Riverdale Avenue Books, based in Riverdale in the Bronx, New York, is an independent press for e-books, print-on-demand titles, and audiobooks founded in 2012 by Lori Perkins. A member of the Association of American Publishers, the house releases roughly fifty to seventy-five books a year across erotica, queer literature, horror, speculative fiction, pulp, memoir, mystery, lifestyle, and pop culture—making it one of the more visible indie pipelines for adult and LGBTQ+ work that larger houses often sideline.
Awards and Critical Markers
In 2014 the Bi Writers Association named Riverdale “Bisexual Publisher of the Year.” Titles have repeatedly hit Amazon bestseller lists and taken Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs). In 2017, Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, edited by Morgan Mann Willis, won IPPY Gold in Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Non-Fiction, while Jennifer Patterson’s Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement took Silver in the same category. Gabby Rivera’s Juliet Takes a Breath earned IPPY Silver for Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Fiction. In 2016, Lissa Trevor’s Menage a Musketeer: A Novel of Swords and Debauchery—by a USA Today bestselling author—won IPPY Gold for Erotica, and Finding Masculinity: Female to Male Transition in Adulthood by Alexander Walker and Emmett J. P. Lundberg took Silver for Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Non-Fiction.
In 2017 the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer Project Committee selected Juliet Takes a Breath for the Amelia Bloomer List of recent feminist titles appealing to young readers (ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table Feminist Task Force). Outside the XY was also a Lambda Literary Award finalist in Transgender Nonfiction. When the #MeToo movement broke open, Riverdale published 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—pairing the house’s erotic lines with explicit cultural intervention.
Thirteen Imprints
Riverdale routes curated lists through specialized imprints so readers can find tone and heat level without wading a single undifferentiated catalog:
- Desire — erotica and erotic romance
- Riverdale/Magnus — LGBT titles
- Afraid — horror
- SFF — science fiction and fantasy
- 120 Days — LGBTQ pulp fiction
- Circlet — erotica and erotic romance
- Truth — erotic memoir
- Dagger — mystery, thriller, and suspense
- Verve — lifestyle
- Hera — true and fictional lives and loves of women thirty-five and up
- Pop — pop culture
- Sports and Gaming — sports and gaming titles
The imprint map is practical SEO for adult readers: Desire and Circlet for heat, Magnus for queer shelf space, Truth for confessional kink and sex memoir, 120 Days for pulp cadence.
Authors and Local Reading Culture
The roster includes Cecilia Tan, Riki Wilchins, Trinity Blacio, Lissa Trevor, Marc Shapiro, Chris Shirley, Gabby Rivera, Andrew Gray, and many others—names that bridge erotic romance, gender politics, and queer YA-adjacent fiction. Riverdale is the only New York City publisher with a reading series open specifically to authors of erotica and erotic romance: the Downtown Series at People Lounge on the first Friday of each month, and the Uptown Series at An Beal Bocht in Riverdale on the second Monday. Those rooms keep adult authors in public literary space rather than only on e-reader screens.
Why Kink and Erotica Readers Track the Press
On a BDSM literature map, Riverdale matters as infrastructure: an AAP-member indie that still ships dozens of erotic and queer titles yearly, wins library-adjacent awards, and runs open erotica readings in New York. Related publishers and lists sit nearby in any adult-fiction survey, but few combine bisexual publisher recognition, #MeToo essay curation, pulp and Circlet heat lines, and a Bronx home base. For readers hunting negotiated desire in book form—not only free fanfic—Riverdale Avenue Books remains a practical address: Perkins’s imprint farm, award-winning queer nonfiction, musketeer debauchery that took IPPY Gold, and monthly rooms where erotic authors still read aloud.
