The literary ecosystem can feel vast and overwhelming within an industry in major flux, constantly threatened by corporate greed and inefficiency. These realities continually challenge the sustainability of smaller bookish businesses, yet independent bookstores and small presses keep working to offer better, more personal models for reading intentionally.
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But long before I thought about any of this, I frequented bookstores—wandered the stacks, relished that irresistible “old book” smell, sought out new editions by my favorite authors, and discovered unexpected finds from bookseller recommendations and thoughtful book displays. From Unabridged and Seminary Co-op in Chicago to gems like the second-hand stores Dickson Street (Fayetteville, AR) and Gardner’s (Tulsa, OK), these spaces are where I feel most like myself. Many of our family’s outings and trips now revolve in some way around visiting bookstores wherever we happen to be. We want our children to grow up as part of a community of readers, to instill in them a culture that values books as investments that can help them grow and connect with something larger than themselves.
Since beginning our own small press, my husband and I have woven this vision into the fabric of our culture as a literary business. Much like the booksellers we’ve always admired, we seek to connect with readers and support our authors in the hope of building a stronger community. Now as partners in this process, we rely on our friends at places like Bookish (here in our hometown, Fort Smith, AR) or The Floating Bookshop in Oklahoma City to share our latest titles and create excitement around them in ways that authentically connect with their customers. Bookish regularly hosts our authors and even created a new book club to highlight one of our memoirs earlier this year; our titles consistently make The Floating Bookshop monthly bestseller lists because of the store’s grassroots mindset. Finding opportunities to encourage each other makes the often-lonely process of making (and selling) books more fun and, I like to believe, enables our shared work to become greater than the sum of its parts.
In another tangible sense, we share something significant in common: our status as small local businesses. While serving distinct roles in the literary world, independent bookstores and independent publishers are often built on similar foundations, depending on various players in the publishing industry to help books find their ideal readers (and pay the bills in the process). When a bookseller shares an anecdote about their lives as parents or the ongoing challenges of juggling the constant demands of a small business, it resonates instantly because I am right there with them. While our press has grown quickly, we remain a family-run operation, managing everything from our own home while taking care of our children and other responsibilities together every day.
My husband and I manage the workload of book development, promotion, and distribution within the daily rhythm of our family life, typically in the late hours and other stolen pockets of time. Our bookcases—already long overstuffed from personal collections—now fight for space among the living room “warehouse” of books that aren’t sent to our distributor. Our kids practice counting the packages for book orders and make friends with the postal workers; they carry ARCs around the house and pretend they can read them. When we get good news about our books, we celebrate as a family, building a shared life around the things we love most. And at the end of the day, we do everything we can to find readers who will keep making this life possible.
When I think of serving readers and the wider world of books, I think of people like Danny Caine and his “Resist Amazon” work as a (now former) bookseller and author, providing a compelling alternative vision to the corporate book world. I think of Two Dollar Radio building a following and putting down roots in their local community so that readers near and far become loyal to their brand and their books. Emily Liner at Friendly City Books in Mississippi recently established a new literary festival with a stellar lineup and fantastic turnout. There are endless examples of booksellers modeling ways that publishers can tap into a broader readership beyond their authors’ immediate circles by cultivating a culture that seeks out those communities where they are and promotes loyalty to them. It’s how some bookstores become destinations in and of themselves for folks from all over, building an experience around books and the shared process of encountering them that creates more reasons to keep coming back for more.
Since most small presses don’t have storefronts or regular opportunities to connect with readers in person, we have to get inventive in offering opportunities for supporting our work directly. It’s not as simple as throwing the metadata to Amazon or Ingram and expecting people to discover books organically, but if we want to continue to see independent literature thrive, we have to take conscious steps to support it. There are several strategies that all of us can implement to work toward this common goal.
Recommend small press books to your local independent bookstores—and then buy them! If you know a press that should be on your own community’s radar, help make that happen.
One of the few variables more or less in our control as publishers is to build up a following around our own books. A practical way to promote this loyalty is through investing in a direct-to-consumer website that makes promoting and buying books simple; it also gives the publisher the widest margin compared to other platforms, which can build greater sustainability less susceptible to the various fees and complications that come with selling through external channels. For readers committed to helping small presses thrive, buy directly from presses when those books aren’t available in bookstores. Publishers can further incentivize with extra perks, discounts, and exclusive options to give readers less reason to go elsewhere for their books. “Shopping small” can still happen on the internet when you know you’re buying from a real person at the other end of a website. Bull City’s “pay-what-you-can” model for certain titles is a great example of incentivizing purchases beyond the enigmatic pricing algorithms on other platforms.
Websites also provide greater opportunity for a cohesive editorial vision. Similar to how booksellers group books in their stores to create dialogue (and encourage larger purchases), publishers have a responsibility to build a similar vision in their own marketing and community around their books. A catalog is a conversation; help encourage readers to want to join in. There are a number of ways to do this, from keeping bundle listings updated to creating social media posts that group backlist titles and new releases together to encourage new purchases from readers who’ve liked your past books. As presses build out their websites, they can further diversify revenue streams that remain oriented to providing clear tangible benefits to readers (i.e. not submission fees or relying on contests). I love seeing things like the new “Poetry Lives Forever” merch from June Road Press. Some presses build strong workshop programs to address this goal as well, offering a wide range of opportunities for readers and writers to stay connected to their mission and community.
As readers become more mindful of the actual publishers of books they love, they can also help raise awareness of those presses. Recommend small press books to your local independent bookstores—and then buy them! If you know a press that should be on your own community’s radar, help make that happen. Never assume this will happen organically amid the constant influx of new books that often prioritizes larger presses with vast marketing budgets. Publishers can help support this process as well by building a solid distribution infrastructure and ensuring their books are available on favorable wholesale terms that serve everyone’s needs within slim margins. As some already do, booksellers can feature small press spotlights on designated shelves or tables to steer readers’ attention toward titles that could otherwise be overlooked among the more popular, buzzy books of the season.
In general, I would love to see more dialogue across the various levels of the publishing world. Encouraging more conversations among everyone in the industry—readers, writers, booksellers, publishers, and all the other professionals that get books where they need to go—would help us do our work better and more efficiently. We have much to learn from each other about the ways our own choices have a wider impact on the sustainability of our shared literary landscape. Publishers can also collaborate together to share resources and accomplish more together. One of the ways we’ve done this is by offering a bundle of books by one of our authors that includes books he’s published with other small presses; I am eager to see fewer literary silos and duplication of efforts whenever possible. Asterism has ambitiously taken on a similar goal in their newer distribution network as well, creating a compelling alternative model for booksellers and individual customers to discover more independent literature in one place.
A better world is possible in publishing; we all have a job to do to make that happen. As Small Business Saturday approaches (and of course, all year round), how can we fight for independent literature and small literary businesses in a time when they can seem increasingly precarious? Do as much as we can to help support the publishers and booksellers championing these books so that they can be less dependent on other forces out of their control.
