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Founded in 1969 in the San Francisco Bay Area, Small Press Distribution is the nation’s only exclusively literary nonprofit book distributor serving small, independent literary publishers. In 2023, SPD presses and their authors were honored with the PEN Award for poetry in translation and the National Jewish Book Award in poetry. In 2022, John Keene’s Punks, from indie poetry publisher The Song Cave, won the 2022 National Book Award in poetry. Small Press Distribution connects underrepresented literary communities to the marketplace of the commons, according to SPD executive director Kent Watson. “We’re here to help the marketplace equalize and allow everyone to have a voice in the community,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. The SPD business model allows it to take risks on books by new or marginalized writers, Watson explains, enabling work to develop an audience and to gain recognition. “What we do is unlike any other distributor. We don’t have our presses come into the system by having to prove that they have such and such sales or such and such titles. A lot of large distributors require a certain outlay of not only the titles that they have, but the amount of money that they generate each year to even get into distribution, which seems kind of crazy. You have to get distribution to get distribution. It seems a little nuts. “SPD operates as a nonprofit 501(c)(3), so we are mission-based. We do a lot of literary fiction, literary nonfiction. Most of our books are based around poetry. We do some art criticism, too. With our publishers and their authors, 60% of our bestselling titles come from people of color. 35% of our bestselling titles come from LGBTQ+ authors. And 75% of our bestselling titles come from women-identified authors.” To jump start the rollout of hundreds of POD titles, lower costs, and providing global reach, SPD is embarking on a new GoFundMe round of fundraising from both individuals and institutions. As a nonprofit, SPD has always depended on philanthropy and small donors to help fulfill its mission.

US book publishers and readers looking for more diversion, less politics, in 2024.

Impact factor is a global standard for measuring the influence and importance of scholarly journals. Published by Clarivate, this calculation is critical for authors when considering where to publish research as well as for librarians when deciding which publications to hold in collections. For nearly half a century, the Journal Citation Reports, or JCR, have been “must reading” in universities around the world. The latest revisions to the JCR for 2024 respond to important community requests, according to Dr. Nandita Quaderi, a senior vice president and the editor in chief for Web of Science at Clarivate. Dr. Quaderi has overall responsibility for editorial strategy, selection of Web of Science content, and inclusion in Journal Citation Reports. “We are making two changes to JIF category rankings in this year’s JCR. Both are driven by what we see in the data and changes in the publishing landscape, and the requests we get from our users and the research community at large,” she explains. Previously, the JCR provided separate rankings for the nine subject areas that are indexed in multiple editions. Psychiatry, for example, is indexed both in SCIE, the science index, and in SSCI, the social science index, and the JCR provided separate psychiatry rankings for these two indices. “What we’re changing this year is that we’ll no longer have these separate category rankings, and instead, we’ll have a single ranking for each of our 230-odd science and social science categories,” Dr. Quaderi tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. A second change introduced for 2024 is the addition of ESCI journals to category rankings. The Emerging Sources Citation Index brings to light new research in emerging scientific fields as well as new journal content of regional importance. “If you take psychiatry as an example again, what we will do is display a single psychiatry ranking that includes journals from the science index, the social science index, and from ESCI. Moving to this single category ranking will provide a much simpler and a much more complete category view for our customers,” she says.

At PubWest 2024 in Phoenix, the impact of generative AI on publishing dominated the conference agenda. A conference keynote by Ana Tomboulian and Vincent Serpico of Decision Tree AI, an Arizona-based consulting company, offered their take on how “genAI” services like ChatGPT can assist publishers to create jacket and marketing copy as well as how authors or publishers might use AI tools to conceive the continuation of a popular book series. “The show's closing session provided a series of short reflections on the impact of A.I. on publishing, which ranged from fearful, to hopeful, to resigned,” reports Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly executive editor. The principal fear running through the conference was that AI would replace publishers and writer. Rhoni Hirst, president of Books of Discovery, a publisher of physical therapy books in Boulder, Colo., described how pirates had posted fake copies of her company’s bestselling title Trail Guide to the Body to Amazon, noting the difficulties of having it removed or otherwise rectifying the situation. Thad McIlroy, a PW contributing editor and PubWest panelist, asserted his position that there was less need for concern than there was for publishers to embrace AI’s potential.

When Russian armed forces opened a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, the ordinary lives of millions from Kyiv to Kharkiv were upended. Two years later, Ukrainians have earned the world’s admiration, not only for their courage on the battlefield, but also for their determination to maintain a functioning civil society. The Russian invasion targeted Ukrainian culture as much as the country’s infrastructure. Chytomo, an online publishing news platform, has diligently documented the resistance by the country’s publishers and poets, as well as booksellers and novelists, to that attack. Iryna Baturevych, Chytomo co-founder, recently described for CCC’s Chris Kenneally the Ukrainian book community’s mood today. “The mood is to keep on fighting because we have no other opportunity. It’s very hard to understand that new bookstores are opening. New festivals are appearing in Kyiv and in other cities all over Ukraine. This is showing how much Ukrainian people want to have normal life back,” Baturevych said. “We know that with the help of Ukrainian literature, with Ukrainian culture, we are not only normalizing our life. We’re also trying to make our society, our country, stronger. This war is something that is trying to erase our history and to erase our culture, and we are showing that we are an independent European nation,” she continued. “This is something that’s bringing people together, but it’s also driving the industry forward. This is very important.”

Manhattan-based independent publisher Soho Press will launch a new horror genre imprint, Hell’s Hundred, reports Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly executive editor. “The imprint takes is name from the New York City neighborhood of SoHo, where the press was founded,” he explains. “The now chic neighborhood had a slightly less catchy name in the 19th Century, ‘hell’s hundred acres,’ so-called for its grim industrial facades and deadly factory fires. The first two books from Hell’s Hundred will debut this summer, Albanese tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “Soho publisher Bronwen Hruska said that the imprint wasn’t planned so much as the result of a natural confluence of a few factors: the increased cultural fixation with horror over the past few years; a bump in horror and horror-adjacent submissions at the press; and the passion of two young editors. Nick Whitney and Taz Urnov,” says Albanese.

The inaugural session of the Advanced Publishing Institute, held last month at New York University, employed case studies and problem-solving exercises to examine the changes sweeping over publishing. On the weeklong program’s final day, International Publishers Association President Karine Pansa offered the class of mid-career publishing executives her global perspective, emphasizing professional responsibility as seen from many angles. Pansa tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally she places special importance on her responsibility to preserve the freedom to publish, which faces threats around the world. “The freedom to publish, like the freedom to read and the freedom of expression, is under increasing pressure around the world – through traditional state pressure, but also on social media,” Pansa says. “We see books, especially for the young, being targeted. In Turkey, some books were classified as obscene, and they were forced to be taken off the bookstore shelves or to be shrink-wrapped so that children could not have access. Those books were mainly of LGBTQ themes. The same pressure can affect librarians, and the talk of book bans is present nowadays in many, many countries.”

Simon & Schuster executives launched a centennial celebration this week with the release of the Simon & Schuster 100, 100 books chosen to represent the breadth and depth of the company’s publishing programs. The Big Five publisher’s new owner, private equity firm KKR, appears poised to grow the company significantly, notes Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly executive editor. A centerpiece of the celebration arrives April 8 at New York City’s Town Hall auditorium. Author! Author!: A Simon & Schuster Centennial Celebration will feature more than 30 notable S&S authors for “an evening of stories, conversation, and memories. “In case you’re wondering: April 10, 1924—that’s when Richard Simon and Max Schuster published their first book,” Albanese tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “A work of great fiction? A work of serious history? Poetry perhaps? Nope—a book of crossword puzzles. Humble beginnings for what is now the third largest U.S. trade publisher.”

From Squid Game to Parasite, BTS to Blackpink, Korean popular culture has ascended to the summit of global attention. Korean books, especially novels by women authors, are also finding enthusiastic readers far beyond native audiences. Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, a fictionalized memoir with factual footnotes, ignited a feminist groundswell in South Korea and has sold over 1 million copies worldwide since its publication in 2016. The Vegetarian by Han Kang received the 2016 Man Booker International Prize and has been translated into two dozen languages. An online database of titles called MatchWHALE is set to add many more Korean titles to libraries and bookstores around the world. “Apart from bestsellers, Korea produces a variety of high-quality literature, nonfiction, and illustrated books for adults and children every year,” explains MatchWHALE founder Beatrice Lin. “We thought we needed very powerful tools that can introduce Korea’s wonderful books more effectively to overseas readers and publishers, especially recommending books that align with their interests, and so, we launched MatchWHALE,” she tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. From 2017 to 2021, sales of Korean literature published rose 10 percent year over year, according to Lin.

ALA winter conference highlights freedom to read, sustainability, and AI.

If you think that libraries are just for books and that kids today care only about digital media, then you should read a new report from the American Library Association.

On Wednesday, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to block key provisions of HB 900, Texas’s controversial book rating law. In a 36-page decision, a three-judge panel ruled that the law likely violated First Amendment protections against compelled speech. The lawsuit challenging HB 900 was first filed in July, by a coalition including two Texas bookstores, Austin’s BookPeople and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop, together with the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In a joint statement, the plaintiffs called the appeals court decision historic. Texas Rep. Jared Patterson, the law’s author, urged the state to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. “For now, the law is blocked while the litigation continues, but with this ruling the outcome is all but certain—HB 900, Texas’s book rating law, is unconstitutional,” explains Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly executive editor. “The court had no trouble rejecting the state’s argument that the mandatory book ratings would be informational and uncontroversial, like nutrition labels, movie ratings, or warning labels on cigarettes,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “In fact, the ratings would be ‘highly discretionary’ and would involve weighing and balancing many factors to determine a rating for each book.”