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?

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.

I’m leaving on a jet plane

I’m off to New York this week to promote New Pages, Catalyst Book Press, and myself (J.L. Powers). And also to have a good time in New York, meeting up with some good friends, seeing my agent and editor at Knopf. So probably no new postings for about a week but check back around the 6th. That’s when I’m going to start really digging in to this independent culture thing.

Catalyst’s mascot

Here is Catalyst’s mascot, Jamaica. And does she ever transform things around here. Boxes of postcards and flyers–she’ll rip right into them, so every morning I have to pile them onto the bed (which is 3 feet behind my desk). She likes to gnaw on books so Creative Suite 3 Bible has now been christened with her teethmarks. (Just so long as she doesn’t do that to a real Bible and call down the fires of heaven upon us.) She likes to lay right in front of the little space heater that keeps the office/bedroom warm and, right in the middle of something important–like talking to the lady who is going to design the cover of Ken’s book and possibly Labor Pains and Birth Stories as well–she wants nothing more than to loudly chase around her latest squeezie toy. What a little nuisance. What am I going to do with her? Guess I’ll just love her.

AWP

Jan. 31-Feb. 3. I will be at the AWP 2008 Conference in New York City. I’ll be the deranged young adult author wandering around among all these poets and writers for adults. But when I’m feeling sane, you can find me at the New Pages  table in the Bookfair, table 215 Americas Hall 1. If I’m not there, Casey & Denise can tell you when I’ll be back.

Announcing Catalyst Book Press

A year ago, when I asked my friend and ex-boss Bobby Byrd (publisher at Cinco Puntos Press) what he would tell somebody who was thinking about starting a small press, he replied, “Don’t do it.”

 Well, Bobby, welcome 2008 and welcome to the launching of Catalyst Book Press. I’m going against your sage advice and I’m starting this small independent press, focusing on non-fiction. (I do have a mission statement and a focus within non-fiction but more information on that will come later. )

Part of what convinced me to go ahead and do this anyway was a combination of things: 1) I’ve been planning to start a press for a few years so this was going to happen inevitably sooner or later; 2) I read Aaron Shepard’s book Aiming at Amazon and realized that there has to be middle way between his method (more on that later, much much more) and the traditional publishing model, which would not starve me of time and money and might allow me to still focus mostly on my own writing career that is definitely and solidly within the traditional publishing model!; 3) I keep writing little odds and ends, interviews and articles, for New Pages. Casey, Denise, and I have been talking for years about this and I finally decided I should go ahead and write the damn book about independent publishing culture that we’ve been talking about  for years and, well, I’d better be an independent book publisher if I’m going to write about that with integrity; and 4) (most important) I got tired of reading so much scholarly stuff for graduate school. There, I said it. If I’m going to read this much, I decided, I might as well sometimes read things I really, really want to read–things I’m going to write about, things I’m going to publish, and things for the sheer pleasure of reading. I’m tired of reading nothing but these academic tomes.

 This blog is going to be a combination of things. It will shamelessly promote Catalyst Book Press’s books, of course, and will contain news and updates as necessary. It will also be an exploration of independent publishing culture as I work out the kinks of this upcoming book. And it will probably evolve from there.

 So hallelujah, open the champagne bottles and let’s toast the beginnings of yet another indie book press.