At the beginning of the month (also my blogversary! Yay!), I announced that one of my major focuses this year would be on small press publishing. To me, this encompasses a variety of publishing options, from more established small-press publishers like Bella Books to self-published authors and brand new, run-from-the-kitchen independent publishers.
I reached out to a number of small presses in hopes of receiving materials to review. Several answered back, and I’ll be reviewing my first book from one of this this weekend. It’s exciting to work together with those who understand the value of maintaining the integrity of writing from lived experiences.
Related to that, I made sure to find small press publishers who find value in diversity and who make it a point on their website or social media that they are inclusive or represent marginalized voices.
As I begin to work my way through the piles of book mail (this is, of course, the best type of problem to have), I will review titles by themselves with a mention of the book being published independently or small press, but that won’t be the main focus of the review. Instead, I’ll be posting “Small Press Spotlight” features that specifically highlight the publishers. I hope to include interviews with the editors and heads of the presses. Of course, this is all to promote the work they’re doing.
The goal is to post a Small Press Spotlight feature at least once a month, but hopefully twice a month if all goes well with scheduling, work commitments, and the like.
On a slightly different note, earlier this week I posted on Twitter that without #DiverseBookBloggers, I might go insane with rage over the last week and what’s been happening from the White House and on Capitol Hill. This is my way of fighting back–finding and promoting voices that need to be heard. I learned a lot from my first year of blogging and intentionally reading diverse voices. And I’m not stopping now.
Really excited to follow along with small press spotlight as I don’t generally read a lot of books published by small presses and would like to improve a little on that end! I’m doing somewhat better with reading from small presses this year but there’s always room for improvement 🙂
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I love this idea. Hopefully, I’ll find some interesting publishers that focus on my areas of interest. Diversity Book Blogging is a form of activism for me. That’s why your last paragraph really resonated with me.
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Way to go. I say keep going for diverse reads. Good luck with the new feature. It will help many I am sure.
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This is an amazing idea! I know of some small publishers that I really want to check out, like Jacaranda, but most of the books I read are quite mainstream and popular, so this will be interesting to follow!
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This is such a fantastic idea. Definitely something I’m going to consider myself!
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