24 Mar 2008, Written by Laura Pearson in literary,zines
Preserving Our Independents: Small Beer Press
March is Small Press Month, so in celebration, why not pour yourself a small beer and download a free book from independent publisher Small Beer Press? In case words like “beer” and “free” aren’t enough to pique your interest, how about “magic” and “girl detectives” and “spooky” and “strange”? All of these words can be associated, in one way or another, with Small Beer books.
I first heard about the Northampton, Massachusetts-based micropublishing house a few years ago when I was working at an independent bookstore. One of my well-read coworkers had hand-sold dozens of copies of a short story collection called Stranger Things Happen, which featured great Vintage Nancy Drew-style cover art and a blurb from Jonathan Lethem describing the author, Kelly Link, as “the exact best and strangest and funniest short story writer on earth that you have never heard of at the exact moment you are reading these words and making them slightly inexact.” It was true: I’d never heard of her, but I became increasingly curious about this book that, at least in our little store, was outselling The Da Vinci Code. So I read these strange and funny stories-stories that, by some special alchemy, imbue everyday events with a fantastical weirdness while treating haunting Brothers Grimm-esque themes like they’re nothing out of the ordinary. After reading, enjoying, and starting to recommend the book myself, I discovered that Link had self-published Stranger Things Happen, or I should say co-published it (with her husband Gavin J. Grant), on Small Beer Press.
Link and Grant founded Small Beer in 2000. In some ways, the evolution of their publishing endeavors can be described as two people working with greater and greater amounts of paper: starting with zines, experimenting with chapbooks, and finally arriving at trade paperbacks. In 1996, while working at Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston, they collaborated on publishing a literary zine called Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. “Gavin had access to a photocopier at his temp job, and we both knew a fair number of writers,” says Link. “After awhile, we put out two chapbooks to experiment, just a bit, with more book-like design and layout… It seemed as if we could probably sell a certain number of books, and having worked in bookstores for years, we really wanted a chance to see what making books would be like.” According to Grant, publishing Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet had already taught them “(in small affordable steps): marketing, distribution, design, how to work to deadlines, and most of all, the importance of professional proofreaders.”
Obviously the experience paid off, because after releasing the two chapbooks, Link and Grant went on to publish two short story collections: Stranger Things Happen and Ray Vukcevich’s Meet Me in the Moon Room. Now, in addition to still releasing the twice-yearly zine, Small Beer Press publishes novels, collections, chapbooks, anthologies, and classic reprints. “Most of the books that we’ve published have had some element of fantasy or strangeness to them,” says Link, “but that wasn’t a conscious decision… We set out to publish books that we loved.” Recent releases include the novels Endless Things, by John Crowley, Water Logic, by Laurie J. Marks, and Generation Loss, by Elizabeth Hand (another book that enchanted my well-read former coworker).
This labor of love isn’t strictly a paper venture. Like other indie publishers, Small Beer uses the Internet, in various imaginative ways, to get the word out. Which leads me back to that free book I mentioned: After Link published her second short story collection, Magic for Beginners, Small Beer made Stranger Things Happen available for free download under a Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommerical ShareAlike 2.5) license. Not only was this a way of promoting downloadable story-sharing with no Digital Rights Management (DRM) strings attached, but it also served as an expression of gratitude. As Grant and Link explain on their website, “When we published our first two books, we were incredibly lucky and received an incredible amount of support, advice, help, and enthusiasm from readers, publishers, writers, and others across North America and beyond. So this is one way to say thanks, everyone.”
Yet as indie publishers like Small Beer Press continue on-not only holding their ground but even claiming new territory (content-wise, distribution-wise)–it’s we grateful readers who are saying thanks and raising our glasses and toasting: Live well. Live long.
Free Download of Stranger Things Happen
Previously in the Preserving Our Independents series
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