How does Impetus Press compare with larger publishing companies?
[Jennifer Banash] Publishing is becoming more and more limited. The big houses, like Random and Harper’s, are only looking for blockbusters. They all want the next Da Vinci Code. That’s terrifying, because it’s become a business where huge companies are eating up little ones and everything is sold to the highest bidder and art has been — if thought about at all — thrown by the wayside. Instead of being a space that welcomes new writers and rewards risk, it’s mostly just either the same voices over and over again or it’s total nepotism — the moral equivalent of incest — where the only people who are getting heard are people with some kind of inside connection. Of course everyone is aware of the problems with mainstream presses, so we don’t have to talk about that. Basically they’re just the devil. Your website also says that you dislike “the rigid constraints of experimental presses.” What exactly do you mean? [JB] There are a lot of small presses, but they tend to serve only the mo
