2012 in Retrospect: Publishing

Rather than doing a single post about what I thought of the past year, I'm going to break things up into some smaller posts.  There will be on short fiction and one on titles I especially enjoyed.  But I thought I would start with publishers.

Last year, I wrote about the publishers I thought you should be reading this year.  That list hasn't changed much.  The day before I posted that list, I gave reasons why I wasn't going to be reading much from the main imprints.  Those reasons haven't changed much, either.  If anything, they're more valid than ever.

What I'm going to attempt to do here, in this present post, is to assess some of the things I said in those two posts.

Four Publishers You Should be Reading in 2012

Yep, that's right.  I said "publishers", not "authors".  The reason for this wording is these are the publishers I think are publishing the most innovative, original, and/or best written stuff in the fantasy and science fiction fields, with a dash of horror thrown in for spice.

I'm limiting my list to four (plus a runner-up) because these are the publishers whose books I've most enjoyed this year.  If you've read my post from yesterday, you can probably guess which ones won't be on there.  I'm deliberately not including small presses that publish pricey limited editions, even if they also publish trade editions.  I'm limiting the list to imprints you can find in a local bookstore.  Also, there's at least one publisher not on the list because I simply didn't get around to reading any of their books this year, and that's Orbit. I've enjoyed things they've published in the past, and have several books in the TBR stack from them.  What I've read of Orbit's line I've generally enjoyed, and I expect that to be the case with what I have on hand.

One thing to note about all the publishers on the list.  Roughly a decade, to use round figures, is about as long as any of these publishers have been around, although one or two have existed slightly longer than that.  Some are much younger.  All of them are lean, efficient, and not afraid to take chances with what they publish.  And their books don't look like all their other books.

Here's the way I'm structuring this list.  I'll list the publishers in reverse order, starting with the runner-up (along with an explanation of why that publisher isn't number 5), with a few recommendations from their line along with a list of some of what I'll be reading from them in the coming months.  I'll confine myself to three, at most four, recommendations and TBRs, even though in most cases the actual number is greater.  Links will be to the books' webpages, not any reviews I've posted; there'll be a comprehensive list of reviews at the end of the post.  For series, I'll only list the first volume.  A book's being included in the TBR listing is not a guarantee I'll review it here or at Futures Past and Present.

Let's get started, shall we?