The Best Writing

As someone once told Raymond Carver: all the best writing is done between the pages of the small press magazines and chapbooks.

Discuss.

Small presses are the lifeblood of the publishing industry. For a good view of what's happening in the small-press world, check out these sources:

ForeWord magazine
Independent Publisher magazine
anything PMA-related

I'm an editor and loathe the idea of having to work in a big house in New York City (which I also loathe). Does anyone here work at a small press?

-corey

Yo--I'm the founder of a small press in Duluth, MN called Lost Hills Books. Frankly, I don't know what it means to say that small presses are the life blood of publishing. It seems to me that the big publishing houses and the small presses live on different planets, and most book editors at large newspapers rarely if ever review small-press publications.

I'm doing an Author Chat starting Nov. 1, and these might be interesting issues to discuss at that time and place.

Man, I'm sorry I didn't see this message sooner. Thanks for your post. There are thousands of small presses in this country, all of which give voice to creative and thought-provoking voices that wouldn't be considered at bottom-line driven big houses and conglomerates. This is what I mean by "lifeblood." Variety and richness are found in small niches and communities that don't cater to the "blockbuster" and beach read crowd. It's the middle of November, so I may have missed your author chat, but I'll try to catch it now.

One-Story.com. I love it.

Yes, I agree whole-heartedly with what you say. I was only lamenting the fact that so few people see small presses the way you and I do. I've justed posted a review of Shelter Half, a novel by Carol Bly published by a small press in my home city. It's a wonderful novel, and I don't know what would have happened to it had not the guy who runs Holy Cow! Press known about the manuscript when Carol died last December.

It is sad to think how much wonderful work is lost in the hypercompetitive book trade. Of course, it's getting easier and cheaper to self-publish--and even self-market. However, I'm a strong believer in the value-adds that publishers provide. And I think if editors have a strong connection with authors--if the authors can see you care about their work--those books become much better in the publishing process. This is something small presses are particularly good at, and I like that atmosphere of collaboration and creativity.

Just a quick link for "small press spotlight" on the National Book Critics website:
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/
A lot of interesting people are profiled here periodically.

I agree that the small presses publish some of the best, richest, and most diverse writing and are in that sense the lifeblood of contemporary lit. I don't even know if it's a shame that the small presses have this role, and the big presses ignore a lot of those voices. It just is the way it is. The small presses will always inform the tone of literature because so many writers and intellectuals do read them--so many of the culture makers. In the book, So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance by Gabriel Zaid, he argues that diversity in publishing is good, because not all books HAVE an inherent audience of 3 million, or even 30,000. Some books have more like 5000 readers, while books that are easier to read and digest (i.e. big presses) may really appeal to millions of readers. At the risk of sounding snobbish, when I was a bookseller and many of my friends were too, the phrase we heard so often about Harry Potter or even The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was "It's not like reading at all, it's like turning pages!" Well, something tells me that those "readers" are never going to make a blockbuster of a much tougher read like Murphy or A Heaven of Others or Stet, even if they were published on a big press.