Nextbook

Nextbook began in 2003 with a mission to promote and create Jewish literature, culture and ideas for all generations. It continues to operate with a three-pronged approach and generate not only innovative content but also new delivery mechanisms. Its Jewish Encounters Book Series, published in conjunction with Schocken/ Random House, provides a fresh take on Jewish subjects through the production of brief and entertaining texts. The series has gained a foothold in the publishing market with sales exceeding over 100,000 copies to date. A second facet of Nextbook’s work is public programming with well-known writers, critics and scholars in cities with engaged Jewish communities like Chicago, Seattle and Washington, DC. Its one-day festivals of ideas have been held in New York, Los Angeles and Boston and were attended by over 2,000 people last year. In a partnership with the American Library Association, Nextbook has presented Let’s Talk About It: Jewish Literature, a scholar-led reading and discussion program that has so far taken place in more than 200 libraries. 

So as not to sideline web technology, Nextbook’s third arm is a
daily online magazine of reporting, criticism, personal essays and podcasts, recently relaunched and rebranded as Tabletmag.com under the new editorship of the remarkable Alana Newhouse, formerly the Arts and Culture editor of The Forward. In striving to provide the types of offerings available in the secular media, similar to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, Tabletmag.com is being recognized for its efforts with mentions in Newsweek, The Guardian and many blogs. It now receives over 300,000 visits each month and subscribes over 5,000 to its daily e-mail. 

Aided by a growing budget, Nextbook is thinking big, with a plan to bring on younger writers for its book series, expand its one-day festivals, create traveling exhibits for public libraries and conduct market research of its online visitors. With efforts to “continue to raise the bar and seek new avenues by which and through which to reach new populations,” Nextbook is lauded as “innovative and creative, indeed!”