Peter: was that "200 copies a year" or for a longer stretch of time? 200
copies a year probably _is_ doing better than many small-press authors
(judging by the fact that sometimes I can get a hold of books issued in runs
of 200-600 copies a decade or so after their publication date!). Anyway,
the absence of Harrison on that list is indeed suspicious, as are many other
features of it!
As you've noted, it's something of a self-fulfilling exercise: in the
"mainstream" periodicals the same old authors get their every book or
jotting reviewed, if not always respectfully, while the rest of the field
mostly receives only scant attention. -- That said, there's a shortage of
good little-magazine reviewing too. There seem to be few remaining venues
for it in the UK; & my impression of the journals I've seen from the US (a
very random sampling, I should immediately say) was that the reviews could
be more discriminating & a little less wildly admiring. To point to a
particularly irritating example I just received an issue of _Tripwire_
magazine which contains two one-page "reviews" of books from Krupskaya
Books: the reviews are the work of a member of the editorial board of
Krupskaya, Hung Q Tu, leaving me to conclude that (at best) either the mag's
editors were unaware of this, or that they somehow mistakenly typeset a pair
of ads as reviews. (There's indeed an advertisement for the press elsewhere
in the magazine.)
all best --N
Nate & Jane Dorward
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THE GIG magazine: http://www.geocities.com/ndorward/
109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, ON, M2N 2B1, Canada
ph: (416) 221 6865
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