Kate Casper of The Daily Iowan examines Iowa City's Impetus Press. Impetus Press is the brainchild of Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash, located in Iowa City, IA. They publish serious literary fiction with a pop edge that falls in-between the worlds of experimental and commercial publishing.

Jennifer Banash and Willy Blackmore have taken their small publishing house from an unknown, shoestring concern to an independent press that attracts half a dozen unsolicited manuscripts from across the country every day. Impetus Press, founded in August 2005, will even host a reading this month in Manhattan and another that will be broadcast May 29 on satellite radio.

With a lust for literary pop fiction, a great-grandfather's legacy, and fresh voices to be heard, Banash's and Blackmore's press is proving itself after a difficult first year in business. In January, Impetus passed a key small-press benchmark by signing on with a national distributor specializing in books from independent imprints, Biblio Distribution. The distributor handles storage, shipping, and bookstore marketing.

Nationwide distribution also brought Impetus attention on the literary scene. Across the country and on the Internet, book reviews, interviews, and features on Banash and Blackmore have drawn attention to this Iowa City press.

Readings at literary venues, such as the KGB Bar in New York City, well-known for hosting authors, have generated buzz for Impetus (and another is planned for May 20). The hype has attracted daily submissions, and in the fall, Impetus will release three titles.

Still, the first year of business for Impetus was a "trial by fire," Banash said.

She and Blackmore had the literary/editorial/artistic side covered, but they knew little about business. The name of the press accurately describes its foundation; they had an idea and moved quickly.

"I think that if we had really sat down and thought about the financial aspects of things at the very beginning, we probably wouldn't have started the business at all," Blackmore said.

Impetus was financed by personal savings and loans scraped together. It was risky. "Small presses require a fair amount of capital and have a very difficult time getting good returns," Blackmore said.

Almost every aspect of publishing was a challenge, he said: "Finding people to blurb books, finding people to review books, finding bookstores to carry our books, finding a distributor to sell our books to bookstores, then trying to find readers to buy the books once there in bookstores."

Read the rest of the article here. Also, a very nice article/interview was recently posted over at Pop Matters. 

Source: The Daily Iowan

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