There have been alarums and distress calls ...

... but this San Francisco Chronicle story puts the collapse of Advanced Marketing Services and -- more importantly -- of Publishers Group West in the clearest, direst terms:

"More than 130 independent publishers across the country were hurled into financial crisis on Dec. 29 with the bankruptcy of the parent company of Publishers Group West, the Berkeley firm that distributes books from much of the small press world....

The bankruptcy threatens the survival of many of these small presses. This week, a potential white knight appeared in the form of Perseus Books Group, a New York company that is offering to pay the book publishers 70 cents on every dollar they are owed. But the bailout is far from certain.

The bankruptcy rocked a part of the literary world that even the most avid readers don't pay much attention to -- the system that enables small presses to get their wares onto the shelves of bookstores and, eventually, into the hands of consumers."