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?

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.