Software or pretzel rolls or books

also, pancake ice

Prospect Park Books was founded by Colleen Dunn Bates fifteen years ago. She created a press, and jobs, and books, publishing over 100 titles. This week, she sold her assets to Turner Publishing. Of the sale she said:

There are many ways to react to this news if you are, like me, someone who does not know Bates personally but has admired her from afar, or someone who believes in the importance of small and independent presses, or just a chronic rooter for the little guy. It’s sad, sure, in principle, but Bates seems mainly relieved and happy, and we should take her words at face value and cheer for her. In the mystical story of America, she created something new, nursed it so it thrived, and then moved on, pocketing some cash. Or, in the smoothed-edges of our 21st century remaking of that myth, all TED talky, she had a successful “exit.”

It’s not an occasion to mourn or wring hands; it’s just a business, like pretzels or software. Though, perhaps unlike pretzels or software it is “one…