The Joys of Small Presses

[stevazeno]

I sail a lot, and i've found that small press sites tend to be really good about providing inexpensive, open source downloads you can read on your laptop. I've been really happy about that. Considered getting a "Kindle" or one of the other readers, but frankly the whole protection scheme thing...especially with what Amazon did a bit ago deleting works off of people's machines that they'd previously paid for, gives me the willies.

I think Ill stick with the small press sites that just provide simple .pdf downloads. I'd hate to be in the middle of the Biscayne Bay and discover that some corporate type had deleted all my reading material.......

[tuscia]

Did you know that March was Small Press Month? There are some very worthy small presses: Wordcraft of Oregon www.wordcraftoforegon.com which does fantasy, as well as literary fiction and poetry. Quite a few of its authors have raked up prizes in the small press area. Gival Press is another, Milkweed -- All of them are struggling at present, the crisis has hit them hard. There is a whole roster of prizes for small press fiction: the Hoffer Award, the London Book Festival Award, the IPPY prizes -always interesting to investigate. Google them and you will find some great books and prize-winning authors.

[Rancher1]

I think you are right about small publishing companies but only because my books are published with one. So I may be a little one sided. However if I was with a big publishing company I would probably think they were awesome too.

The following link is my publishing company. They have quite a few books (including mine) that are pretty good. If you are really serious about checking out small presses.



http://www.graydogpress.com/bookstore

[stevazeno]

one thing I've noticed lately is that a lot of these small press operations....most of them publish on demand,...are switching over to Createspace, Amazon's in house publisher for their hardcopy work. Its good because it makes a lot of their stuff available on Amazon (which takes a hefty bite, often more than a publish on demand company can handle), but I wonder about Amazon getting so much control in the industry.....or even more control than it has.

I went looking for some of the stuff PaulaS posted at the start of this thread and noted that wildshorepress had moved some of its titles to Createspace, probably for just that reason. Most of the small presses, though, seem to be sticking with their own sites for downloads. Maybe Amazon's bite is a bit too much for the Kindle stuff.

What do they charge for that, anyone know?

BTW I did download aging Popstar Ian Whitcomb's book from wildshore, and its a lot of fun. Its also freaking LOOOONG for a small press book. Ah well. My Mac don't care.

[Cathymacleod]

The small press behind Booktaste (where I blog) has introduced tools that help a reader judge a book and its author. It's a vital step when the author is not well known.