So venerable SF publisher McSweeneys (of Dave Eggers fame), has put out a call on their website and to their various lists asking for fans of the publisher, and of independent publishers in general, to buy stuff from them to help them recover from the $130,000 loss they took when their distributor, PGW, declared bankruptcy in December:
Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big.
Over the next week or so, we'll be holding an inventory sell-off and rare-item auction, which we hope will make a dent in the losses we sustained. A few years ago, the indispensable comics publisher Fantagraphics, in similarly dire straits, held a similar sale, and it helped them greatly. We're hoping to do the same.
I've said this before and I'll say it again 1000x over before the year is out (probably before the month is out, even), but times are FUCKING TOUGH for independent publishers. If you believe in what any of us are trying to do, YOU NEED TO HELP. If you don't help, publishers don't survive and truly independent voices get their tongues cut out.
This is real and this is NOW.
Read their whole call here: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2007/6/12agoodtime.html
Because I failed to realize it when I was only doing DIY media out of my bedroom, is that just because an independent publisher gets a lot of press doesn't mean that they're rolling in dough or somehow more economically stable than you or I are. In fact, they may be even more economically fucked and in debt than the bedroom zinesters/CD-R record labels.
Just 'cos McSweeney's books get reviews in glossy mags doesn't mean that they're sitting on a huge cash cow. It really is dire, and tight, folks, and even a little bit of cash can make a big difference.
I'm not a huge fan of a lot of what McSweeney's does, but I appreciate their mission, and that they've provided a slipstream to mass awareness of writers who would otherwise go unknown. We need to support the larger indies, unless we want to leave the fate of disseminating independent voices to a wide audience up to whether Congress decides to uphold Net Neutrality. Because that is really what it's coming down to, here.