Like independent bookstores, small and independent publishers are vital to our literary culture. They take risks on new authors, fill niches, and produce and sustain the diversity of voices that enriches American society. Often, these publishers are so small, they don’t have the resources to distribute their books so they find larger distributors or join together to make sure their books get into stores.
Independent Publishers Group was founded in 1971, the first organization specifically created for the purpose of representing titles from independent presses to the book trade. Recently IPG has been in the news because of its conflict with Amazon. Though we don’t know the exact terms of the conflict, Curt Matthews, chief executive of IPG, in a post argued that the small publishers could not have stayed in business under the terms Amazon offered. (And while you’re on the IPG blog, read through some of the other posts. They are great insights into publishing.) In response to their inability to reach an agreement, Amazon removed all of IPG’s titles from its Kindle store. That’s 4,443 titles that can no longer be purchased for the Kindle.
We need small, independent publishers, in the same way we need small independent bookstores, so we are highlighting ten ebooks from IPG publishers on our homepage for the month of April. Fiction, history, spirituality, sci fi and more. Independently published titles, that, at least at the moment, are not available in ebook form on Amazon. Click here for the full list.
1 comment:
Nice post,Changes in technology - both in hardware and in software - are liable to render many e-books unreadable. And portability is hampered by battery life, lighting conditions, or the availability of appropriate infrastructure (e.g., of electricity).
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