12 Jun
Why we turned down venture money twice
A frank account of two term sheets, the growth targets attached to them, and the arithmetic that made saying no rational.
46 min28.7k
Founder Spotlight
United States
Adaora Nwosu
Founder & Publisher, Ledgerline Press
Adaora Nwosu started Ledgerline Press from a spare room in Rogers Park with two manuscripts and a borrowed printer. A decade later the imprint is one of the Midwest's most respected independent publishers, known for literary fiction, translated work and a backlist that keeps earning.
PublishingFunding & cash flowIndependent business models
Featured company
Ledgerline Press
Ledgerline Press is an independent Chicago publishing house releasing roughly 18 titles a year across literary fiction, essays and translation, with distribution into Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and the UK.
View the Ledgerline Press company page- Founded
- 2014
- Team
- 22 people
- Headquarters
- Chicago
- Website
- ledgerlinepress.com
140+
titles published
Gallery
Inside Ledgerline Press
On the record
Key challenges
- 01
Financing print runs without investors
Every print run had to be funded from the previous one. Adaora explains the rolling-cash model that replaced outside capital.
- 02
The year the imprint nearly closed
A distributor collapse left eight months of receivables unpaid and forced a full rebuild of the sales channel.
- 03
Paying writers properly at small scale
Advances, royalties and the transparency policy that made Ledgerline a destination for African literary talent.
On demand
Past interviews
Next on air: Thu 3 Sep · 14:00 GMT
4 Mar
The backlist is the business
How older titles came to fund 60% of revenue, and the metadata work that made them discoverable again.
38 min19.4k