Small Market Roundup 2009

Early in the year, a lot of us committed to doing more to support small market press--you know, the guys who pay to publish the stories we write, and who publish the stories we love.

I could have done better. In my defense, I spent most of 2009 waiting to get handed a pink slip from DayJob™ and was counting every dime (that has been delayed a little bit longer, if you're curious). But I did take advantage of a lot of the specials out there, and did my utmost to pimp small market magazines, anthos, and novels.

But, without further ado, the list of small market materials for the year (to the best of my cluttered memory):

• Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy: this started good, but my dog tore it to shreds before I finished.
• Cemetery Dance #59: Great Keene story at the beginning of this one.
• Douglas Clegg "Afterlife": I think this was a Cemetery Dance pub, too. I paid an obscene amount for this book to support CD sometime early in the year (might have been late 2008, come to think about it), and felt dumb afterward because the dialogue irritated me and I had to stop reading. I'll try again in 2010.
  
• GUD Magazine #2, #3, #4: at least one of these I got for free, I think
• Robert Swartwood "The Silver Ring": I don't think Robert got an ISBN for this, but I did pay a buck directly to the author, so I get karma for that one.
• Catherine Gardner "The Sour Aftertaste of Olive Lemon"
  
• Barry Napier "Debris": this is next on my reading list
• Aaron Polson (ed) "Tainted": on order from Amazon, should be in my hands before the holidays

There were a lot more that I wanted, but once we really tightened our belts, it just wasn't happening...so, my apologies if you read my blog and wrote something that I didn't buy this year. I'll try to do better next year.


I have a ton of PDF magazines that I got free...I don't get points for not paying for them, but maybe if I give them some love here, it'll give them a half of a half of a fraction of a Google ranking:

• Niteblade Dec 2008
• James Moore: Home for the Holidays
• Macabre Cadaver #3
• Arkham Tales #2, #5
  
• Crazy Horse #74
• Ruthless Peoples Magazine March 2009

Definitely a scary year for small and large market press, and it goes without saying that the more we (read: I) can do in 2010, the better the odds that these guys will survive to end up on our 2010 year end roundup lists, too.