| Sumario: | The article focuses on the phenomenal increase in the number of small, American publishers during the past three decades. In 1958 the titles of approximately one thousand companies appeared in Publishers Weekly. Writers were dependent upon the critical judgment and patronage of these publishers, for they provided access to the elaborate merchandising system necessary to place books onto bookstore shelves and into the hands of readers. It was not until the 1960s that a small press movement evolved, in part from the political and social ferment of that decade. What at once were self-publishers of a single title or two evolved, like Ten Speed Press or Black Sparrow Press, into commercial organizations that maintained personalized interests while patterning production and distribution practices toward the methods of large, established publishers. By the end of the decade of the 1960s, the survival of small houses often depended upon how well they were able to exploit special group or subject categories. This startling growth in the number of American publishers since 1960 has created a situation in the book industry that is markedly different from other mass media industries, where contraction of ownership has occurred.
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