Men Don’t Give Birth, After All

I just got off the phone with a snotty bookseller in Boston.

I was trying to set up a reading for four of the Boston-area writers in my forthcoming anthology of literary birth stories, Labor Pains and Birth Stories:Essays on Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Becoming a Parent. 

I mentioned the book and said four of my writers live in the Boston area.

“I feel like I’ve done this already,” she said.

My mind started racing. Oh, no, has somebody beaten me to the punch? Has somebody just released an anthology of birth stories?

Then she wanted to know who they were, which is a fair question. I mentioned the first writer (a man), and she snorted. “Did he have children?” she asked.

“Well….yes, he did,” I said.

“Did he give birth?” The only way to describe her tone is Boston-style snide.

“Well, he was there, after all, when his wife gave birth,” I explained–I hope in a gentle, soothing tone, that tried to get across the idea that birth stories are not only for or about women, and that, after all, women are not the only participants in this life-changing event. “And so it seems like he would be qualified to write about his own children’s births…”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “And? Who else?”

I listed the writers in order, my voice shaking as she grew quieter and quieter. Then she said, “We just did an event with a book about miscarriages, so I think we’ve already done this topic.”

Wow, I wanted to say. You think that having a miscarriage is the same thing as giving birth? Who are you? And where can we find your witch’s broom and witch’s hat?

Birth Parents anthology

I’m pleased to officially report that Labor Pains and Birth Stories, due out in January 2009, will be followed in the next year by an anthology of essays (and possibly poems) exploring the experiences of birth parents. We are looking for essays (and poems) written by birth mothers and birth fathers who have given up their children for adoption, of birth parents who have met their children later in life, birth parents who have navigated the difficult waters of open adoptions, adoptive parents who have struggled through or been blessed with a relationship with a birth parent or who have watched their children reach out or struggle with their birth parents, and people who have been adopted and later developed a relationship or did not develop a relationship with a birth parent. The focus, however, is on birth parents (not adoption, which we may do for a later anthology.) We hope this will be a healing book, and perhaps a resource as well.

Though lots has been written about adoption, there is a real lack of resources for birth parents. I’m very excited to participate in this project, which will be edited by mother-daughter team Ann Angel and Amanda Angel. They have their own great story to tell, which they may choose to do at a later time on this blog. Essays can be short or long. We are a literary press and looking for essays written to the highest standards. Please submit your best work.

If you want to submit an essay or poem to this upcoming anthology, please contact Amanda and Ann at the following email: alangel78 at gmail.com. You can also contact us here at Catalyst Book Press at info at catalystbookpress.com.

p.s. this is a sensitive topic; for those who need it, we will welcome essays and poems written under pseudonyms…

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.

What exactly is publishing, anyway?

Last week, my friend and editor at New Pages (Casey) got really excited one night and emailed me, sputtering, to talk about Off the Grid Press’s publishing model. Off The Grid Press is pretty open about what it does. Here’s part of its submissions policy: “To be eligible for publication by Off the Grid Press, you must be at least sixty years old, have a completed manuscript of sixty pages or more in hand, and have already published at least one book with a non-vanity press or five poems in three or more nationally distributed literary magazines. You must be willing to bear the cost of book design ($800-$1200), printing (about $2000 for 1000 copies), and distribution.”

“I mean, is this even publishing?” Casey asked.

 ”I can see how this doesn’t differ a whole lot from vanity presses,” I said. “But it’s still sort of/kind of publishing, isn’t it?”

“No!” Casey howled. All-right, actually he just said it, with emphasis. But howling sounds better. “There’s no marketing, no distribution, and the author pays to have his/her work printed. How is that publishing? Sure, the press is making money but the poet who publishes with them–how are they going to sell a thousand copies of a poetry book?”

“Okay, it doesn’t follow the traditional publishing format, no, and I see your point, yes, but it seems to me that things are changing so fast these days–what are the rules to publishing anymore?”

“So…is this just part of publishing culture now?”

Maybe.

Well, exactly what is publishing these days? One of the dirty little secrets (and maybe it’s not so secret) is that in order to publish poetry these days, many presses split the costs of printing with the poets. Sure, maybe they don’t publish just anybody–maybe they only publish poets they respect and honor and think do good work. But the fact of the matter is that they’re still splitting costs of printing with the author, and that has traditionally been called “self-publishing.”

We also know that many presses pay for the poetry they publish by sponsoring competitions with $10-20 entry fees. The entry fees pay for at least part of the printing costs.

And then there’s definitely tons of ethical issues with the “you scratch my back/I’ll scratch your back” approach to publishing, which occurs not just with books but also with lit magazines. We’re not even talking about self-publishing or vanity publishing here. And what constitutes self-publishing anyway? Hell, Catalyst is going to publish a number of anthologies related to fertility, sexuality, and family. I’m the publisher/editor/marketer for the press but I also plan to be the series editor for those books because, well, who else is going to do it unless I can scrounge up a guest editor whose taste I trust, whose values are roughly in line with mine in terms of how I want to approach the topics? I’m not going to write what’s between the pages of the book, no, except maybe an acknowledgements page or perhaps an introduction, but my name will be on a number of those books, if not all of them, as editor. Is that self-publishing? God, I hope not. But why is it that I hope not? Because I want to be accepted by my peers.

“Why is it that the publishing industry doesn’t accept self-publishing?” I asked, with trepidation, I admit because well, frankly, I want to be liked and thought well of and admired, eventually, by all those people who don’t like self-publishing and I also have some of the same biases regarding self-published books. I’ve seen a few decent books come out that way. Many self-published books, however, are cases in point–they prove exactly why those books weren’t published by a regular press anyway and why the author had to resort to self-publishing. But still.

I continued with my thoughts. “The music industry has no problem with musicians who record and produce their own cds. In fact, the indie music scene is thriving. Why aren’t we as evolved as the music scene?”

Then I answer my own question in my head: part of the problem is that writers don’t have a venue, like musicians, to prove our worth. People have to buy the book without hearing the music, to mix metaphors.

“I’m probably going to lose friends over this,” Casey moaned.

Okay, he didn’t really say that. But I like to imagine he did.

This whole publishing culture thing: we’re in the middle of a revolution. Not everybody recognizes it yet and tons of people are clinging to the old way of doing things. Maybe the old way is the best way. Maybe the old way will win  in the end because it has all the power and money (though power and money have never been the determining factors for winning when there’s a revolution). Maybe what will emerge is a hybrid of the old and the new. Maybe books are lost forever to Amazon’s Kindle and internet publishing.

And surely, digital imaging technology–which is getting better every year–is (gasp) the wave of the future.

I asked a friend in the bid-ness why digital imaging technology (often known as POD or print-on-demand) is such a dirty word among authors and publishers. Well, about publishers, he didn’t have much to say except that he knew a number of publishers who kiss but don’t tell. But about authors, he had this to say, not in so many words but close to it: ”No author wants to be told that their book can only sell a few hundred copies. Every author wants to believe that their book should sell tens of thousands of copies.”

So maybe it all comes down to pride.

Mission Statement

I’m using this space to work on the mission statement for the press. Please feel free to send comments. I can’t promise to incorporate your comments or pay any attention to them whatsoever–but I’m thrilled to  get ‘em because they might, like Mighty Mouse, come to save the day!

A mission statement can often be sort of lofty and, well, high-falutin’ so to speak. I’m going to do that in part A. But in part B, I’m going to get down to the nitty-gritty to describe the things Catalyst will publish and the things Catalyst won’t publish.

The Lofty, High-Falutin’ Part

A) The definition of “catalyst” is “something that causes an important event to happen.” The best literature is a force for change. Catalyst Book Press will publish books that follow the human journey through life, paying special attention to those moments of individual and group transformation, revolution, and change. While it is a worthy goal to try to transform society, that means trying to change bureaucracies, which is like trying to stop the earth from turning. Societies are changed when individuals change and so Catalyst focuses on the ground up, at the personal level. We hope to publish books that 1) increase knowledge about the world and 2) work to help transform individual hearts and minds.

The Nitty-Gritty Part

B) First of all, with but a few exceptions, Catalyst Book Press will exclusively publish non-fiction. This non-fiction should strive for the best journalistic and literary standards. We are not interested in scholarly works though we are interested in works that have been thoroughly researched and investigated. So here’s a list of things that might appeal:

1) TRAVELNOTES Like people, places have a personality–that personality is influenced by geography, culture, religion, history and politics. So Catalyst is interested in publishing books about strange or unique places, perhaps books written by people who have either travelled somewhere or lived somewhere interesting.

2) FERTILITY AND FAMILY. Catalyst will be publishing a series of literary anthologies related to those kinds of topics (birth stories, birth parents, adoption, miscarriages, etc.) exploring people’s personal and spiritual transformations. From time to time, we will send out calls for submissions for these anthologies. Although Catalyst is not interested in self-help books etc., there may be other books that fit into this category that, from time to time, we will publish.

3) RELIGION. All religions can be a force for both good and evil. Catalyst is interested in exploring individual and group spiritual experiences, books that explore religious movements or depict religious people, spiritual memoirs, biographies, popular histories.

4) AFRICA. Anybody who knows me knows how much I love Africa. In the next two-three years, Catalyst will begin publishing books by Africans and about Africa. This may be the press’s death knell. It seems like nobody buys books about Africa (woe to us.) If necessary, Catalyst will start a side non-profit to pursue this interest.