(This is the first in an interview series: What’s Right and What’s Wrong with the Small Press World ?)

QUESTION ONE (Rauan Klassnik):  What’s right and what’s wrong with the small press world?

ANSWER ONE (Reb Livingston):   There’s a lot that’s right.  There’s thousands of gatekeepers and thousands of others sneaking in the side.  I like that.  I like that on an almost daily basis I stumble across a magazine, press or website I never heard of before.  Try as I might, I can’t keep up.  That’s good.  Nobody should be able to keep up.  I like that the traditional publishing tower is beginning to topple.  It’s time to start over.  Tear that shit down.  I’m waiting for someone to radically change how literature gets to readers.  Or what it means.  Or something I can’t even comprehend at this very moment.  Yes, it’s changed a lot already this past decade and changing right as I write this, but I’m talking about something few of us can imagine.  It’s going to come from an individual or a small group of people.  That’s the only prediction I feel comfortable making.  It’s not going to come from Amazon or Random House or Conde Nast (snort!) or a university (which these days are run more and more like wannabe corporations, despite some of the fabulous people they employ as teachers and staff).

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