Book blogs and indie publishers

There's a great piece in this week's Foreword on book blogs and independent publishers in today's age of the ever-shrinking book sections in print media. You can find the whole thing here.

A few choice quotes:

“Bloggers like me have no obligation to read anything other than what we like. And if the books we like tend to include a high percentage of independent press titles, maybe that just means there are more great books being published by independents,” [Jessica Stockton] said.

George Murray at Bookninja echoes other bloggers sentiments. “We don’t avoid big titles or publishers on purpose, but quite often our interests lie closes to work being done by indie presses and indie authors,” he said.

Are book bloggers having an impact on sales for the indie presses? Yes, indeed.

“Independent presses are learning to tap into this grass roots marketing machine, made much more effective by the wide reach of the Internet in ways that large house have not yet learned,” said Stockton who sees plenty of independent titles cross her desk. “Perhaps because indie presses have internalized the fact that word of mouth is their best form of publicity. Presses without a huge advertising budget may not be able to take out giant ads in the New York Times but they can still afford to send reading copies to a few bloggers and independent booksellers,” she told FTW.

--John Mark