It’s been a tough year all around. You don’t need me to tell you that. And among those who have felt this economic downturn the most acutely have been the already beleaguered though valiant band of Independent Presses. You don’t need me to tell you that, either.

As a writer published by one of these presses I have watched the struggles of Salt and others with my hand on my heart and my heart in my mouth. I have bought my books and commiserated with my good friends who’s presses have been struggling for their survival. But the question has been hanging out there…what about bluechrome?

Bluechrome has not been immune from difficulties, some economic, some not. But I am thrilled to say that bluechrome is not giving into the blues, is still out there kicking with the best of them, fist shaking at the wind. Today, Anthony Delgrado has posted his own comment on the situation in his own inimitable way on his blueblog, but I wanted to share it with you here as well:

Bluechrome’s got some special authors, but then so have another hundred small independent publishers that all spend their time and energy doing something just a bit special, that maybe wouldn’t get seen if they were concentrating exclusively on the mass market and the bottom line. And whether they have Arts funding or not, unless you make the effort to support them here and there with a book, they will gradually disappear. And so will the choice they offer, and the opportunities they provide for authors to write something other than Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter clones. So if you are an author, why not buy a book from the publisher before you submit your next manuscript. I’ll give you a clue – bluechrome would have made a profit every year since 2002, if everybody that submitted had checked out the books we publish and bought a single copy of any one of them first. This would have meant that we would have published a lot more books, and seen more of the authors that we had to turn down, end up in print. Go figure. And if you are a reader and like something a bit more challenging, give an indie a chance, you could be in for a nice surprise. I read a review recently, where the writer said that he liked indie publisher books as you got ‘the writer’s real stuff’. After I stopped feeling a bit queasy, I really liked that as it summed up what we have always wanted bluechrome to offer. Whether it is poetry or short stories, experiments or just plain crazy, indie publishing does that and I hope we have too. And if it matters even a wee bit, we’ll be doing our best to hang in here just as long as we can, hope you’ll be nosing around too.

This all makes great sense to me. Please, check out the offerings at bluechrome and all these wonderful and important indie presses. Whether you’re a writer or a reader or both, you’ll be glad you did! Now, why is this music playing in my head?