Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

I agree with you to a certain extent. Most indie publishers, you must remember, love making books and love the books they're publishing. They put all their energy in those books and of course they want it to sell. But somehow marketing and promotion isn't in the realm of editing and publishing, so it might be a little hard.

However here you're talking about Soft Skull Press. They might be indie, but they definitely aren't small. I think they can be classified between small and dedicating indie publishers and the big corporates. For Soft Skull Press, money becomes very important and with all those books they publish, you sometimes ask yourself whether they aren't more like the corporates than a small indie publisher.

It doesn't surprise me for a second, Jason. it's a little bit of our "endowment culture," a little of our "fast-food culture," and a little of what publishing has become -- lots of young folks who are worked so hard during the day to meet unrealistic deadlines that are relentless that they hardly want to spend their "free" time reading for fun.

It's a rare saturation learner that really goes deep in the business.

Then there's the point that Khalil makes that the folks who are drawn to building books aren't the folks who are drawn to business. It's true.

I could do a semester on this topic, sorry.
liz

Dear Liz and Khalil,

Thanks for weighing in on this, it's really a telling moment for publishing. I want to say that I adore the books published by all five publishers I just name-checked, but I think it's time all five of those publishers did a Technorati search.

I'm not drawn to business either, but I am drawn to writing communities. Maybe this post will help bring some publishers together with these web communities. It's just sad that they are separated right now...

Thanks for visiting!
Jason

Hate to break it to you man, but I've an RSS feed for the Technorati search for "soft skull" (as well as a number of key authors not likely to be doing it for themselves, should a blogger mention the author byut not the publisher...)

Saw the Mamatas and McColly interviews a while back, did not have time to contact because I was away getting married for the last 3 weeks.

Also, in general, I try to contact bloggers by e-mail directly rather than in comments, since my shameless hustling can be bring for other fols to have to read, but since both your post and hte comments discuss my failure to comment in the past 72 hours, here;'s your comment.

All the best,
Richard Nash
Publisher
Soft Skull Press

Richard,

Nice! And congratulations about the wedding.

Dear Richard Nash,

Thank you for stopping by, and I'm sorry I sounded so aggressive in my post last week. I was hoping to start a discussion, but the whole conversation got off to a bad start--my fault.

I just posted a follow-up, noting Soft Skull's commentary. Check it out:
http://www.thepublishingspot.com/2006/06/post_14.html

Thank you for your support, and feel free to stop by any time...

Sincerely,
Jason Boog

Hi Jason:

If nothing else, I do search the Web every now and then for mentions of Ugly Duckling. Here's our actual URL (the Wikipedia article doesn't link to it -- I have to fix that). Thanks.

Oh, and Richard -- congratulations. I just got married in April myself.

Greg
UDP