Another small publisher is folding.

Down and Out Books, which published two Carolina Crimes anthologies that included stories of mine, has announced they are going out of the publishing business. This is the fifth small-press publisher of some of my work to give it up in the last ten years or so. And I’m not counting the two larger publishers that closed lines that had published my books or the one that was bought out by a corporate behemoth and changed focus.

It’s increasingly clear that small-press publishing is not a sustainable business model. And that kind of breaks my heart.

I know that change is the name of the game in any business, but the publishing industry is increasingly viable only for large companies that rely on a stable of a few big-name, best-selling authors to keep them afloat.

For myself, I’ve been reclaiming rights to older books and self-publishing those, except for a few that for one reason or another I don’t want to re-release or that I feel need extensive rewriting before I make them available again.

I still submit short stories to various anthologies put out by small press publishers and will continue to do so, if only to try to help sustain the model. I might consider seeking an agent and a larger press publication if I manage to write a story I think would work.

I started writing fiction forty years ago, but I didn’t do it thinking that it would make me rich and famous. I don’t write for the money. It’s nice when it happens, and I’ve been fortunate enough to earn some decent amounts at times. But I write because I have stories in my head that insist on being told, characters that want their chance to shine, and ideas that just need to be worked out.

I want to share those stories with readers. I want them to be enjoyed. So I keep the prices for my self-pubbed books as low as is feasible. And I make sporadic, mostly inept attempts at marketing them to get the word out. But mostly I just want to continue to create new worlds and new people for them, to tell their stories in a way that I hope will entertain and amuse however many people read them..