Sa*miz*dat (noun)

1) underground publishing from Russian, “self-publishing”, a phenomenon that arose in the late 1950s in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Etymologically, the word "samizdat" is made out of "sam" (Russian: сам, "self, by oneself") and "izdat" (Russian: издат, shortened "издательство", izdatel'stvo, "publisher"), thus, self published.
Documents were run off on mimeograph machines in basements.
The term was coined as a pun by Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov in the 1940s in an analogy with the names of Soviet official publishing houses, such as Politizdat (short for Politicheskoe izdatel'stvo,
Russian: Политиздат [2]), Detizdat (literature for children), etc.
2) secret printing press
3) banned literature.

Welcome to the Web page for Samizdat Publishing, Inc., founded by Jim Fawcette. Samizdat is emerging from ‘stealth mode’ after five years of development.

Our first product is a Web site called Way Too Connected, which is aimed at power users of mobile technology, from phones to services.

Samizdat is the creation of Jim Fawcette, who has worked on over 20 publishing start-ups or repositioning efforts. Among those Jim was the founder of Fawcette Technical Publishing, Inc., whose assets were sold in December, 2006 to 1105 Media; DevX.com, which was sold to Jupiter Media, and Fawcette-McGrath, Inc., focused on international trade and political risk.

I picked the term Samizdat less for the political context than for the self-publishing guerrilla nature of this underground Soviet literature, which seems to fit the nature of today’s Web.

Jim Fawcette

© 2009 Jim Fawcette