We are delighted to announce that from October 2018, all Urbanomic and Urbanomic/Sequence Press books will be distributed worldwide by The MIT Press.

This is a great move for us: we’re excited to be under the same umbrella as great pioneering publishers such as Semiotext(e) and Zone Books, and to join other recent additions on MIT’s distribution list, including Strange Attractor Press, Goldsmiths Press, and Afterall.

For readers this will mean much greater availability of our titles, especially outside of Europe. You should see Urbanomic and Urbanomic/Sequence books in many more bookstores worldwide. Mail orders will be operated through MIT Press’s website.

For us it means being certain that books are being promoted by people who understand them, in the right places, and are getting to readers. It means letting go of some logistical and marketing aspects of the business so that we can spend time on the things we do best: editorial, design and production, working with authors, events and special projects, and making sure Urbanomic continues to scan new fields of thought and build new audiences.

Needless to say, this in no way alters Urbanomic’s cultural and intellectual outlook. We carefully select titles for their exploratory innovation and conceptual interconnections, and each title matters to us. With no one agenda or point of view, but sometimes wildly different positions and approaches across different publications, we will continue to try to provide a map of the tensions and faultlines that constitute the field of contemporary thought (and where possible, to exacerbate them).

The move does also mean that we say a regretful farewell to Central Books, who have been indispensable partners for Urbanomic since 2013. Central are highly recommended, their service has always been superb, and we’re sorry to leave them. However, consolidation of our distribution with Sequence Press in the US has meant that this move makes perfect sense for us now.

Since 2010 our relationship with Sequence Press has already enabled us to reach new audiences, to explore new fields of theory and practice, and to sustain and grow Urbanomic—it’s no exaggeration to say that, if it weren’t for Sequence, Urbanomic would not be where it is today. So we’re thrilled to be taking this next step together with them. Along with Urbanomic and our combined titles, Sequence Press’s own list of publications will also be available via MIT’s distribution network.

In the short term, this move means that, during the transition period over the next few months, there may be disruption in availability of Urbanomic titles through all channels. The web store here at urbanomic.com will be offline, and elsewhere our accounts with third party vendors will be transitioning. Please bear with us while the process is underway.