What is the toughest job of managing a small press? What is the most rewarding?

The toughest part is actually selling books. So many readers these days, even serious readers, will only "take a chance" on books that they have already heard a lot about. I always wonder about this, because what exactly does the reader have to lose by reading an unknown title by an unknown author? They might be disappointed? Then again, they might make an exciting discovery. It seems to me if you love to read, you might enjoy being the first to discover some hidden treasure.

The most rewarding part is bringing into the light, excellent books that might otherwise have been lost to the world.

How do you market your books to bookstores and libraries? 

Personal contacts with bookstore managers and librarians is absolutely important. I have gotten orders for books from libraries I have visited personally, not when I have written or emailed, the same with local bookstores. We now work with a distributor of small press books: The Booklink, Inc. We have really enjoyed working with them. We don't keep as much of the sale proceeds but hopefully this arrangement will result in more sales and therefore greater exposure for all our authors.

Any book publicity strategies you would like to share with our readers?

Well, I've learned the hard way that reviews by themselves don't sell books, ads by themselves don't sell books and even the two together in one publication at the same time, doesn't always have any immediate effect. When readers take a chance on a book and recommend that book to friends or better yet, give books to their friends for birthdays and holidays that is a good long term strategy. One author I know said that trying to get some attention for a new book these days is like highlighting a snowflake in a blizzard. It is just going to take a lot of time and perseverance and a little luck now and then (like being discovered by Oprah).

You're also an author. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became an author.
What type of books do you write?

I read all the time as a child and by the time I was in my teens it seemed inevitable that I would write stories. In fact my creative writing teacher in high school suggested that I start a literary magazine so I did and it became a tradition at the school. In my twenties I did send out some stories and even won a first prize for fiction one month from a literary magazine in Austin, Texas. I also corresponded with Anais Nin who was very encouraging. Then I decided I needed to live more and figure out what I wanted to write about. I threw out dozens of stories that suddenly seemed trivial to me. In my early thirties I wrote an experimental novel, Snow (I had just finished reading Ice by Anna Kavan). It was one of those stream of conscious creations that is not exactly poetry and definitely not narrative and later I called the manusript my "salvage yard" because sometimes I really could use something from it to clarify another story or novel.