1990s Bay Area small press heyday has much to teach in the 21st century

New technologies spur new companies and new ways of thinking. As artificial intelligence emerges affecting everything it touches, it’s worth looking back at a technology-driven creative explosion of entrepreneurship and invention from the era of desktop publishing in San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s-90s.

Bay Area publishing pioneer Vicki DeArmon has a unique perspective. She cofounded the popular Foghorn Press as well as the Independent Travel Publishers Association, was president of San Francisco Bay Area Books Festival (attracting 35,000 readers), launched the Bay Area Book Council, produced the 25^th Annual Earth Day Celebration at San Francisco’s Presidio, created Copperfield Books’ nationally recognized author events program, and currently runs Sibylline Press, which exclusively publishes work by women over 50. Her most debatable claim to fame: producing the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest. Local News Matters tapped her for this recap of the heyday of book publishing, the subject of her 2025 memoir, “Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire.”