Getting de-pressed

Katherine exhorts us to join with others and make a little noise about the very worrying state of small literary publishing houses in Canada in the wake of distributing giant GDS filing for bankruptcy protection. As usual the small, idependent voices will lose out, and that's a crime and a shame.

To find out more about the situation and why you should give a damn, check out
Darren Wershler-Henry's article. I quote:

Why does it matter if a few small poetry and literary fiction publishers go under? Because the small presses are the heart, the soul and the guts of Canadian literary culture.

Presses like Coach House, Talon, Oberon, Mercury, Broken Jaw, Turnstone, TSAR, Brick and Arsenal Pulp invest the most time and energy in author development. Weíre the farm teams: we find promising new authors, edit their work and otherwise help them develop their writing styles. And we get that work to market for the first time ó usually in better-quality editions than mass-market paperbacks, to boot. In other words, the editors of the small press are responsible for the stunning variety and high calibre of Canadian writing today.

I should also append my previous entry to say that while I listened to the Kink's tribute CD at Indigo's listening post, I promptly went around the corner to the smaller CD Replay and bought the disc there, along with Caitlan Carey's CD. I'm gonna make the effort to do more of my CD buying at the independents, like Soundscapes on College. It's very important that we all support independent authors and publishers, as well as musicians, record labels and record stores. Sometimes it costs a few dollars more, but hell, I've probably got $100 or more in loonies and quarters sitting on top of my dresser. If I was that hard up for money, I'd have cashed those in long ago. Think of it as accumulated subsidy money to allow the patronage of independents.