Over at the Village Voice, Jessica Winter analyzes the successes, great and small, of some notable independent publishers - namely Akashic Books, Soft Skull Press and Archipelago, which offer alternatives to the big houses that don't necessarily want to grapple with the fortunes of the midlist.

"In big publishing, the line is that people don't read, and we're all competing for the same dwindling pool of readers," says Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic. "That's not true. We're going out and finding new readers, and showing people that reading can be provocative and exciting." Temple adds that his definition of thriving is more creative than financial. Soft Skull's Richard Nash agrees. "With a 10th of the advertising budget for one of the major publishers' blockbusters, I could run our entire operation across 40 books."