Some very BIG news

In the early 21st century, everything is… BIG.

This is especially true in book publishing, where the trend has been for fewer and fewer BIG houses to offer fewer and fewer BIG bonuses to celebrity authors in hopes of reaping BIG profits.

(How’s that for reducing the economics of an entire industry into one simplistic formula?)

So it’s nice to know that there still is life at the other end of the financial soda fountain. It’s among the cheap eats that we tend to find publishing houses such as Lost Horse Press , the Sandpoint-based, nonprofit company that, since 1999, has both put out books of poetry and fiction and sponsored readings and other literary happenings that spotlight writers and works of the Inland Northwest.

And now comes word that Lost Horse Press is teaming up with the University of Idaho Press , the Moscow-based academic press, founded in 1972, that publishes up to 10 new titles a year and has some 90 titles currently in print. A joint press release put out by Lost Horse and the UI Press says that the two will exhibit books jointly at festivals and other literary events. In addition, the UI Press will distribute all Lost Horse titles.

It’s not exactly BIG news. But anything that promotes the best of regional literature is a very BIG deal.