Maggie MacDonald reviews Catherine Kidd's Missing the Ark (Conundrum, 368 pages, $20) in the Globe and Mail this week:

Catherine Kidd is a well-travelled performance artist who has published several CD/chapbook combinations. Missing the Ark is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the performance piece, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Taxidermy, also published by Conundrum Books. Based in Montreal, Conundrum is a small press responsible for breeding eccentric talents, publishing poetry, graphic novels and prose books that fall outside the banal cottage reading that permeates the CanLit landscape. But it is in describing cottage-appropriate domestic details that Kidd's writing works best.

Small publishers can unlock niche markets, writes Bill Wolfe, courtesy of the Courier-Journal:

Film and television director/writer Josh Becker never thought his first book, "The Complete Guide to Low-Budget Feature Filmmaking," would get a lot of attention from big-name publishers. The title, which was aimed at a niche market, would find better reception at a small independent company, Becker reasoned.  His New York literary agent had different ideas. She said, "Here's a list of who I'm going to take it to," Becker recalled, "and it was like the 10 biggest publishers in the world. And after the first five turned her down, she said, 'Nobody likes your book. I'm giving up.' "

 

Abandoning hope of seeing his work in print, Becker eventually decided to place it on his Web site, www.beckerfilms.com. That's when Point Blank Publishing, operated by J.T. Lindroos and Kathleen Martin in New Albany, Ind., came to the rescue. "Immediately, J.T. read it and went, 'Hey, that's a good book. I'd like to publish it,' " said Becker, of West Bloomfield, Mich. Now, after a successful debut by "Complete Guide," Point Blank will issue a second Becker book, "Rushes" in a few weeks, and is working on a third from him. "We can publish books that none of the big companies would touch," said Lindroos, who married Martin and moved to the United States from Finland in 2000.

 

"We can publish a book that is, say, half screwball comedy, half mystery and maybe with a dash of science fiction in it," he said. "No big publisher would publish a book like that," because they're focused on mass-market success.

Ian McMillan (of the Times Online) enters the world of the fringe publishers – who survive with only ingenuity and innovative writing to help:

It's hard to find appropriate language to describe those who run literary small presses, but they are the true heroes of literature, sailing into stormy seas when others prefer the flat, flat calm; they are the grassroots football of literature, playing on muddy pitches in front of small but enthusiastic knots of people, as opposed to the prawn sandwich, big-money Premiership of the mainstream publishers. Maybe neither of these hits the exact spot, but you get the drift.

Mark Hodkinson, who runs Pomona Books from Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, describes the best thing about running a small press as “having an idea for a book and seeing it through from getting an e-mail from the author to the book appearing a year later, and then seeing it in the shops”. Hodkinson is ambitious, too: “I don’t want to sell 500 copies of a book, I want to sell 20,000.” Every small press publisher wants to see their books in people’s hands. They are no good in boxes in the shed.

A new name and logo for the Small Press Center made its official debut on May 31, 2007, when it hosted a cocktail reception at its century old landmark building located at 20 West 44th Street, in midtown Manhattan. The guest of honor was Barney Rosset, founder of the groundbreaking, independent Grove Press.

"Our new name more accurately describes who we are," said Lloyd J. Jassin, Chair of the NYCIP Executive Committee. "Since its founding in 1984, the Center has combined unparalleled educational programs, with fabulous networking opportunities for independent publishers and other industry professionals. Our name served us well over the decades, but didn't reflect who we had become - a vibrant center for the publishing community. Many of our programs take place in the main reading room of The General Society Library. A large part of our brand is our century old library building and our unparalleled access to the publishing industry's movers and shakers - both from the commercial and independent press worlds." "With all new membership benefits, a new website, and an ever-expanding calendar of events, the NYCIP will continue be the go-to place for independent publishers seeking to network with industry insiders while gaining a more competitive edge in today's marketplace" said Karin Taylor, the Center's longstanding Executive Director.

Teresa Mendez, of the Christian Science Monitor, writes about the largest book trade show in the US, where small presses and authors shone and self-promotion was the name of the game:

The country's largest book trade show was spread out over five blocks in the Jacob Javits Convention Center – a meeting place so far on the western edge of Manhattan it seems about ready to topple into the Hudson River.

While by no means a buttoned-up affair, BookExpo America (BEA), which ran May 31-June 3, wasn't exactly the type of circus where you'd expect to see a woman in a firefighter's suit – complete with helmet. Or a young man with an oversize name tag plastered across his entire chest and then some. I, for one, was certainly not expecting to come across God.

But here they all were, roaming among the estimated 36,000 attendees and 2,000 exhibitors where book publishers were offering up their newest and best to ambling booksellers.