What Keeps the Many Independent Publishing Houses Going?
It might actually be the other way around – the small publishers might be what keeps book publishing going. They know how to do one thing, namely find the niche that the big players are missing, either because they cannot or do not want to cater to it. Poetry, for example, is a traditional niche topic but also politically risky and non-mainstream theories, specialized consumer-health research and regional topics. Plus, the entrepreneurial ‘90s especially were conducive for the advent of small presses for a variety of reasons: document.getElementById(‘adsense_placeholder_2’).innerHTML = document.getElementById(‘adsense_ad_2_hidden’).innerHTML; • Desktop publishing brought the whole publishing process to the home office; • improved print-on-demand (POD) technology allowed for small print runs and on-demand reprints; • the Internet transitioned from presentation medium to effective sales and marketing tool; • chain bookstores were ready to taken on even small publishers initially • ISBN n
