Richard Marcus, via Blogcritics Magazine, spotlights two indpendent presses, Toby and Perceval — check out the full article here.

But if there is anything or anyone I have a soft spot for when it comes to books it's the smaller independent presses. I suppose you could put it down to a type of romanticism, an affinity for the small press that puts out books because they love it, rather than being in pursuit of the next bestseller of the moment like bigger presses are forced to be.

Of course that's not the truth in either situation, but larger imprints do have much more put on the line than the small ones and have to worry more about the bottom line. The small press with only a limited run of far fewer titles can afford to take a few more risks with the style and content of its releases. Whether it is true or not, in my mind's eye I will always associate small presses with work that is more concerned with artistic merits than commercial viability.

I know that is an awful generalization and that there are probably numerous instances of just the opposite, but how often do you find the work of a contemporary Cuban photographer in one of those luxurious coffee table books the large houses produce periodically? How many would risk publishing translations of detective novels by a former officer in the Algerian army?

Trance, published by Perceval Press, and the early works of Yasmina Khadra, published by Toby Press, are respectively the two small presses referred to in the paragraph above. Over the past few months I've come to appreciate both of them for the wonderful content they have to offer.

Perceval Press was founded by Viggo Mortensen and is primarily concerned with publishing books of artistic expression that would probably have very little chance of seeing the light of day otherwise. A good percentage of the work is Mr. Mortensen's wonderfully cerebral and emotional poetry and photographs. But this is much more than just the vanity press of a wealthy individual, as they also publish selected works by a variety of other artists.

The majority of their focus is on art for art's sake, but they do publish other work as well. There are the highly strange and brilliant musical collaborations of Mr. Mortensen and the mysterious Buckethead (so named for the empty Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket he wears on his head while performing, and his penchant for appearing masked at all times) available on CD. There are also a good variety of other photographs and visual arts on sale as well.

In a lot of ways Perceval Press epitomises the nature of the small press in that they publish a very specific type of book. The books they produce are not going to appeal to a mass audience, but they weren't designed to. The books they offer challenge us to see the world in different ways and not all of them are comfortable or pleasant. But then again, there is a lot about our world that is not comfortable or pleasant.

Toby Press is a lot more like your traditional publisher in that they offer a variety of fiction and non-fiction work. Where they differ from their more mainstream contemporaries is the nature of their content. Aside from the aforementioned Khadre, they lean heavily towards authors from the Middle East.

Probably Toby Press is one of the few places in the world where Jew and Arab are equally at home as they rub shoulders quite happily together in their catalogue. Whether it's an Iranian describing the days just before the overthrow of the Shah or an elderly Orthodox Jew who is devoted to his faith and his life in the city of Jerusalem, the gulf that exists between them in our world is bridged in Toby's catalogue.

It is truly an international publisher as stories travel from eastern Africa to the Georgia Steppes, to the Golan Heights, and the streets of Damascus and Algiers. Although on some pages the characters speak the polemic of the times, the authors are not endorsing those sentiments, just ensuring that we know the reality in which they exist.

Like Perceval Press, Toby Press brings us the voices we don't normally get to hear. While now it seems like almost every publisher has at least one Muslim writer in their stable, to go with their Hindu, the only distinction that seems to have mattered at Toby has been the quality of the writing.

Check out the full article here.

Source: Blogcritics Magazine

Via Wikipedia: Blogcritics is a popular news and opinion blog founded in 2002 by Eric Olsen and Phillip Winn. The site—a self-proclaimed "sinister cabal of superior bloggers"—offers a wide range of articles focusing on popular culture in such categories as Music, Books, TV/Film, Sports, and Gaming. In addition, it features Politics and Culture sections dealing with a broader range of cultural issues. Blogcritics features more than 400 original articles a week and maintains an archive of over 37,000 posts.

Beginning with only fifty members, Blogcritics has since gathered over 1000 contributors who work to provide original content.^[2] Perhaps the distinction that most sets Blogcritics apart from many other group blogs is the democratic nature of the site; anyone with a personal blog is eligible to contribute. This is evident in the Politics section where one can always see a wide range of political views represented (and often hotly contested). One regular contributor even used the site as a platform to document his Libertarian candidacy in the Indiana senatorial race in 2004.

At the forefront of the Blogcritics enterprise is site publisher and co-owner, Eric Olsen, who was recently named to the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100—a "power list of bloggers, social networkers, tool smiths, and investors leading the Open Media Revolution." Working alongside Olsen is a team of over twenty editors—many of whom are scattered across the country and have never met face-to-face—who offer their time and energy to the management of the ever-growing site.

Since the site's inception in 2002, Blogcritics has picked up a strong popular following and garnered critical acclaim. As of November 2005, the site currently receives approximately 50,000 visitors a day. It has won several Blog awards including a Bloggie and a Forbes.com Best Media Blog. In addition, the site is an accredited news source for both Google News and My Yahoo!.

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