Small Presses: 'Closest Equivalent to Your Local Farmer's Market'
From today's Shelf Awareness. The Odyssey Bookshop couldn't agree more. While we *love* our friends at the big publishers and the books they produce, ounce for ounce, it's the small publishers doing some of the most responsible publishing in America today. Let's hear it for small presses--academic or otherwise!
Small Presses: 'Closest Equivalent to Your Local Farmer's Market'
 "In the world of literary culture, the small press is probably the closest equivalent to your local farmer's market. (The carrots might look funnier, but, after you're used to it, they taste about five times better.) There are tons of small presses, spread out over the country, and they're often run at either no-profit or a loss. These are labors of love--not engaged in the production of commodities for consumption, but something closer to Lewis Hyde's notion of 'the gift.' Hand-sewn chapbooks take time to make, the poems in them take time to read, and the poets (most likely) took a lot of time to write them. Their production occurs on a smaller (and less grandiose) scale, and like the Slow Food and broader Slow Culture movement, they want to restore to us a sense of time that our current world system strips away from us. Perhaps they wouldn't want to be in the airports, even if we let them. But they can, like the local food economy (which is growing at a spectacular rate, nationally), become viable alternatives with our support."
~Emily Crowe |
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