The Small Pressession

On Sunday, the North Carolina based daily News & Observer took a look at the current state of small presses, specifically Carolina Wren Press.
The feature comes amidst almost daily news of big publishing houses in trouble (or trouble of a sort), and the big outlets like Borders struggling to keep afloat. It's a logical leap to think small publishers and their outlets are equally troubled, but they are of course much harder to document, which makes this News & Observer story all the more interesting.
It begins with some grim statistics which may very well be accurate, but without attribution or documentation it's hard to know what to think of them. And then there's paragraphs like this:
"A decade ago a small press could guarantee sales of 2,000 books to libraries. Now it's unusual for a small publisher to crack 100. Walk into any library these days and what do you see? Computers. Each computer purchased probably replaces at least 100 books."
Really? Since we're dealing in probables, why not just say each computer replaces a million books and kills a puppy? Could be!
Anyways, it was nonetheless true before the current meltdown that many small presses were hanging on by a thread, and as 2008 wound down I'm sure many found themselves in dire straits.
Since the Kindle still has very little by way of contemporary poetry and big publishers are hell-bent on throwing all their money at Laura Bush and Sarah Silverman, small presses are increasingly the only place contemporary poetry lives in print.
There is some strange comfort, though, to read a quote like this from literary agent Amanda Urban in the New York Times:
“Books can only support a certain retail price,” she said. “It’s not like you have books that can be Manolo Blahniks and books that can be Cole Haan. Books are books. A book by James Patterson costs the same as a book by some poet.”
Welcome to our world, James Patterson!