Periodic Plump for Independent Everything

It's that time again, time to rant and rave about the neglected glories of small, independent presses. I am, of course, not alone in my ranting - when am I ever? tschaah, never - as witnessed by the fine folks at Branching Out, a resource for reader development. What peaked my interest is their Independent Press of the Month page, in which they present a well-informed page on whatever press has taken their fancy. This month, it's Peepal Press, which specialises in Caribbean and Black British writing.

Admirably, particularly because the independent presses needn't be integral to their programme, Branching Out also makes a point to highlight the functionality of the press' website, which is extremely important; the LEAST a small press can do is set up a decent, functional and hey, attractive website. It's a small investment, and one that small Irish publishers would do well to make. Some, like Maverick Press with their myspace page, have led the way, along with Liberties Press, but so many others have fourth-rate websites or none at all.

Likewise, while we're cleaning house on all findings indie, I've finally found an independent Irish bookseller online, which I intend to use for all gifts etc. going home. It's the web branch of Dame Street's Books Upstairs in Dublin.

With the sad closure of Greene's Bookshop's city centre shop in Dublin a while back (not dead and gone, though, they've moved to *gack* Sandyford, have a look at their websitehere), something should also be done for those who prefer to purchase in the flesh (paper?), there's this website listing of Irish independent bookshops Books Upstairs in Dublin.

Will keep up a list of interesting independent publishers and sellers in the lists to the right, starting with the amazing Snow Books/and their lovely staff blog. They're doing something very clever, bringing the bloggers directly to them rather than having to go out and find them. At any rate, hopefully I'll doing a better job on the indie list than I have of the short fiction posts, *blog guilt blog guilt*...