Street Level....Atlantic Avenue

his story could easily be a beach-bag pulp fiction novel. Instead, it is the true story of the near-ruin of an independent publisher.

The plot: A man convicted of conspiracy to commit murder writes a scandalous book about a popular presidential candidate, claiming access to high-level sources, revealing information about illegal financial dealings and cocaine use. Threatened by said candidate and the author’s own criminal past, a large publishing house decides not to release the book and burns it. The author, distraught, turns to the young editor of a small publishing company, who gleefully accepts. A year later, the publishing company gets sued and the author kills himself. The book is “Fortunate Son,” an unauthorized biography of George W. Bush; the dead author is J.H. Hatfield; the do-it-yourself publishing company is Soft Skull Press.

In a few short months, Soft Skull was run into the ground and almost destroyed by financial disasters, bad business deals, poor record keeping, and a lawsuit. But now, despite its highly publicized troubles, detailed in the new documentary “Horns and Halos,” Soft Skull is quietly making a comeback.

Soft Skull was founded in a Kinko’s copy shop in 1993 by Sander Hicks, a young, charismatic punk rocker, self-described revolutionary, and Kinko’s graveyard shift employee. His girlfriend Susan Mitchell was his partner. Between midnight at 8 a.m., Hicks Xeroxed chapbooks for his friends. After years of word-of-mouth praise, Hicks incorporated Soft Skull in 1996. To raise money, Hicks issued limited stock offerings of

$1,000 to supporters. The company’s first home was a basement on the Lower East Side, where Hicks worked as a janitor.

Hicks began publishing books ranging from poems by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo to William Upski Wimsatt’s cult classic Bomb the Suburbs. Independent magazines, punk rockers and activists across the country were talking about Soft Skull. In July 2000, Punk Planet’s Will Tupper wrote, “Sander Hicks is going to change history.” When Hicks decided to publish “Fortunate Son” in 2000, it seemed like just another notch in a long line of successes.

But “Fortunate Son” was different. The book was receiving widespread media attention once St. Martin’s Press withdrew it from circulation, because of the discovery of Hatfield’s criminal past and perceived threats of a libel suit from the Bush family. Hatfield claimed in the afterword of “Fortunate Son” that the younger Bush had been arrested for cocaine possession in 1972. At the same time, a reporter for The Dallas Morning News uncovered Hatfield’s conviction of attempted murder in 1978 for which he served time in prison.

Shortly after Hicks signed on to publish “Fortunate Son” the water started to rise above his head. He asked Hatfield to address his criminal record in a foreword for the new edition of the book. Hatfield agreed, and included a detailed description of his crime and the alleged involvement of a business partner who was never convicted.

“Hatfield sent in the new foreword at the last possible moment before it could have gotten printed,” Hicks says. “My own naiveté and inexperience allowed me to let it go into the book without being vetted [before a lawyer]. I learned the hard way.” The consequences were disastrous.

Soft Skull Press was sued for libel by the businessman Hatfield names as a co-conspirator. From there, the mistakes multiplied faster than anyone could have imagined. Though top-ranking New York lawyers would have jumped at the chance to defend Soft Skull, Hicks hired a few affordable lawyers who settled the case out of court for an undisclosed sum.

“It was a war against a manufactured set of opinions about a book and its author,” says Hicks. “We defeated the opinion about the book by keeping it in print, and letting the intelligent reading public see firsthand that it’s well-written, fair and potent. We didn’t save the author, whose personal demons were huge, but not as huge as his public enemies. I think [Hatfield] was out of control, broke and desperate,” Hicks says. “He had a ton of creativity, drive and energy. When he turned on himself, it was like he was devoured by wild dogs.” However, Hicks says that he is only “80 percent certain” Hatfield killed himself. He did not elaborate.