem to be related to the degree of care and thought given to planning and the sometimes-tricky balancing act of effective management.

Sustainability is a balance of economy and ecology. That is, how we satisfy human needs and still preserve what we have in nature. Examples of this are the forest industry and energy. We must find ways to harvest a forest without destroying the forest. Similarly, we must find practical alternatives to energy sources, such as solar and wind power, so that we don't harm the atmosphere and deplete natural resources.

The following is an account of Chelsea Green Publishing Company, a small publishing business that has successfully found its niche, while at the same time has made (and continues to make) the world a bit more sustainable.

In 1985, Ian Baldwin and his wife Margo founded Chelsea Green Publishing Company in their house located near Chelsea, Vermont's green. It was in the middle of the Reagan era—not an especially favorable time to start a publishing company that even remotely highlighted environmental issues. In fact, the books that the Baldwins published then didn't really have a unifying theme, they were simply "nice" books that were well written, finely edited and beautifully produced.

Earlier in his life, Ian spent five years as an editor at Holt, Rinehart, Winston before leaving to join the Institute for World Policy, a non-profit organization with a mission to organize intellectuals from around the world in a quest for world peace. He later worked as a consultant for the Environmental Defense Fund on a project to convince Pacific Gas and Electric Company that through conservation, co-generation, and the use of renewable resources, the utility could avoid building new nuclear or coal power plants.

In 1984 the Baldwins' neighbor, gardening writer Eliot Coleman, shared with them a story that Helen Nearing had given him years earlier. The author of the fictional piece was Jean Giono, and the title was The Man Who Planted Hope and Grew Happiness, which first appeared in Vogue in 1954. It was a tale of a shepherd who singlehandedly reforested thousands of acres in war-ravaged Europe.