It’s easier to think of the acquisition of 36-year-old Cinco Puntos Press by Lee & Low Books as a marriage made in heaven, rather than the end for a Texas-based publishing house.
Cinco Puntos Press from El Paso was founded by a husband-and-wife team of writers: Bobby Byrd is a poet and Lee Byrd writes fiction.
They were among the first to publish books for American readers in both Spanish and English. They opted for highlighting Mexican folklore and Native American authors and for writing about topics like disability, without disability being the focus of the story.
Jason Low, the new owner of Cinco Puntos Press says he has always admired the work the Byrds were doing.
“And even when we were competing for some of the same awards and they, sometimes, beat us out, we were happy either way,” Low said.
Being a small publishing house in El Paso without any household names on their writers’ roster wasn’t easy and it wasn’t profitable. But Lee Byrd says it was satisfying.
“We may have not been incredible businesspeople, but we picked some really fine books,” she said.