What, no names?

Ken Waldman called me a few days ago to say that he had brought up Labor Pains and Birth Stories , the anthology, to a bookstore owner in the Midwest. The bookstore owner was intrigued…but, “Who are the names?” he wanted to know. In other words, who are the famous writers I’m including?

I remember this was one of the problems my agent faced when she was trying to sell it in New York. In exasperation, she finally said to me, “I keep wanting to say that famous writers aren’t the point of this anthology….”

I do understand where the editors and the bookstores are coming from. Famous writerly people are more likely to sell a literary anthology, especially among dozens of other anthologies. But part of the problem is the idea that an anthology like this should be shelved with other anthologies. Doesn’t it seem obvious that it should be shelved in the pregnancy section? And when a pregnant woman comes looking at books, and sees the birth stories anthology, she’s not going to give a flip about whether there are famous writers in it or not. She’s going to care about whether she can read about natural birth, about miscarriages, about long hospital stays, about home births, stillbirths, etc. She’s going to care that there are real people writing these essays, moms and dads, doctors, sisters, friends….The writers I’ve included are good writers. They’ve been published in parenting magazines, literary parenting magazines, newspapers. They’re good parents. They care about their kids, their spouses, their families.  They’re good people. And they’re writing from the heart, about an experience that absolutely changed how they think about themselves, life, the world, God.

About the famous writers, I understand. I do. I really, really do. But I guess I’m feeling a little rebellious about it today…

The Problem with Anthologies, Writing Contests, and Other Endless Details

As I muck around trying to figure out how I can pay all my writers for the Labor Pains and Birth Stories anthology without going broke before I even start the press, I begin to realize exactly why so many presses fund their operations (or at least their payment to writers) through contests. Yet charging a submission fee isn’t something I’m especially interested in doing, especially not for an anthology. As a writer myself, I frankly don’t ever submit to contests or anywhere else that charges a submission fee. Why? Maybe I’m not desperate enough to get published. More important, if I have to shell out $10 or even $20 every time I submit something, even an entire book, I’m going to lose a lot of money over the long run.  Do you know how many times you have to submit something before it gets accepted? There are, I suppose, a few lucky folks who don’t have the problem of rejection, but most of us normal folks experience it on a regular basis. Now I have an agent, a good one, too–and I still experience rejection. So…Contests seem like another great way to go broke, unless you’re the publisher, and then they seem like a great way to maybe break even.

My friend and former boss Bobby Byrd  emailed me recently to say he’s putting together an anthology right now and, thus, remembering why you should never ever put together an anthology and, he said, I should take that advice to heart. Oops. Too late, my friend! And besides, I know he loves putting together anthologies. Anyway, I sort of intend to do a lot of anthologies, but on related topics, plus I’m going to have a webzine focused on the same topic (literary essays on topics related to fertility) so I hope I’ll build a loyal audience and a niche market. I told Bill Pierce of AGNI that I was, in a sense, publishing a literary journal but bringing it out as a book every 6 mos. to a year. He might have been bullshitting me, but he told me it was a smart idea. I hope he’s right because I certainly am approaching this publishing thing differently than a purely traditional model of publishing. Either I’m completely stupid and I’m going to work really hard and fail–or maybe I’ll be lucky.

Killing Trout & Other Love Poems

New Pages, by the way, is launching their own press this weekend. There is no mention of it anywhere on their website (shame on them!) but they are bringing out a book of poems called Killing Trout and Other Love Poems by David Fraser and the book launching is, well, today! Whenever they get something up on the webpage, you can buy a copy and support New Pages.

Great cover, huh? killing-trout.pdf

P&W’s take on publishing

Good ol’ Casey and I have been having a back-and-forth about what exactly is publishing. I think we essentially agree that publishing is when the publisher selects a manuscript that they think is excellent and then the publisher edits it, pays to have the book printed, then distributes & markets it. But though I agree that this is the tried-and-true, socially legitimate form of publishing, I am still curious about how the trends are changing. As I mentioned before, I know many of these socially legitimate presses–and no, I am not going to name names–do in fact split the costs of printing with the artist. Is that publishing, when they select a manuscript they know is worthy but do this? Good ol’ Casey says no. I’m on the fence. It is not how I intend to operate my press, ever, but then I’m not publishing poetry. And I do admire many indie music artists who produce their own music. Why is that acceptable but self-publishing is not? Of course, the people who choose to self-publish may not care about the sort of social-contract that the literary world demands if you want to be part of it.

 Casey actually called Poets & Writers to find out what they thought. He talked to someone in the advertising section, who said that they discriminate against pubishers who publish on what they see as a vanity-press model, and that splitting the printing costs is vanity publishing, period. (I’m pretty sure that’s why this is the dirty little secret, and kept secret, as such.) Casey also asked how they feel about presses that fund their operations through “contests”–writers who submit their books pay a fee and the writer whose book is selected gets published, plus prize money. The guy in advertising said that they do see that as legitimate but only if the prize is at least 10 times more than the fee for entering. (So if you entered the contest for $20, the prize would have to be at least $200, I guess.)

So if you don’t publish poetry by splitting the costs, and if you don’t fund your press through contests, then another way to do it is to publish a very limited number of copies, say 100. And that is something many presses do. In fact, one press I ran into at the AWP does both the contests PLUS digitial-imaging-technology, which is either lucrative or allows them at least to break even. I went to Bookmobile and saw that they were advertising one of Greywolf Press’s books. Bookmobile is a print-on-demand or digital-imaging-technology printer. They are not a publisher, they simply provide the services of printing in such a way that you can order only 50 copies or 100 copies, instead of laying out $2-3000 for 1000 copies that you know you can’t sell. And Greywolf Press is, I might add, a highly respected press.

Of course, all of this is applicable to non-poetry publishing, too. It’s just that poetry is an obvious problem for any press that chooses to publish it. How to sell it? How to market it?

hardcover vs. paperback

Steve Almond wrote an interesting article in this month’s Poets & Writers about the difference between hardbacks and paperbacks. Many publishers these days are publishing first print runs in paperback, knowing that they’re more likely to sell copies that way. It may seem like a press has no confidence in a book’s success if they don’t issue it first in hardback but in today’s economy and today’s book market, that is just not the case. People will buy books for $10-12 when they won’t shell out $15-20. There is a psychological barrier in that leap between $10 and $15, let’s admit it. Even I’m more likely to buy a book if it’s only $10 and I, well, I’m a total whore when it comes to books. (Bookslut is already taken, so maybe I should nickname myself The Book ‘Ho.) Anyway… I love hardback books and I’m glad that Knopf had enough confidence in my novel, The Confessional , to put it out in hardback first. But still, I don’t plan to put any of Catalyst’s books out as hardbacks, at least not right away. Choosing to go paperback seems like a really simple and effective way to cut costs–and according to Almond, it doesn’t have a negative effect on potential reviewers, who review according to interest, not whether a book is a hardback.

It’s disheartening to get into today’s book world. On the one hand, it seems like there are more opportunities and reasons to publish than ever. On the other hand, it seems like it’s a cutthroat business world. (I speak from a writer’s perspective as much as a publisher’s perspective, though I feel personally everlastingly grateful for the agent I have and the editor I ended up with at Knopf.) I don’t know how independent book publishers make money when they have to shell out money for booths at this book fair and that book fair; send out dozens, even hundreds, of free books to reviewers, bookstores, & librarians; and accept returns that are unsaleable from bookstores who couldn’t sell the copies in a few months and thus, send the copies back. It’s a cold, scary world, I’m learning.

P.S.

Of course, I will also post about how important bookstores are (god, I love ‘em) and what does it say about our culture that we can’t keep them in business?

How exactly does B&N make money anyway? It seems like they don’t sell that many books, given how many they send back to publishers.

And really, not to piss off the big guys because I certainly hope some of them will carry Catalyst’s books, but really–why is the book business modeled on consignment? Consignment seems like it would work well with something like clothes, which last relatively well. But books are like food: not that books spoil but they do rip and tear and shred rather easily, hence the decrepit condition in which they are returned to the publisher after they have been on B&N’s booksheles for a few months.

The AWP

I met some interesting people at the AWP and in the weeks to come will be posting some snippets of interviews, as well as much commentary about how small presses are using digital imaging technology (often known as POD), how some are saying “Screw you” to Ingram’s, and how online sales and internet marketing are driving the new style of small press.

I had wondered about the quality of some of the POD books. I thought Bookmobile’s quality was superior, but even Lightning Source’s quality was pretty good and if I hadn’t known it was POD, I wouldn’t have guessed. But admittedly, the price they pay per book is horrifying. Still, when I asked Richard Peabody of Paycock Press how he felt about Print on Demand, he joked, “It saved my marriage!” Then he explained how much money he spends to warehouse books that never sell, how much money is tied up in that….And, well, it makes sense.

Morris Rosenthal and Aaron Shepard do say that most small presses are simply using POD within their traditional publishing model and they suggest that that is unimaginative and still ties up lots of money and time. This is because most of these presses are still targeting brick-and-mortar stores, still offering returns, still getting back unsaleable books from bookstores. They’re right. But if you’re not self-publishing, and you want to publish self-respecting authors, they want to know that their books can end up in bookstores, so you do have to cater to that market to some extent. In the weeks to come, however, I will be talking to different presses to see how they do it and how things are a-changin’ in the book world.