Helloooo!

Let’s introduce our little campaign  to support the Independent Small press - #SmallPressBigStories

What’s that about Womble?

One of the joys of getting into book-blogging is you find there are so many books out there. When I was young and innocent I just thoughts books were all the same and they’re the ones you’d always find in the shops. Little did I realise that often some publishers you had to look around a little more to find. I remember the first book by an indie press this decade was African Monsters edited by Marget Helgadottir and Jo Thomas from Fox Spirit books. A really interesting anthology with a whole host of authors connected to the continent. Excellent book to one side this started to teach me that publishing is this huge ecosystem with the famous (and very good) Big 5 who all manygreat things that I’m a huge fan of; our increasingly varied and self-published authors who are working hard to give us unique stories on their own terms and then in the middle we have the independent presses of all shapes and sizes; covering all genres finding new authors, working with many existing ones and always trying hard to give us great stories. Yet often this group can be a secret many readers forget about even in this age of web stores, e-publishing and social media.

The end of the year is always a busy time for readers. We are running around trying to beat any reading challenges, Goodreads targets or writing our traditional best of the year lists; award nomination seasons and when we all try to narrow all the books down to a handful for one simple list. You’ll see the same manic rush now in your major bookshops, newspapers (they may even have at least one SF&F novel on the list if we are lucky) and this has got me thinking that we occasionally overlook the books and publishers who we don’t always find on the mass market shelves; who may only have published a few books each year and don’t have global or national marketing campaigns to help push and re-push books onto our media feeds. I love the big publishers too and self-published novels often get the push of very well-established blog competitions such as SPFBO but I wondered if we could do something fairly simple to help promote the delights of the very valuable independent presses to help YOU gentle reader find yet more books to enjoy and remind you that for example great novellas don’t all come from one single publisher. Why yes there will be book tempting!

What is happening?

I’ve reached out to bloggers I know well to see if they’d be interested to use November as a chance to talk about the Indie press books and publishers that caught their eye this year and well worth reminding you of. This will cover all genres; cross blogs, social media, vlogs and podcasts and we’ll use #SmallPressGreatStories (with huge thanks to Stephen Poore for the allowance of the hashtag) to shout about the books we think of worthy of your attention and should make a great end of year; gift idea or something to go on your ballot forms . Feel free to join us! But this month stay tuned over the coming weeks to hear from these great bookbloggers; -

Throughout November

The Fantasy Hive - https://fantasy-hive.co.uk/posts/

Sue’s Musing https://suelbavey.wordpress.com/

The Shaggy Shepherd Book Reviews https://theshaggyshepherd.wordpress.com/

Fiction Fans Podcast - https://www.fictionfanspodcast.com/

The Middleshelf - http://www.themiddleshelf.org/

Dave - https://espressococo.com/

Oh and little old me!

Also during 1st November to 7th

KK Book Reviews - https://kbbookreviews867789450.wordpress.com/

Infinite Speculation - https://infinitespeculation.wordpress.com

From 8th November to 14th

W&S Bookclub - https://wittyandsarcasticbookclub.home.blog/

Gwennypenpen - https://www.instagram.com/gwennypenpen/

Ginger Nuts of Horror - https://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/index.html

Steven Poore - https://stevenpoore.wordpress.com/

Cora Buhlert - http://corabuhlert.com/

From 15th November to 21st

W&S Bookclub - https://wittyandsarcasticbookclub.home.blog/

The Pewter Wolf - http://thepewterwolf.blogspot.com/?m=1

Chronicles of Noria - https://m.youtube.com/c/ChroniclesofNoria

Out of This World SFF- https://outofthisworldrev.blogspot.com/?m=1

The Monday Review - https://themondayreview.wordpress.com/

There’s Always Room For One More - https://onemore.org/

Gautam Bhatia - https://anenduringromantic.wordpress.com/

From 22nd November to 28th

Gwennypenpen - https://www.instagram.com/gwennypenpen/

Reader@Work - https://readeratworkblog.wordpress.com/

Chronicles of Noria - https://m.youtube.com/c/ChroniclesofNoria

Druid Life - https://druidlife.wordpress.com/

Before We Go - https://beforewegoblog.com

This should be fun – and I’d welcome anyone else to take part be you a blogger, reader or inhuman scheming book tempter (I am definitely not that no sireeeee!)