Two publishing success stories
On Ethan Rutherford and a new Bad Bunny book
Note: Carrie Olivia Adams’s insightful interview with Derek Krissoff from last month indicated the challenges of promoting small-press books. As a follow-up, we wanted to highlight two books that have done very well in the difficult environment that she accurately described. All book links lead to Bookshop.org, with a portion of sales benefitting Square Books through the affiliate program.
I met Ethan Rutherford last September in Barcelona, shortly after he moved to the city with his wife and two children. Another American fiction writer living here, Josh Denslow, had our families over for lunch. We happened to meet the weekend following an auspicious development: Rutherford’s debut novel North Sun, or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther, published by A Strange Object, the imprint of Deep Vellum, had just been long-listed for the National Book Award in Fiction.
By the time Denslow and Rutherford read together in November at a bookstore1 around the corner from the Sagrada Familia, North Sun was named a finalist for the NBA. The novel’s ascent had begun; just before the holidays, it landed a coveted spot on Barack Obama’s reading list.
North Sun, set in the 1870s, begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at the start of a whaling journey. Cody Morrison—the buyer from Square Books in Oxford, MS—spoke to its relevance today:
“The novel has so much to say about the times we currently live in,” said Morrison, who served on the fiction committee for the National Book Award.2 “The environmental crisis and how it is caused by man’s incessant plundering of natural resources, the greed and economic consequences which result from an insatiable industry, the cruelty that man can inflict upon his fellow man.”
In writing the novel, Rutherford took some inspiration from the “flat, detached tone” of whaling logs from the era, according to Deep Vellum publicity director Nadine Santoro. She added that Rutherford’s “singular narrative voice is one of the things that sets this book apart to me. It lulls you like the rocking of a ship . . . By the time the novel takes its surreal turn, you’re already hooked.”
Oscar Dorr in The Baffler articulated the challenge that Rutherford set for himself: “Moby-Dick is a fact, and any spinner of a modern whale tale must reckon with questions of whether and how the legacy of the whaling novel will be broached.”
That was one of only a handful of reviews to have appeared prior to the National Book Award nomination. With modest review attention, Santoro said it was important that the novel had become “a cult favorite” at indies.
“We consider the immense outpouring of love for this book from booksellers at independent bookstores to be a tremendous accomplishment,” Santoro said. “Deep Vellum and A Strange Object are forever indebted to the booksellers who champion our titles and build a network of word-of-mouth enthusiasm and support for books like North Sun.”
Rutherford, associate professor of English at Trinity College, is the author of two previous story collections. His first book was published by Ecco in 2013, before his agent Sarah Burnes placed his 2020 follow-up with Jill Meyers at A Strange Object, which had just linked up with Deep Vellum. Also worth noting here is Rutherford’s reading list for The Millions and a piece published by Time in 2024. Originally titled “Safety at Sea,” the Time essay reflects on his father and raising a trans daughter. At the event in Barcelona when it was announced that Rutherford’s book was a finalist for the National Book Award, his daughter’s arms went up in the air.
The university press world has found an ally and subject in Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper. A few months after Princeton published Jorell Meléndez-Badillo’s Puerto Rico: A National History, Bad Bunny’s team reached out to the author. They asked if Meléndez-Badillo might be interested in working with them surrounding the release of Debí Tirar Más Fotos, the most recent album.
He agreed. On Bad Bunny’s YouTube page, there are links for the album’s 17 songs. Short paragraphs on Puerto Rican history, written by Meléndez-Badillo, are displayed as the visual while each track plays. The visualizer videos have hundreds of millions of views: a collaboration between the world’s leading hip hop artist and a university press author resulting in a public education project on a massive scale.
“Bad Bunny sneaks in political commentary and context in unexpected places,” said Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones, whose The Hurricane Book also confronts the island’s history. “I love that he does everything in Spanish.”
In early February, Debí Tirar Más Fotos won the Grammy for Best Album. Just a few days before that, Duke published P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance by Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau. The book was scheduled to be published later in the spring season, but when the NFL announced in September 2025 that Bad Bunny would be performing at the Super Bowl’s halftime show, Duke moved up the publication date to capitalize on the opportunity. That turned out to be “perfect timing,” according to freelance publicist Megan Posco, who was hired by Duke to lead the campaign.
“We were lucky to have two authors—one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast3—so we could say ‘yes’ to twice as many media invitations,” Posco said. The day after the Super Bowl, the authors were interviewed by PBS NewsHour, BBC World Service, MS Now’s Katy Tur Reports, and KCRW’s Press Play. They also wrote commentaries on Bad Bunny’s politically-charged performance for the New York Times and Rolling Stone.
Sales have accompanied the media attention, among both large retailers (the book briefly cracked the top 500 on Amazon) and indies, where it has been on the Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers list for three weeks. At in-person events that drew hundreds of attendees in New York City this past week, Planeta’s Spanish translation of the book was available for sale, alongside Duke’s edition. Posco said the authors are just getting started.
“I know Vanessa and Petra have some really exciting things in the works,” Posco said. “There are definitely more books in their future.”
Backstory Bookshop. Denslow’s recent story collection, Magic Can’t Save Us, was included in LitHub’s 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025.
Rumaan Alam, Debra Magpie Earling, Attica Locke, and Elizabeth McCracken were the other committee members. Morrison said he first read the novel during the judging: “One of my fellow judges on the NBA panel read North Sun as part of the process of plowing through the hundreds of books submitted—her enthusiasm was immediate and contagious and we all looked forward to reading it. Once we did there was a consensus that it was one of the frontrunners for the award.”
Vanessa Díaz is Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Petra R. Rivera-Rideau is Associate Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College.
Thanks for highlighting P FKN R!!