The Small Press: A Rant
Small presses. The phrase gives off a sort of insignificance, doesn't it? Among big-time authors and major publishers, small presses are relatively unimportant. To readers, the small press couldn't even exist and it wouldn't affect them.
Of course, we could always say that the innaccessability of small press publications is because of this. Booksellers are guaranteed to put books produced by major publishers on the shelves before any close-to-unknown books published by small presses. And it's a given that major publishers will have more money to advertise and fund their books so they are seen almost everywhere.
This basically pushes small press books off the ballot.
But I think there's another reason why small presses don't get so much of the limelight. What's the reason?
Their quality!
That's right, I'm finally coming out and saying it: Small presses don't seem to give a shit about the quality of the things they publish. Granted, there are very professional small publishing houses that put out very good and very clean work, but for the majority, small presses STINK.
You see major publishers shooting out ten to twenty books a year, all without or close to without any grammatical/punctuation/or spelling errors. They're busy as hell, what with reading so many damn submissions every day, analyzing and evaluating them all, meanwhile trying to make the ones they've already agreed to publish look as perfect as possible. And they do that endlessly!
And yet, here are the small presses who are lucky to even publish three books a year, and if they run a magazine or online mag, they publish probably on average about six issues a year. Are they nearly as busy as the major dudes? Fuck no they aren't! I can just picture these inexperienced little morons twiddling their thumbs, waiting to receive more submissions while not even glancing over one they've decided to publish. Once they get something that seems worth publishing, they're too excited to even look at it and edit. Do they put half as much the time the biggies do into making their material shine? Are they even a fraction as busy as them?
NO!
They're all just little dimwits, to put it plain and simple. Their idea of starting a publishing company probably came around whilst one was smoking a joint and musing aloud, "Hey, I like Stephen King. I bet that if I get some writer like him to write books for me, I'd make a lot of money. Boy, it would be so EASY!"
I'm not even joking.
I've had it up to HERE with small presses. I read one anthology that contained so many errors I almost screamed at it. Granted, there were a few stories in it that were flawless, but that was due to the writer's skill. And I just put down a book that had so many mistakes in it that I just couldn't stand reading it any longer.
And guess what's so special about that book? The copy-editors (yes, editorS) were listed on the inside flap. Do you see that in any major publishers' books? No. The only written credit the editors get are on the acknowledgements page from the author. They're not put in the book anywhere else.
And you know what I think is so funny about that? THE COPY-EDITOR DIDN'T EXIST TO ME! He was not there. He was probably smoking a joint while he was perusing the manuscript as well.
So I'm sure that by now you all see my point and my obvious anger.
See, with Blue Monday Press, we're hoping to set an example for small presses. The cleanliness of our work is absolute and we're always aiming to improve the quality, even if it already seems decent to the average reader. We want it to look the way WE want it: Beautiful, clean and enjoyable. No strings attached.
If any other thirty-year-old guy who's still living with his mother and "running" a "publishing company" can't do that, it's a definate sign of the apocolypse.
But if a kid half his age with some determination and at least a grasp of how the business works can do that, we may yet be forgiven for our sins.
Of course, we could always say that the innaccessability of small press publications is because of this. Booksellers are guaranteed to put books produced by major publishers on the shelves before any close-to-unknown books published by small presses. And it's a given that major publishers will have more money to advertise and fund their books so they are seen almost everywhere.
This basically pushes small press books off the ballot.
But I think there's another reason why small presses don't get so much of the limelight. What's the reason?
Their quality!
That's right, I'm finally coming out and saying it: Small presses don't seem to give a shit about the quality of the things they publish. Granted, there are very professional small publishing houses that put out very good and very clean work, but for the majority, small presses STINK.
You see major publishers shooting out ten to twenty books a year, all without or close to without any grammatical/punctuation/or spelling errors. They're busy as hell, what with reading so many damn submissions every day, analyzing and evaluating them all, meanwhile trying to make the ones they've already agreed to publish look as perfect as possible. And they do that endlessly!
And yet, here are the small presses who are lucky to even publish three books a year, and if they run a magazine or online mag, they publish probably on average about six issues a year. Are they nearly as busy as the major dudes? Fuck no they aren't! I can just picture these inexperienced little morons twiddling their thumbs, waiting to receive more submissions while not even glancing over one they've decided to publish. Once they get something that seems worth publishing, they're too excited to even look at it and edit. Do they put half as much the time the biggies do into making their material shine? Are they even a fraction as busy as them?
NO!
They're all just little dimwits, to put it plain and simple. Their idea of starting a publishing company probably came around whilst one was smoking a joint and musing aloud, "Hey, I like Stephen King. I bet that if I get some writer like him to write books for me, I'd make a lot of money. Boy, it would be so EASY!"
I'm not even joking.
I've had it up to HERE with small presses. I read one anthology that contained so many errors I almost screamed at it. Granted, there were a few stories in it that were flawless, but that was due to the writer's skill. And I just put down a book that had so many mistakes in it that I just couldn't stand reading it any longer.
And guess what's so special about that book? The copy-editors (yes, editorS) were listed on the inside flap. Do you see that in any major publishers' books? No. The only written credit the editors get are on the acknowledgements page from the author. They're not put in the book anywhere else.
And you know what I think is so funny about that? THE COPY-EDITOR DIDN'T EXIST TO ME! He was not there. He was probably smoking a joint while he was perusing the manuscript as well.
So I'm sure that by now you all see my point and my obvious anger.
See, with Blue Monday Press, we're hoping to set an example for small presses. The cleanliness of our work is absolute and we're always aiming to improve the quality, even if it already seems decent to the average reader. We want it to look the way WE want it: Beautiful, clean and enjoyable. No strings attached.
If any other thirty-year-old guy who's still living with his mother and "running" a "publishing company" can't do that, it's a definate sign of the apocolypse.
But if a kid half his age with some determination and at least a grasp of how the business works can do that, we may yet be forgiven for our sins.
posted by Ian Kappos at 9:44 AM
7 Comments:
w00t w00t! Go Unhallowed Sanctum!
How high is "HERE," exactly?
So these small presses of which you speak refer to almost completely to just sci-fi/fantasy don't they?
All speculative fiction, really. That includes horror.
So how much research have you done because there are quite a few quality small press companies the most famous which is no longer really small is Mcsweeneys.
I've seen enough to know that it's in a ditch and the whole market is regarded as shit because of several publishers' idiocy. And I already stated that there are some good ones.
Just a thought...if one is going to rant about the small presses (with, you might expect, much smaller staffs than the major houses) and their lack of copy editing skills, one should learn how to spell definite. This is especially true of one who claims to pride himself on the cleanliness of his prose.
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