[let’stry this again…]
Ok, this may be a strange topic, but give me a chance.
When I first got into libertarianism back in the early 80s, there were several libertarian groups, many of them publishing books, booklets and journals. In no particular order, there was the Cato Institute (several journals, plus books, plus a monograph series, the Cato Papers). There was FEE (Freeman, books, pamphlets). Institute for Humane Studies (journals, books, and several monograph series). Center for Libertarian Studies (journals, Occassional Papers monograph series). There were magazines like Reason, Inquiry, etc. You had Libertarian Press, Laissez-Faire Books, etc etc.
While I never stopped being a libertarian, I kind of drifted away (tho I kept my subscription to reason and Liberty).
Now things are different. CLS seems to be gone (what happened to it). Cato is still around, but their monographs are gone (still trying to get a complete set of Cato Papers…). IHS dropped all their publishing (no more books, journals or their monographs. I have some of their monographs, but not a complete set). FEE still publishes Freeman, but instead of being a smaller, digest size FREE zine, its a smaller, magazine size, and you have to make a donation to get it. They don’t seem to publish as many books as they used to (most of Leonard Reed’s stuff is out of print). Libertarian Press is still around, but not publishing as much. Lot of their stuff seems to have moved to Liberty Fund or the Mises Institute. And their current covers are all a uniform, dull, style of horizontal lines. Why doesn’t the Mises Institute just buy them out or something. LFB had their Fox & Wilkes imprint, but ITIL has dropped that in favor of starting their own imprint (Cobden books), but been slow to start publishing (why, with POD so easy???). The Mises Institute seems to have come out of no where (so to speak), with publishing stuff and bringing stuff back into print (or making it available on-line). I think they have several issues of Inquiry on-line now, and other libertarian journals I only heard about before.
Lot of smaller efforts have disappeared. I sometimes wish that the Mises Institute could step in and bring back more of the classic works of LeFevre, various libertarians, etc.
What are other’s thoughts on this?