about us
Why a chickadee? Why a prince?
The Chickadee Prince Books Story.
“Once you have a great logo for your business,” Steven says,
“then you need to have a business to go with the logo.”
So Steven started a business.
Chickadee Prince Books was founded with well-defined values.
“There really are still demonstrably, objectively great writers out there who don’t yet have a home in the large or small publishing houses,” Steven said in an interview, back in 2016. “We will never ever say that some book is not the ‘right kind of book for us,’ or that we published something in that genre recently and so we’re not going to publish another one so soon. Or that we don’t know how to market something even though it’s great, so we will have to pass. We will never say, ‘sorry, your book is amazing, but there aren’t enough readers who want to read about the mountains of Kazakhstan.’ CPB is a small press that will publish anything, so long as it’s great. So we are incredibly selective, but the good kind of selective. Sales and success will chase quality, if we keep getting the word out.”
CPB began in earnest as a going concern in 2015, with the publication of Jay Greenfield’s groundbreaking post-war, post-Holocaust novel, Max’s Diamonds and Mark Laporta’s classic young adult science fiction trilogy, The Changing Hearts of Ixdahan Daherek; CPB soon added Donna Levin’s bestselling contemporary women’s fiction novels and legal thrillers written by Ed Rucker, the well-known Los Angeles defense attorney. CPB continued expanding, publishing mysteries, global thrillers, historical and sports fiction, and memoirs, all to significant acclaim.
CPB also added Audere Magazine, a lively web-magazine in May 2018, which, like CPB, publishes anything and everything, from fiction to memoir to political opinion. In October 2019, we opened our first pop-upbookstore in midtown Manhattan, which sold CPB and other small press books during the day and featured a well-attended publication party in the evening.
In April 2021, CPB premiered its first dramatic podcast based on a CPB novel, which debuted to strong numbers. In August 2022, one of CPB’s novels was optioned for film, for the first time.
Most significantly, in September 2022, CINN Group, Incacquired Chickadee Prince Books. CPB is now managed for CINN by Beacon International, a multifaceted media company with offices in London, Singapore, Milan, New York, Chicago, Tampa, and San Francisco, which has committed to fully capitalizing CPB, giving it sufficient resources to permit it to meet its ambitious aspirations fully for the first time.
Both CINN and Beacon are owned by Steve Acunto, a successful and far-sighted publishing and media entrepreneur. With the help of CINN’s significant financial and logistical support, we’re expanding our list to 40 titles a year at the start, adding a twice-weekly podcast that will feature conversation and more new dramatizations, beefing up Audere Magazine, and actively devoting Beacon’s resources and production facilities to the development of CPB’s existing list for film and streaming.