THE OFFICES OF Manic D Press, San Francisco's publisher of street poets, paranoid artists, political cartoonists, and experimental novelists (full disclosure: Manic D published my poetry book, The Beautiful) – are tucked away in the upstairs part of publisher Jen Joseph's Bernal Hill home. But evidence that a crucial player in local indie-lit culture publishes here is scattered throughout the place: The living room is a mess of debris lugged home from the recent BookExpo, and the press's first paid employee, Sierra Logan, is sitting at the sunny kitchen table, sorting through the slush pile.

"I read every manuscript that comes over the transom," Joseph says, with both weariness and pride. "The Bigfoot book came in the slush pile. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever read in my life." She's referring to In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot, by Graham Roumieu, an illustrated novel in which the mysterious creature demystifies himself, offering opinions on a variety of pop-culture and philosophical quandaries. It's been one of Manic D's best sellers.

Today the slush pile holds no such gems. "Nothing that I've been just 'wow' about," says Logan, who met Joseph at a recent Anarchist Book Fair, asked if the press needed any help – and found herself a new job. As she tears into another envelope, Joseph leads me upstairs to the official Manic D office, a small room made smaller by the avalanches of paper sloping out from the walls.

"Manic D started in 1984," Joseph tells me, "just 'cause, in the larger scope of literature, that's a fine year to start a press. The first book was my own. It was a lot easier to be slack in San Francisco then, so I worked as little as possible and spent all my time in City Lights. When I wasn't reading, I was sitting in Trieste drinking espresso and writing my own poetry. Next thing I knew, I had notebooks and notebooks full of poetry." Back then, in the days before desktop publishing, books had to be typeset the old-fashioned way. "It was laid out by hand," Joseph recalls. "I got a book called The Publish It Yourself Handbook and learned about ISBNs. And spent a lot of time looking at poetry books and how they were designed." The first Manic D offering is titled The Future Isn't What It Used to Be.

Manic D got proper bookstore distribution in 1994, after Perry Farrell, in a Spin interview, mentioned that he was reading a Manic D book, Bana Witt's Möbius Stripper. Suddenly the book – one stripper's experience of the rise and fall of the Mitchell Brothers' sex empire – was in hot demand, but nobody could find it. The book distributor Publishers Group West stepped in and hooked up Manic D with a larger audience. Now its books are found not only in chain and indie bookstores, but also in commercial, lifestyley joints such as Virgin Records and Urban Outfitters.

Manic D's latest release is the irreverent and surprisingly helpful Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All Ages, edited by Jennifer Blowdryer, a fixture in underground lit scenes on both coasts. Stuffed with sage and snarky wisdom by a cavalcade of seasoned misfits, Good Advice features such pieces as "How to Be a Hip Mama" by hip-mama zinester Ariel Gore; charming tips on "How to Be a Trendy Flunky" by novelist Alvin Orloff; guides for the gender dysphoric by Tribe 8's Lynn Breedlove and spoken word performer Sherilyn Connelly; plus help with drugs, debt, and becoming a dominatrix. The best advice comes straight from the pen of Blowdryer, whose tone teeters between cranky and benevolent. A section titled "Dangerous Wannabes" warns the newly trendy against "Eves," those little personality suckers so finely dramatized in the classic film All About Eve: "At some point in your trendy life, someone will want to be you. Perhaps their youth was not tortured enough, or they were tortured in the wrong way, and they are not enjoying your modest success." "Things That Will Age You" lists federal trials, employment, and sunshine as enemies of youth. A special passage is devoted entirely to advice on not acting too crazy while visiting Washington, DC, as the book warns you'll likely be tossed in an institution. Blowdryer suggests Los Angeles, instead.

Coming down the pike for Manic D is The Military Draft Handbook, edited by local activist James Tracy, whose previous Manic D publication, The Civil Disobedience Handbook, is a must for a politically minded bookshelf. "Manic D takes work that had been traditionally marginalized by commercial publishing – slightly offbeat," Joseph summarizes. "What we like to do is take things from the margin and bring them to the center."