Reading Responses

For starters, I guess the most useful thing I got out of these readings were the ten billion references to different independent publishers and small presses. After I finished up with what Temple and Munroe had to say, I had an absolute field day on Google looking at all of the people they plugged. Speaking as someone who knew next to nothing about the world of small press prior to entering this class, it was great to suddenly have so many names thrown at me, and only in the second week, too.

I absolutely identified with what the Temple fellow had to say about the corporate takeover of the book world. "Even young people, new to the trade," he says, "long for the time we never actually knew when publishing wasn't dominated by faceless corporations and the public was hungrier for good books." I am so one of those people, and I think it's wonderful that independent publishers are still willing to take a leap of faith when it comes to selling things that aren't exactly "mainstream". Hell, hardly anything I read is mainstream. Prior to this reading, I'd never really noticed that before. And while the constant comparison to punk music can get old kinda fast for those of us who have nothing but 80s hair metal on their mp3 player- I assume that's only me, though- I was very interested to hear how effective it can be to aggressively promote your own book.

I enjoyed the section of No Media Kings where the different options for do-it-yourself book press were explained, along with all of their pros and cons. After reading it, however, I am 100% positive that I will -never- be able to hand bind my own hardcover book, as it seems to require a level of craftiness that a person as entirely lacking in domesticity as myself could never hope to achieve. That was a bit upsetting. I like hardcovers.