The business began with $2000, provided by the author of the Press's first work, The Latecomer by Sarah Aldridge, the pen name of lawyer Anyda Marchant, and her partner Muriel Crawford.

Naiad was credited with playing "a crucial role in bringing lesbian mysteries into prominence in the 1980s[3]" by publishing award-winning series featuring detectives Kate Delafield, Carol Ashton, Caitlin Reece, Virginia Kelley and others.

Naiad achieved national prominence in 1985 with its publication of Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, for which it reportedly paid Rosemary Keefe Curb and Nancy Manahan $500,000.

Correspondence in the collection includes exchanges with contracted authors as well as other literary luminaries and influences such as Dorothy Allison, Rita Mae Brown, Nancy Berreano of publishing houses Crossing and Firebrand, Andrea Dworkin, Audre Lorde, Sherry Thomas of Old Wives Tales feminist bookstore and Spinsters Ink, and background material on the establishment of the Women in Print Conferences which began in 1976 and are widely credited with creating the Feminist Bookstore Network.

The San Francisco Public Library History Center holds the considerable collection of archival photographs of lesbian and gay literary figures.