The situation doesn't look good in today's publishing industry — venture capitalists and the likes of Rupert Murdoch are taking over venerable old publishing houses, whose focus is shifting more to bigger profits based on formulaic titles such as sensational memoirs. Digital novelties like Amazon's Kindle e-reader may threaten the paper-and-ink industry, but certainly not more so than Americans' diminishing habit of reading.

It doesn't seem like the best time to launch a publishing company - much less a small, regional press that has no existing model on which to base itself.

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