Martin built a successful office supply business in Los Angeles in the 1960s, eventually becoming the manager of a forty-person operation.
He had been a book collector since the age of twenty, eventually amassing a collection of D. H. Lawrence first editions, which he sold to UC Santa Barbara for $50,000 to fund the founding of Black Sparrow Press.
[6] Under Martin's watch, Black Sparrow went on to publish works by many prominent literary figures such as Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Diane Wakoski, David Bromige, Joyce Carol Oates, John Ashbery, Wanda Coleman, Charles Reznikoff, Kenneth Koch, Wyndham Lewis, Fielding Dawson, and Ed Sanders.
In 2002, HarperCollins imprint Ecco Press purchased the rights to Black Sparrow authors Bukowski, Bowles, and Fante for a "seven-figure" deal brokered by Ecco founder Dan Halpern; the rest of Black Sparrow's backlist was sold to Boston-based publisher David R. Godine for $1.
[10] This sale price included all of Black Sparrow's remaining inventory, in order to continue providing royalty income to the publisher's authors.