Because of the success of the book, the author-photographer decided to do a more ambitious project, a book on the Great Plains that spanned 10 states from Montana to Texas. He founded Silver Print Press and published the book in 1996. People of the Great Plains immediately won national four awards. It did not sell that well and Peter quickly found out the difficulties of being a small, independent publisher who creates his own books. The distribution pipe-line for books is controlled by a few large companies.
Chain stores control most of the sales and favor very large publishers who buy display space.
Books would be ordered in quantity by the chains and then, four weeks later, be returned completely damaged for credit. Some book stores would only order from the large distributors because they could return books quickly. All the books were basically on consignment and such an arrangement hurt, in the end run, the publisher. So Peter decided that, as a very small publisher, he should only print books that could be sold in his own region without using the large distributors. If he had a national book, he would go to large publisher who had clout with the chain book stores.