Linda Kramer, the longtime publisher and co-founder of H J Kramer who published bestsellers like Dan Millman's Way of the Peaceful Warrior, died December 24, 2017, at her home in Marin County, Calif., due to illness. She was 81 years old.
Kramer first entered the publishing world in the early 1960s, working as an art director for Dover Publications and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. In 1966, she left the industry in order to raise her family, but returned to publishing in 1983 when she and Hal Kramer, founder of Celestial Arts, started H J Kramer with the goal of touching "as many lives as possible with a message of hope for a better world." She and Hal married in 1987.
In 1984, only a year after starting H J Kramer, they released Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which became a worldwide bestseller, and over the next several years they published other bestselling titles, including Diet for a New America by John Robbins and Opening the Channel by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer. In 2000, H J Kramer entered a joint venture with New World Library.
Hal Kramer died in 2008.
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Bill Dailey, the longtime proprietor of Dailey Rare Books, "a landmark in Greater West Hollywood and on the Los Angeles book scene for 40 years," died December 15, WEHOville reported. He was 72. Dailey was also a publisher and a letterpress printer. In 1972, he co-founded the Press of the Pegacycle Lady with his then-wife, Victoria Dailey. The press specialized in producing the book as art.
In 1975, they opened William & Victoria Dailey Rare Books, which became Dailey Rare Books in 1997 and was "a mecca for those in search of rare and unusual books," the Times noted. Dailey closed the store in 2007 and sold books via the Internet and at antiquarian book fairs.