Riverdale Avenue Books sits in Riverdale, in the Bronx, New York. Lori Perkins founded the independent press in 2012. It is a member of the Association of American Publishers. Larger houses often push adult literature and LGBTQ+ work to the side. Riverdale treats both as core lines, and it is one of the visible indie pipes for that writing. It releases about fifty to seventy-five new books a year, across erotica, queer literature, horror, speculative fiction, pulp, memoir, mystery, lifestyle, and pop culture.
In 2014 the Bi Writers Association named it Bisexual Publisher of the Year. Titles have hit Amazon bestseller lists and taken Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs). Among those, Morgan Mann Willis’s Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity took nonfiction gold, and Jennifer Patterson’s Queering Sexual Violence took silver. Gabby Rivera’s novel Juliet Takes a Breath took fiction silver and was selected by the American Library Association for the Amelia Bloomer List of feminist titles for young readers. Lissa Trevor’s erotic novel Menage a Musketeer took erotica gold. Outside the XY was also a Lambda Literary Award finalist in transgender nonfiction. When #MeToo broke open, the press gathered a twenty-six-essay anthology edited by Perkins, #MeToo: Essays About How and Why This Happened, What It Means and How to Make Sure It Never Happens Again, and set that cultural intervention next to the erotic lines.
Riverdale splits the list into thirteen imprints so a reader can sort by tone and heat. Desire and Circlet are both erotica and erotic romance; both are the heat lines. Riverdale/Magnus is the LGBT shelf. Afraid is horror. SFF is science fiction and fantasy. 120 Days is LGBTQ pulp. Truth is confessional kink and sex memoir. Dagger is mystery, thriller, and suspense. Verve is lifestyle. Hera is the real and fictional lives of women thirty-five and older. Pop is pop culture. Sports and Gaming covers sports and games. The split is so a reader does not have to hunt one undifferentiated catalog.
The roster includes Cecilia Tan, Riki Wilchins, Trinity Blacio, Lissa Trevor, Marc Shapiro, Chris Shirley, Gabby Rivera, Andrew Gray, and others. The books run through erotic romance, gender politics, and queer fiction that sits near young-adult readers. The erotica lines are not written for minors. Riverdale is the only New York City publisher with a reading series open to authors of erotica and erotic romance. The Downtown Series is at People Lounge on the first Friday of each month. The Uptown Series is at An Beal Bocht in Riverdale on the second Monday. Adult authors read aloud in a physical room, off the e-reader screen.
On a BDSM literature map the press is infrastructure. An AAP-member indie still ships dozens of erotic and queer titles a year, with award-winning nonfiction, a pulp line, and a Bronx address. Readers who want negotiated adult desire in a published book, not in free fanfic, still have a practical stop: IPPY-winning books, and a monthly room where erotic authors read aloud.
