By By Danielle Capalbo, News Staff
Major booksellers and publishing houses nationwide have been forced, like the Americans who frequent them, to scale back as they lurch from the economic jostle. Some have frozen salaries or canceled pension packages and made major layoffs. From 2007 to 2008, there was an overall decline of three percent of books published across every genre; some categories, like travel, saw a 15 percent decline, according to data culled by industry analyst agency Bowker.
The folks at Featherproof, however, rented a van.’
A group of authors from the modest Chicago-based publisher pooled about $1,100 for the wheels and launched a promotional road trip spanning 5,500 miles.’
The Dollar Store Tour, which lasted for two weeks in July, gave the caravan of literaries five minutes each to aurally deliver a tale inspired by an item of dollar store kitsch: ‘ a way to draw more readers and promote books as a mechanism for fun. They stopped by the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., July 14.’
‘I was kind of wary when they first mentioned it to me,’ said author Blake Butler. ‘We’re going to put all this money into a van and pay for gas? I sort of said, ‘Oh God,’ because I’d been to so many readings where there’s 10 people who are friends with you and the reading is really boring and people go on too long.’
When the two-week tour was up, Butler said the group made back all the gas money through nightly raffles and donations, and the van was paid for through donations the night of the launch at a barbecue in Chicago ‘- one particularly meaningful display of support that seesawed Butler’s expectations.
The outcome of the tour is a fair, microcosmic analogy for the general predicament of Featherproof and other independent publishers of their ilk. Despite the toll the recession has taken on corporate counterparts, independent publishers are faring fine ‘- not great, but often better than they may have expected.’
‘The economic downturn has had a significant effect on independent presses, but has not created a large number of closures or bankruptcies,’ said Paul Williams, executive director of The National Association of Independent Publishers Representatives (NAIPR).’
Small, independent presses tend to appeal to a loyal niche audience with specialized content, he said.’
‘Large presses publish a lot more discretionary books for entertainment value,’ he said. ‘They are ‘nice’ to have, rather than ‘got’ to have books. When money dries up, discretionary purchases suffer.’
It’s hard to escape the image of a relatively tiny, independent vessel bowling over as the waves swell, but Williams speculated that the size of an independent press actually plays to its benefit when the proverbial storm hits.
‘Book publishing is such a small, poor and difficult industry to begin with, that it’s hard for things to get much worse,’ he said. ‘Being small and lean to begin with is an advantage when the economy goes south.’
Featherproof co-founder Zach Dobson said, after more than four years in business, the company’s challenges are the same as ever. They’re not necessarily heightened by the recession, he said; he corroborated Williams’ notion that small publishers enjoy devoted readers.’
‘What we want to do is connect the books, and connect the authors we like, with readers who would like them. That challenge takes shape in many different ways: ‘ distribution, marketing on little or no budget, which is also difficult,’ he said. He added that Featherproof has faced some circumstantial turmoil ‘- major chains returning an unusual amount of stock last year ‘- but in general, the company is ‘flying a little too low for that storm to really effect us in a major way.”
Dobson compared today’s situation in the publishing sphere with the recording industry’s transformation in the late ’80s and early ’90s.’
‘Major record labels … got congested and started crashing in on themselves, and small indie labels … rose through those little niches,’ he said. ‘People were interested in something outside of the mainstream.’
Still, Featherproof is just one drop in a massive pool of independent publishers, not all of whom have enjoyed the same scot-free maneuvers through the thickets of recession.
‘Some foreign presses have closed US offices,’ Butler said. ‘Some have tightened their belts publishing fewer titles or seeking more supportive distribution economies. Most have recognized the poor state of affairs with print media and have cut back massively on the number of review copies, press releases, and book-reviews they are trying to reach.’
When it comes to working with an independent publisher, Butler said, recession or not, he prefers the unprecedented degree of near-autonomy he has over decisions about his book.’
‘I guess there’s some amount of trade-off ‘- they can’t print as much up front, and they can’t throw as much money at [a project],’ he said. ‘So many books end up getting pulled with those places, it seems like a big waste anyway. With a major house, you’re going to have a kind of ingrown market and you’re going to be on the front table at Borders. But I don’t know. Here, it feels more wholesome and more cared about, and I would take that over throwing it and seeing where it sticks.’
