Go Indie: Support Small Press Month

March is Small Press Month, as you may have heard, and I've outlined below 10 ways to help our indie friends stay afloat in this increasingly conglomerated, flooded, and financially challenging literary marketplace. I'm sure there are many more ways you could support the indies, so please feel free to share your plans here.

First, here are some great small/independent presses that VoidMagazine.com enjoys working with: Two Dollar Radio, Insight, Contemporary Press, Greycore, Akashic, Greywolf, Behler, WW Norton, Grove Atlantic, Seven Stories, Soft Skull, Four Way Books, and the Wessex Collective.

And here are a few ideas [some serious, some obviously not so much] for promoting Small Press Month...

1. Contact your local bookstore or library and suggest they put together a special display for National Small Press Month, containing a selection of small/independent press titles. You can get free Small Press Month posters by contacting lisa@pma-online.org or by visiting www.smallpressmonth.org.

2. Stop by a bookstore and handsell your favorite small press title to the person browsing the Bestseller Shelves. "Oh, you liked The Da Vinci Code? You'll love [title] from [indie press]." Sure, it's a lie, but they won't realize it until they've already thrown out the receipt. Suckers.

3. Randomly stop mid-way through conversations all month and say, "Oh, crap." And when the person says, "What?" say very pensively, "I totally forgot that it's national small press month. I'd better get on it."

4. Guerilla marketing -- write to an indie and ask for a stack of bookmarks and slip them in the hardcover bestsellers, whose rate-of-sale is about 1000 times that of a mid-list indie book. Also, face-out the indie titles throughout the store and maybe accidentally leave a few on the octagon on your way out.

5. Submit five-star reviews of great small press books to places like Amazon.com, BN.com, and, well, VoidMagazine.com.

6. See if your favorite local bookstores stocks titles from the small presses -- reach out to the press and let them know what you find. Unlike the Big Boys, many small presses sell titles directly to stores without the help of a major distributor, and it would be helpful to know which ones are doing their part in keeping the indies alive.

7. Start a reading group or book club focusing on small and independently produced books. Here are some suggested titles.

8. If you see someone reading a book not from an indie press, just shake your head and sigh, and say under your breath, "Dude, weak," or call them a "f*cking sell-out."

9. Understand the difference between a large and small press -- the former does not always imply commercial and the latter literary. There are some great literary imprints at large presses, and a few commercially minded and successful booksellers who are still indie. Know the landscape.

10. Throughout the month, ONLY BUY AND READ BOOKS PUBLISHED BY SMALL PRESSES. Trust me, they need your money as much as they need your moral support.

Visit www.smallpressmonth.org for more [and more serious] ways to help.

Chris Steib is the editor in chief of VoidMagazine.com. He does not run a small press, per say, but he loves them very, very much and really wants you to buy small press books.