Keswick House Publishers, located in far Northern California, was founded in 1994 and is part of the independent press movement that began when large conglomerates started buying up and consolidating the great publishing houses of the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, a handful of corporations control most of mainstream publishing, which means that control of content is primarily in corporate hands. With the advent of desktop publishing, smaller, independent presses have once again been able to offer their wares to interested buyers.  

 

Most books that are sold in bookstores are relatively cheap because of economies of scale; corporate publishers issue large print runs and use their powerful marketing machinery to sell, they hope, hundreds of thousands if not millions of copies. Prices on books from independent publishing houses are often higher, reflecting the fact that these presses print and sell fewer numbers of books. If you like to support small businesses, mom-and-pop enterprises, freedom of the press from corporate filters, and the work of authors whose work is not deemed commercial by publishing conglomerates, you can do this by buying books from independent publishers in the same way that you might support, for example, your local food movement.