Before All Others

I love inde­pendent book­stores. I love small presses. But before all others, I’m nuts about readers looking for some­thing to read that they hadn’t thought about before reading one of our reviews. I can now say “our,” because at last count I have five other reviewers who will be helping to bring an ever-​​widening range of reviewed books to your attention.

So what’s the problem? Well, because of dis­tri­b­ution (or lack of it) not all the titles we read and review may be available to your inde­pendent book­stores, but you all know where they are available. Small presses are often dis­tributed by major pub­lishing houses, while others are able to work through Ingram, a major dis­tributor that is now also a pub­lisher. Dis­trib­utors can offer the big and small book­stores price breaks based on the number of books ordered, return policies, and pre-​​publication reviews and other sales incen­tives. Most inde­pendent presses, those whose purpose is to publish only, with no dis­tri­b­ution package to offer their authors, leave the selling of the books to the authors, and that market gen­erally means Amazon. To those authors, Amazon is the good guy. Hell, Amazon’s the good guy to me when my readers click through from this site to buy from Amazon.

But more and more inde­pendent book­stores are setting up their own affiliate pro­grams and, since this little site is gaining in demo­graphics, I’m hoping that vis­itors to our site might look to see if we are an affiliate of their local book­store. In that case, they can click on that button and they’re home! And if you make a pur­chase, our website makes a bit of money as well. How that will show up on our site is a work in progress. Stay tuned.

If we review a book pub­lished by an inde­pendent press with no dis­tributor, one that is dependent on Amazon for sales (one par­ticular title is almost ready for review) I will so state.

Basi­cally, the pub­lishing business seems to be changing almost daily. I read all the noti­fi­ca­tions I can, but making sense of them is some­thing else. What will not change is our com­mitment to you, the readers, and to the authors whose titles our reviewers think worth your time and money.  –ss