The small farm book business grows organically. Growing the seeds of good ideas into books, is akin to farming in some respects. In publishing, like in farming, there are large multinational multimillion dollar corporations dominant in the industry. Yet, the groundswell of good books about small scale farms, seasonable cuisine, and sustainable living reflects the growing market for good ideas. You may have noticed more books in the feed store, the hardware, the farmers market, and library even though you rarely step inside a bookstore. The business of books about small farms is healthy: no boom, no bust. No floods, no dustbowls nor droughts in the forecast. Far away from the publishing district in New York City, Joel Salatin pioneered the grass-fed movement on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley and began to self-publish books under his business name, Polyface. His grass-roots publishing initiative attracted a national audience. Farm tours, speaking engagements, media appearances, and more; Joel Salatin grew an organic audience for his seven books. Featured in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the documentary Food, Inc., Salatin is a self-described Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer. His distinctive voice and passion pulls readers to what he has to say. Even if you disagree with Joel Salatin, he raises many unaddressed issues of relevance to farmers today. In this crazy new world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +, iphones, apps, widgets and plugins, Joel Salatin grew an audience platform organically. Instead of pushing his book, he promoted a way of…

There’s a new kind of first-person narrative nonfiction book growing in popularity, and it is moving away from traditional commercial memoir as “misery lit” following a single template of story structure, the hero’s journey. We’re into the twenty-twenties now, and I see a pattern emerging among these new kinds of nonfiction books: a distinctive narrator’s voice, expository information about a subject matter separate from the personal themes at play, and structure that braids them together. Some of the narrators use a confessional voice, others that of a witness, a reporter, and/or a field guide. Many of these new books have chapters structured more like an essay a novel chapter. Some use a series of scenes, not necessarily chronological, but juxtaposed in such a way as to reveal a deeper story. The subject matter itself may provide metaphors for structuring the book. Taking a subject larger than the self is a refreshing approach to first-person narration that satisfies readers in new ways. I’m not entirely convinced this new wave of structuring life stories is distinctly American since the first book that hooked me on rethinking memoir came from Sweden. Patrik Svensson’s The Book of Eels won the August Prize, the country’s most prestigious literary award. I learned a lot about eels that fascinated me. Not so much about his father, with whom he went eel fishing, often in silence. By standing shyly behind the eels, Svensson reveals metaphorically through the investigation of eels the nature of grief for a parent. In many of…