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The Joys of Small Presses
New here, but I thought I'd dive right in.
After a college professor steered me to them years ago, I've been in love with small presses and some of the doesn't-exactly-fit-the-mold literature you can find there. This has been amplified lately since many of the small press sites offer books for download. I travel a lot and being able to have a novel or two on my laptop really helps pass the time without adding to my carry load.
Recently a friend recommended a little gem of a site called Wild Shore Press (www.wildshorepress.com). I downloaded two of their offerings, which I highly recommend:
The Ganymeade Protocol by Don Elwell.
This is a near-future pirate novel, for want of a better term. Fleeing an America devolved by greed and religious fanaticism (not too far off the mark from where I'm sitting ) and denied access to other countries, a passle of refugees winds up creating an endlessly circling fleet of small vessels, which in turn becomes its own nation. The book bounces back and forth between the present fleet of ships, dealing with the effects of climate change and politics, and the imaginary history of "the Fleet", reaching back into the 18th century with some surprisingly accurate historical research. All of the characters are eccentrics: gay couples, writers, witches, artists, and the author--whom I've since discovered is a playwright of some standing and apparently equal eccentricity--has a real gift for dialogue. The whole world created is really compelling and engrossing.
The Girl Who Tried to Catch The Man by R J Thomas
This one was fun, and very funny. The novel takes place entirely at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, which, if you don't know of it, is huge and pretty wild. Arranged in short vignettes, the novel traces the personal transformation of a suicidal author as his personal preoccupations get blown away by the general weirdness of the Burning Man and its attendees.
I found both these short novels really enjoyable and find myself going back again and again to reread sections. Both are available as paperback or as download and I highly recommend them. Would love to hear what others think of them.
Wild Shore Press is an interesting little site, with a short list of wildly varied offerings, including serial downloads, play anthologies, and some wierd cultural artifacts. Check it out.
Anyone else have small press sites they can recommend?
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Hello!
I too, just read Elwell's amazing "The Ganymeade Protocol". In doing a web search on the title, I found this wonderful post! What a great novel. Well written, moving and absorbing, it sucked me in and didn't let go! There are other works by Mr. Elwell available on the www.wildshorepress.com website and I've just ordered them, along with a copy of "The Girl Who Tried to Catch the Man" due to your recommendation.
I too would be interested in knowing if anyone else out there knows of small press sites? These are amazing and talented writers that are writing for the love of it, not just to crank out another novel for their million dollar contracts. I'd like to support them all that I can!
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What is it about small press
What is it about small press that lets them come up with innovations the larger publishers don't seem to be able to manage? I think one thing is that most of these new publishers are using publish-on-demand technology so they're not having to keep any inventories.
Whatever, I'm glad places like Wild Shore and Chippewa are around. I'm also very happy to have had the opportunity to read books like Ganymeade Protocol (having read your post, I wound up re-reading on a long train communte, and it really holds up).
I also think patronizing little press operations is something I'm going to consciously do in the future. More business for them may put pressure on the big guys to take more risks.
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Being of a suspicious frame of mind, I suspect that PaulaS and gretel5555 are the principals of Wild Shore Press, but the world is a little short on joy at the moment, and if there are any ready joys in small presses , I'd like to know more:
Most small presses are small but not presses (I think) and contract with folks like BookSurge for print-on-demand (POD) hard copies in the rare case where there is a demand for hard copies. Otherwise, small presses today just sell ebooks. Small presses are probably more joyous in Canada where they are subsidized by the government.
Wild Shore has not made it onto the Small Press Exchange, but everybody has to start somewhere.
My involvement in small presses is limit to trying to help people sell their books. Publication is easy, marketing hard. The North Carolina author Walter Henderson, an acquaintance I greatly admire, wrote a novel Crazy Dream Horse that may well have the best account of Southern hoodoo ever written, yet his book has not sold, partly because of slow pacing at the beginning.
Sakis Totlis, a member of BookTalk but not now active, published The True Eye of the Tiger in 2006 through BookSurge. Sakis's book is a brilliant explanation of the origin of the line text of the I Ching. Unfortunately, this is commonly believed to be a rather specialized field of study, and his book has not sold. I ask his permission to publicize it and posted accounts of it to relevant discussion groups (like Paula and Gretel, I imagine), and Sakis did get some downloads but not the attention he merits. So far, alas, I have found small presses and self publishing to be unjoyous.
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I'm not 'with' WildShore. 'Ganymeade Protocol' was recommended to me by a friend in the Burning Man community. I was highly impressed with it and glad to see it being hyped here on BookTalk. I'm not familiar with many small presses either, but I plan to keep my eyes and ears open from now on.
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I find that small publishers are willing to take more chances on titles that are out of the ordinary. I have read a lot of books from different publishers, but I haven't checked out the one mentioned here. I'll have to check them out.
My first book, Deadly Secrets, is being published by a small publisher, LBF Books ( www.lbfbooks.com ). I have more say in the production of my book than I would with a larger publisher. Also my publisher didn't hesitate to help me become a sponsor for the American Breast Cancer Foundation. They even negotiated a contract for us to use their logo on my book. Would a large publisher done that? Maybe but probably not.
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Re: The Joys of Small Presses
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.......
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Re: The Joys of Small Presses
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.
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Re: The Joys of Small Presses
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.
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Re: The Joys of Small Presses
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.
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Re: The Joys of Small Presses
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.
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