Small presses deserve plenty of praise. Lately, I’ve read several excellent small press books. Alan Jacobs’ Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant was a delight. It was published by William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I never heard of this publishing company, but I’ll be checking it out periodically if they keep publishing great books like Wayfaring. “NADA by Daniel Boyd came out from Casperian Books (never heard of them, either) but if you’re in the mood for a faux-Gold Medal adventure novel, ‘NADA delivers. Richard Stern talks about his writing profession and how he is going to wind down his writing career in his moving collection Still On Call. This was published by the University of Michigan Press (a little larger than the typical small press, but still tiny when compared to the commercial publishers). If we don’t support small presses, they will just go away. Small presses have most of the creative energy in publishing today. Buy a small press book and support their efforts.
Yes, university subsidies to the presses are drying up. They have to be more creative to stay afloat. And they seem to have great difficulty getting their books into stores. No surprise there. Borders and B & N continue to fill their stores with teddy bears, cards, coffee and gift items. I can’t even find recent books from big presses in our pathetic Borders store.
I rarely visit a BORDERS or a B&N store anymore, Patti. Their music CD sections have shrunk to nothing. As you point out, their inventory of new books is pathetic.
Sad but true. You walk into Barnes & Noble (as we did on Saturday) and you see: a wall of magazines, a big display of CDs, a large cafe and tables where you can take your magazine and read it instead of buying it, a huge “Nook is better than Kindle” display with a guy selling hard, a huge table of Stephenie Meyer wannabes, and too many clerks who will look up the answer to your book questions on the computer because they never heard of the book or the author.
The days of full-service bookstores where people know books are fading fast.
Well, that’s depressing.
(;
About 80% of the time, BORDERS and B&N stores DON’T have what I’m looking for so I end up ordering it online, Jeff.
But other than that, the books sound good. I definitely plan to get Dan’s book.
I’m not seeing that top image, George.
These do look good. I agree that small presses, whether general, non-fiction, genre fiction, whatever, are of great value to lovers of books. I order from Grey Wolf Press, Chicago Academy, several university presses, plus the small mystery and SF-F outfits.
You are the prototype small press buyer, Rick. Your MAILBOX MONDAYS are full of acquistions from small presses. I admire you for that.
I thought it was just me with the missing top image.
We only go to B&N for Jackie to see what new books are out and to look for books for our nieces and nephew as she has a teacher discount card she can use for kids’ books.
I think I fixed the top graphic, Jeff. It’s showing up on my computer. I’m baffled by the way graphics appear and disappear in WORDPRESS. Last night, everything was fine. Today, there was a missing graphic. I have a BORDERS reward card and a B&N member card. But if the stores don’t have the books (as usually happens) I end up ordering online anyway.
The image still isn’t visible, George.
I fixed the graphic AGAIN, Rick. The WORDPRESS gremlins are driving me CRAZY!
I can see it now. I’ve not those problems with WordPress, George, but we have different programs, mine is the hosted, yours is the on-your-website.
Graphics come and go, Rick. I wish I knew why so I could fix the problem permanently.
It works now. Thanks.
I had to resort to a work-a-round, Jeff. But it seems to have worked. Dan Stumpf’s book is finally visible.
I noticed the last time I checked B&N closely that though there were a variety of publishers represented, they were all subsidies of the big publishing houses.
Barnes & Noble is for sale, Dan. Like BORDERS, they are losing money at a furious rate. The publishers they service are losing money, too.