Press 53 Information

Since 2007, Press 53 has published Surreal South, an anthology created by Laura & Pinckney Benedict, who served as the original editors. We continued to publish Surreal South every odd year (2009, 2011 & 2013) on Halloween. We had a lot of fun publishing this eclectic mix of Southern fiction, and when we opened for submissions each January we were inundated with stories to consider for publication. Sales, however, never came close to the number of submissions our editors worked through to find the stories that we published. So, due to a lack of support from readers, we have decided that Surreal South '13 will be our last anthology in this series. I want to thank the readers who believed in this series as much as we did and supported it by purchasing a copy. I want to thank the many authors who contributed stories to Surreal South and gave readings to bring it attention. We loved your stories and even discovered a couple of future Press 53 authors among its pages. I want to thank Laura & Pinckney Benedict for bringing Surreal South to Press 53 and for trusting us with it these last eight years. And I want to thank Josh Woods, editor of Surreal South '13, who took on a huge challenge and did a fantastic job. Today's publishing environment is chaotic, cluttered, and constantly changing. Many great books suffer from lack of attention, and publishers often face hard decisions when lack of sales can only mean lack of interest and support. Since Press 53 is not a nonprofit press, we rely on book sales rather than donations to keep publishing books. So we have to consider sales when deciding on which books to continue publishing. We plan to keep all four volumes of Surreal South in print for some time, and if interest in this series grows, we will gladly resurrect it. I hope readers will consider Press 53 books, as well as books from other small presses, when looking for a great read. Without the support of great readers, great books will eventually disappear.