Literature and Poetry Reviews, Home of the Virtual Poetry Circle
If you’re not a regular reader of Book Chick City, you may have missed my guest post about the books I love. My guest post appeared on March 29, and I’ve finally got around to telling you. 🙂
I’ve included an eclectic list of books for her readers and you, though some of you will recognize some old favorites I’ve mentioned here before.
Please go check out my post.
Welcome to a post from Tightrope Books‘ Publisher Halli Villegas. She’s going to talk about the fun behind publishing at a small press. This small press offers a number of poetry books for poetry lovers like me, including one I recently reviewed, Open Slowly by Dayle Furlong (check out my review).
Without further ado, please welcome Halli:
Independent Publishing for Fun and Absolutely No Profit
Whatever possessed me? I often ask myself that, especially on days when the bills have piled up on the desk and authors are asking me if they can move the comma on their bio over one pica after the proofs have all ready gone to the printer, and the intern has lost the debit card for the fourth time somewhere between the post office three blocks away and the Kinko’s a block further, and I want to put my head down and have a good cry.
A real love of writing and reading, a frisson of excitement at the act of selling something I had been part of making, seeing a writer’s face when they first hold their book in their hands and knowing this was the closest I would ever get to making someone’s dream come true, this is what motivated me to start a press. Was it enough to build a life around?
It isn’t easy. No matter how many times you hear that from those who have published their own chapbooks, or some writing group that has put together an anthology of their own work; publishing professionally, more then a one off book for friends and family’s delectation, is not something that can be fit in between a full time job, family and socializing. The publishing itself becomes all those things and more. And it doesn’t pay. Not if you want to try to avoid publishing books such as The Seven Healing Crystals: Losing Weight the New Age Way and Five Minute Snacks for Feisty Kids. Which have their place and their market, but were never of interest to me.
So I juggle payments and bills, put money in that I earn at temp jobs, each dollar representing a latte made for some CEO, an endless afternoon answering phones in an office without windows and ask myself again: Whatever possessed me?
But then the day comes when the books are back from the printers, and the author and I open the box, breathing in the smell of new paper and ink. The author runs their hand across the cover of their book, as if touching the face of a long lost friend and turns to me and says, “Thank you, its beautiful.”
Thanks, Halli, for participating and celebrating independent and small presses.
About Tightrope Books:
Tightrope Books was established in January 2005 to bring a fresh take to Canadian literature by juxtaposing new and established writers, genres, and cultures to build an inclusive list that represents the vitality of current Canadian literature. For more information, please visit the Web site. Also visit the Tightrope Books Blog.
Ironically, following my idea to celebrate small and independent presses this month, I discovered the Indie Lit Awards online. However, I did notice that the awards did not have a poetry category, so I started inquiring about it.
This year, I was asked to take part in the 2011 Indie Lit Awards (click for the history of the awards) by Wallace at Unputdownables, and I agreed to be director of the newly added category — Poetry — because it was a natural fit for me, and I knew some great people who could participate as voting members. Want to see whose on the team? Check them out and the teams for Biography/Memoir, GLBTQ, Literary Fiction, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Speculative Fiction. Poetry, Biography/Memoir, and Mystery are categories that were added this year.
Wallace explained the process of nominating books much better than I ever could, so please check out her explanation or refer to this portion below:
When do nominations open?
September 1, 2011- December 31, 2011.
Can I nominate?
Nominations are open to book bloggers who do not make their income through the sales of books (i.e. not authors, publishers, or publicists) — hence “independent” from the publishing industry. You must provide a blog address when nominating to prove that you have a currently running book blog.
I am a book blogger and I want to participate in nominating. How do I get books that were published in 2011 (I don’t want to spend all of my money on hardcovers)?
There are several ways. First, you can purchase new books on your e-reader of choice… these are usually $10-$15 cheaper than print versions. Second, you can borrow them from your local libraries. Third, you can contact publishers and let them know you are interested in reviewing their books. Lastly, we are hoping to open a list on our site that shows which bloggers review in which genres so publishers can more easily find who to send their newest books to. (Keep your eye out for that — it’s not available right now, but should be coming soon.)
There are other ways to support the awards as well, please check out the post from Wallace.
Please follow the updates from the Indie Lit Awards blog or on Twitter. There are some great buttons for the awards and the poetry nominations to display as well.
I hope that many of you, who should be participating in my 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge, will participate in the nomination process!
Also, please do not forget that next month, April, is National Poetry Month, and we’re hosting the annual blog tour here at the blog. I hope you’ll all be participating with guest posts and reviews!
I didn’t have as much time to prepare for the Celebration of Indie & Small Presses as I had hoped, but I did manage to snag another interview. This time, we’re going to hear from Fred Ramey of Unbridled Books, which has a large focus on literary fiction.
Some of their books have been reviewed here on the blog, including (click links for my reviews) Safe From the Sea by Peter Geye, Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel, The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa, and many others.
1. Unbridled Books is a renewal of your partnership with Greg Michalson, and you both seem dedicated to the promotion of good literary fiction in a time dominated by reality TV and pop culture. Has this environment made it more difficult to get readers’ attention or how have you navigated the obstacles it has presented?
The obstacles to what we do are wider than the reality TV and pop culture aspects. They include the loss of mainstream review coverage for independent presses, the shrinking shelf space for all but celebrity books, and, of course, the economy as a whole. But we publish with conviction, Greg and I. The conviction that carries us is that—in a world in which the Big Houses are forced by fiscal pressures to focus on the Big Book—a great many readers will find reward in novels and nonfiction that engage them. We believe in books that lie outside of formulas and high concepts. The novels that most excite us are tales that we connect with emotionally and intellectually. That connection, and the conviction that other readers feel the same, can carry an editor through lean times. We’ve reached a point here where we truly need serious review attention and lively word of mouth, but I can feel the growing hunger of the culture for the kinds of unfamiliar stories that our authors weave. It is a difficult time for us as for all small presses, but with some good fortune, we’ll weather it.
2. What inspired you to enter independent publishing and what characteristics do you look for in your authors and staff that make the model worth while?
In the 1990s—after a long run of teaching and freelance editing, among other things—I was directing a tiny press called MacMurray & Beck, which had a fairly eclectic non-fiction list. Soon after my arrival there, the opportunity arose to publish fiction and I leapt at it. I asked Greg, whom I’d long known, to join the effort. The successes we had early on encouraged us to devote as much of our efforts to good fiction as we could. The authors we have chosen to publish over these many years are authors we are proud to publish. The books in our list are truly varied, but each one takes us somewhere we’ve never been. Many of them are downright beautiful. All, I think, are in one way or another eye-opening. And each one tells a story we haven’t heard before. We try to indicate all this to readers by giving our books the best designs—and long marketing efforts—which we believe are the trace of our enthusiasm for the authors and the books.
Here at Unbridled, we are de-centralized; that is, our employees are all over the country, and beyond. And we have an extraordinary staff of dedicated people who take these books personally. Greg and I often say that our egos are behind every book we publish. It’s clear to me that our team feels the same way.
I should say, too, that Greg and I, along with Caitlin Hamilton Summie, had a stint at Putnam which ended when Phyllis Grann left. What we learned there is that the richness of the books we are dedicated to is better served in an independent context. Working in an independent house, we can afford the patience, not only to support a book for a year and more, but to support an author—like Rick Collignon, Timothy Schaffert, Emily St. John Mandel, Frederick Reuss, Masha Hamilton—over many books in their careers. Our goal is to work with the best authors while they are finding their readers, while their readers are finding them. In this world, that’s easier to do independently.
3. At just about 8 years old, Unbridled Books has published a number of well-loved author debut novels, like Peter Geye’s Safe From the Sea, and others. What goes into the selection process and about how many of the manuscripts you receive are selected for publication? How is this process different from when you both were at Putnam? How is it the same?
As I imagine you suspect, we publish a tiny fraction of what we receive. Greg and I go through hundreds and hundreds of submissions each year. We publish only 10 or so. The process is discussion. Each of us can bring a manuscript into the discussion, and our analyzing what makes the manuscript work, whether it needs to be revised and how, whether it is a match for our profile and our future—that discussion—often goes on for hours, sometimes in more than one session over several days. We publish only what we truly believe in, what we believe is fresh and strong, with a full voice and a rich sense of place. Greg and I began our discussion of what makes a novel successful in the late-1970s; our editorial discussions are an extension of that. And they were exactly the same when we were at BlueHen/Putnam.
4. Relationships with booksellers must be key for an Indie/small press’ survival among large NYC publishing houses and big box stores. Is this relationship reciprocal and how so?
We have always said that independent booksellers are our natural allies. It is difficult for us to generate a situation where the potential readers of Unbridled books will enter a store looking for our frontlist. And so we need to have dedicated booksellers who are genuinely curating their stores to champion our books. We send many ARCs to those booksellers—and we try to know them personally so that we can sense what in our list each of them might be drawn to. We don’t want to bombard them indiscriminately.
We remain convinced that folks who read our books will recommend them: readers to readers, booksellers to their customers. When booksellers are drawn to one of our books, that’s where the seeds of our success settle. This was the case, for instance, with The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson, In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld, and Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel. The booksellers championed each of these. As I said, we hope to publish our authors’ full careers. If the booksellers can support our authors with enthusiastic hand-selling, we will bring more books by those authors. It’s an old-fashioned concept that damping forces like BookScan threaten to make obsolete, but we believe that with bookseller support and the good attention of reviewers, an author’s audience can grow.
5. Many of the Unbridled Books I’ve read seem to have poetic elements to the prose. Is this intentional? Have you thought about expanding beyond fiction into publishing poetry?
I appreciate the compliment. We’re trying to expand our non-fiction list these days; I don’t think we have room to step into poetry, though both Greg and I are poetry readers. I think that what you’re responding to is the imagistic nature of the writing. We do love work that enables us to see as well as to feel. I’m drawn to precise language, too. And it seems to me that the characters in a novel are richest when the authors can see them move through a tactile world. I think that our authors are some of the most gifted writers at work today.
6. What advice would you give to amateur writers shopping around their first novel, particularly about approaching a small/indie press? Would this advice differ from the advice you would give them if they were looking into larger publishers?
Well, what one writes, in this rapidly changing publishing world, will likely dictate where the book will land. The Big House needs the Big Book; this is a matter of economics. (And it’s why one needs an agent to enter the lists of the conglomerate publishers.) But the country is full of independent presses, each of which has an editorial profile and, likely, a loyal market—folks who are looking for their next catalog. We publish micro-histories, memoirs, and what I call commercial literature. By this I mean well-turned works with a wide appeal. My advice to authors who choose to address traditional publishing (as opposed to self-publishing) is to match their work with a house that handles such work. Sending Unbridled a fantasy novel won’t be productive.
7. Unbridled Books and other small presses seemed focused on creating a community of readers and writers through their relationships and connections. Name some of the benefits of these symbiotic relationships and some of the drawbacks, especially when it comes to editing manuscripts or selecting book covers and marketing strategies.
As mainstream review inches and bookshelf space (particularly at the chains) have grown harder to secure for small presses, many of us have found great value in social media relations. This is not to say that we’re only talking to folks online; we call when we can (worried about overburdening our friends), and we attend as many trade shows and other gatherings as we can. All of this is, as you say, to create a community of readers—websites will be salons…. I believe Richard Eoin Nash’s Cursor will actually engage readers in the process by asking them to enter the discussion while a manuscript is being written. We don’t go that far, but our relationships with readers and booksellers are absolutely essential to our future as a publisher. As we develop marketing strategies for an individual title, we ask for early reactions from readers groups. We try to understand what books are the best match for the members of readers organizations. Each book we publish has a constituency, and knowing where those readers are is a tremendous marketing asset. And, as those ARCs go out, we quickly learn which covers are successful and which are not. Is there a drawback to any of that? I don’t think so. The reading world changes weekly; the stronger our relationships with a book-loving community, the better we can respond to those changes.
Thanks, Fred, for answering my questions about Unbridled Books and for participating in the celebration!
The National Poetry Month Blog Tour in 2010 was so successful, I thought I’d host another one for my readers and for new readers as well.
This year, I wanted to do something a little bit different. Rather than just simply direct you to participant’s posts on their own blogs, I also wanted to solicit some guest posts from poets and poetry publishers for the tour, which would be featured on Savvy Verse & Wit. Additionally, I’d love to feature some guest reviews of poetry collections for the blog as well, since I’m a new mother these days.
If you’re interested in providing a guest review, guest post, or simply being part of the tour, please email me with a specific topic and date in mind, and I will put you on the schedule and accommodate your date choice as best I can. Email savvyverseandwit AT gmail.
Anyone can jump on the tour at any time and put their permanent url for their post in the Mr. Linky at the beginning of the month.
If you have any questions or suggestions for posts, giveaways, etc., please email.
Here are the buttons for the tour from Shellie at Layers of Thought:
Welcome to the 90th Virtual Poetry Circle!
Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.
Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.
It’s a new year, and if you haven’t heard there is a new feature on the blog this year . . . my first ever, poetry reading challenge. Yup, that means everyone should be signing up because all you need to do is read 1 book of poetry.
Today’s poem comes from Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith:
Superdome (page 40)
I did not demand they wade through the overflow from toilets,
chew their own nails bloody in place of a meal.I didn’t feed their squalling babies chewing gum,
force them to pee out loud in gutters,
or make them lick their own sweat for healing salt.I pity the women who had to sleep with their legs
slammed shut, and the elders with their rheumy eyes
trained on my crown even after it was ripped away.Glittering and monstrous, I was defined by a man’s hand,
my tight musculature coiled beneath plaster and glass.
I was never their church, although I disguised myself as shelter
and relentlessly tested their faith.
Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.
I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.
Today’s guest post is from poet A. J. Odasso. She’s kindly offered to talk about her submission experiences with small presses as part of the March celebration of small and indie publishers.
As small and independent poetry presses go, the publishers of my chapbook and my collection—Maverick Duck Press and Flipped Eye Publishing respectively—are success stories, and I’m both pleased and proud to be working with them. Fortunate, too, as it seems that where larger, more commercial publishers have been particularly hard-hit by the recent global economic chaos, smaller presses have been better situated to weather these difficult times because they’re more likely to have made cautious financial decisions from the outset. That’s not to say that small and independent presses have it easy right now. I don’t think anyone does.
However, security wasn’t first and foremost on the list of qualities I was seeking in publishers when I first started submitting poetry manuscripts in earnest. From 2005 through 2007 (my first two years of submitting work for publication, period), my poetry and short fiction had met with reasonable success in magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. By early 2007, I had accrued enough poetry to assemble the earliest version of what is now my first collection, Lost Books. I aimed high in the first few rounds of submitting it to publishers; any high-profile US or UK operation open to unsolicited poetry manuscripts at the time doubtless got my query letter and a sample of the manuscript. I spent a little over two years receiving responses that were split between the form-letter “Sorry, this isn’t for us right now” and “Hey, we like your sample, would you please send the whole thing,” only to eventually meet with rejection. During that time, I continued to write, and my list of magazine and anthology credits grew. It was sometime during late 2008 when I decided to assemble a chapbook-length manuscript made up of some newer work, Devil’s Road Down, and submit it to Maverick Duck Press, with which I was familiar thanks to a friend who had been published there. I sent it off and promptly forgot about it.
In February 2009, I received an invitation from a colleague in London (at the time, I was living in York, although I’m now a Londoner myself) to read as part of a line-up of poets being billed as The Sad Poets’ Society at the Last Tuesday Society‘s Valentine’s Day Ball. The event itself was lavish, chaotic, and decidedly alcoholic, as most of the masked and costumed crowd didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to us as we took the spotlight one by one. We were paying attention to each other, though, as after we’d all read, I somehow became engaged in a conversation with one of the other poets whose work I’d thoroughly enjoyed, Nii Ayikwei Parkes. I was delighted to hear that his work was available in print, and that’s the point at which I got the same question in turn: so, do you have a collection? Having to give the answer “Yes, but it’s not published yet, and I’ve been sending it out for months” had always been incredibly frustrating, but, much to my dismay, Nii produced a business card and told me to send him the manuscript. Not only was he a poet, but he was a publisher. If it turned out not to be a good fit for Flipped Eye, he said he’d certainly be able to give me advice as to other places I might look into. Nii’s kindness and forthrightness are, I don’t doubt, just two of the many reasons that Flipped Eye has managed to build such an excellent reputation amongst UK independent publishers.
It took me a week or so to work up the nerve to send the manuscript. In the two or three weeks that I spent waiting for Nii to respond, I heard from Kendall A. Bell at Maverick Duck Press, who said he’d like to publish Devil’s Road Down in autumn 2009. Kendall is a responsive, enthusiastic editor whose endeavors at Maverick Duck truly are a labor of love. The chapbooks he publishes are only available through Maverick Duck’s website, although the back-catalogue of titles (stretching back as far as 2003) is both varied and impressive. Although based in the US, Maverick Duck publishes poets from around the globe. Kendall’s eye for distinct voices and unique, memorable viewpoints has, no doubt, ensured the press’s consistent standard of excellence.
A week or so later, word came back from Nii: Lost Books had the green light, and I’d be joining the Flipped Eye family in early 2010. Along with his small team of co-editors, Nii works tirelessly to ensure that Flipped Eye poets and writers have regular opportunities to perform in and around London (and beyond, as I’ve been part of events in Leeds, Manchester, and York). I’ve met and become friends with many of the other writers represented by Flipped Eye, as well as become familiar with their work (I particularly recommend Malika Booker, Inua Ellams, Agnes Meadows, Niall O’Sullivan, and a forthcoming collection of short stories from Leila Segal). When I call Flipped Eye a family, I mean it in the truest sense of the term. Ultimately, if I’d been successful with one of the larger publishers, I would’ve missed out on being part of the tight-knit community dynamic that small and independent presses foster.
Thanks, Adrienne, for taking part in March’s celebration.
About the Poet:
A. J. Odasso is currently completing her Ph.D. in English at the University of York (UK). Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including Strong Verse, Aesthetica, Sybil’s Garage, Succour, Farrago’s Wainscot, The Liberal, Mythic Delirium, Jabberwocky, Cabinet des Fées, Midnight Echo, and Not One of Us—with new work forthcoming in Illumen, Dreams & Nightmares, Orbis, and others. Her first full poetry collection, Lost Books, is forthcoming from Flipped Eye Publishing in April 2010. Her first print chapbook, Devil’s Road Down, is currently available from Maverick Duck Press.
Poet Andrew Kozma
This month at the Poetry Blog of 32 Poems Magazine my interview with poet Andrew Kozma was posted. He’s a contributor to the magazine and was a delight to interview, especially since he seems to enjoy the distractions of cafes as much as I do, though I more people watch than anything.
First, let me tantalize you with a bit from the interview, and then you can go on over and check the rest out for yourself.
Without further ado, here’s the interview.
Do you have any obsessions that you would like to share?
General obsessions or writerly ones?
Generally, I’m obsessed with bad films (and generally interested in bad art of all kinds). I co-founded a bad movie club at my undergraduate school and have roped people into watching horrible films with me wherever I’ve moved. It’s sad, I suppose, that I’m always more interested in watching a bad movie than a good one (or, at least, one that is seen as “good” by the general populace). But people always want to watch what’s good. Where’s the love for the bad?
In writing, I find myself obsessed with extreme situations. An early poem of mine was inspired by nuns who “cut off their noses and lips to avoid violation.” More recently I’ve written about the Japanese Giant Hornet: a swarm of thirty can kill thirty thousand bees in a matter of hours.
More generally, I’m obsessed with form regardless of what genre I’m writing in. I try to treat everything I write as an experiment, pushing myself in a direction that I have yet to fully explore. In poetry, this means often writing in traditional forms, but also, more truthfully, that every poem I write inhabits a form even if it’s not immediately recognizable.
Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).
I belong to a writing group now for working on novels, but this is relatively new to me. My default learning vehicle for writing has been the academic workshop from freshman year of high school to my last years of my Ph.D. It’s true that, now, I would have to say that I find my writing group more helpful than workshops, but the reason for that is because all the people involved are experienced writers, have workshop experience, and like each other’s work. The writing group is really only an evolution of the workshop for me. The first thing I learned about workshops is that you quickly have to determine whose comments are useful to you and to filter out the rest, essentially creating your own private writing group within the larger workshop context.
The writing books that I enjoyed most are Burning Down the House by Charles Baxter and Stephen King’s On Writing. I don’t really like reading straight how-to books on writing. Both of those books are more a symptom of the way I do like to approach learning about writing book-wise: criticism. King’s Danse Macabre. Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw. James Blish’s Issues at Hand, and a Collections of essays by William Logan and Randall Jarrell.
Do you have any favorite foods or foods that you find keep you inspired? What are the ways in which you pump yourself up to keep writing and overcome writer’s block?
Coffee. And I don’t mean coffee in the sense that I need the caffeine to kickstart my heart or to keep me going – I drown my coffee in cream and sugar – it’s more that I like to have something hot at hand while writing. Drinking it (slowly) gives me something to do, and the heat from what I’m drinking makes me feel active. I think it has something to do with the fact that a hot beverage is a sort of clock. It only stays hot for so long.
Similar to the countdown inherent in a cooling cup of coffee, I use time to overcome writer’s block. When working, I’ll say that I have to write for a certain amount of time – when working on my novel it was two hours a day – and for that time I actually have to be writing. Yes, in theory, I could be staring at a blank screen for those two hours. In practice, if you set me in front of a computer and I have no other way to distract myself, I’ll begin stringing words together. Of course, whether those words will be coherent is anybody’s guess.
Here’s a sample poem from Andrew as well:
A Firm Belief in Unfettered Joy
Here is what I was going to tell you:
The Dalstroi orchestra played for them
as they approached over the ice
that had caught fast the ship
transporting the prisoners
through winter
to Magadan.
Here is what it was going to mean:
Even so, even here, even without knowledge.
There is joy in an attempt at joy by the Dalstroi
orchestra forced by the camp supervisors
to welcome with music those survivors
who saw the sun shining beneath the ice.
Here is the space between:
A siren carries itself across the city.
Against the pale grey sky, the dark branch.
The litter of dead petals on the church floor.
After the explosion, the absolute silence.
Snow becomes the icing on the earth.
Where the footprints stop, beauty lies untouched.
Please check out the rest of the interview on 32 Poems Blog.
Candlemark & Gleam‘s Kate Sullivan is our guest today, and she’s going to talk about the different distribution and payment models used by small and indie publishers today.
Her press focuses on fantastika, which includes not only fantasy, but science fiction and punk. Check out the new and old ideas the industry is considering or using.
Greetings from the wild and wooly realm of small-press indie publishing! I’m Kate, mastermind behind Candlemark & Gleam, a niche press specializing in fantastika – science fiction, fantasy, *punk, and whatever else you can throw at us – and I’ll be your guide on this little trip into the bleeding edge of publishing adventures.
The digital revolution, even as it has scared the pants off the Big Six publishers, has had a great effect on the publishing world as a whole: It’s easier than ever to produce books and distribute them, and that means that there’s been a small press revolution in the last couple of years. And small presses, while lacking much of the marketing muscle of the big boys, have a number of distinct advantages. Chief among these is nimbleness: Small presses have less overhead and are less bogged down in the status quo, so we’re able to experiment with things that the larger publishers might not be able to, even if they want to.
Many small publishers, including Candlemark & Gleam, are trying out different distribution and payment models, many of which are based on old ideas. Personally, I think this is one of the most exciting developments in publishing today – that we’re looking back at the golden age of publishing (which I consider to be the Victorian era), when there were scads of very active publishers on the scene, all competing in an extremely book-hungry marketplace.
What are some of these old ideas? Glad you asked! Let’s take a look at a couple:
1. Cheap books. Prior to the mid-1800s, even though mechanical printing had been around for quite some time (thank you, Johann Gutenberg), books were still the province of the elite. They were expensive to produce, usually hand-bound to order, and had to be painstakingly slit and separated with book knives. All that changed with the paperback, the penny dreadful, and the pulp novel. From the 1830s through the 1950s, every average Joe was able to afford to delve into fantastical exploits and tales of derring-do, weird happenings, or horrible crime, depending on his (or her) tastes. From a shilling per book (twelve pennies, a goodly amount for a working-class stiff), prices dropped to, say, a single penny. This made books-as-mass-entertainment possible, and made our current publishing environment viable.
Today, small publishers are experimenting with price points in a similar way. While there’s not a whole lot we can do to drop the price of a paperback, we CAN play around with seeing what the “sweet spot” is for eBooks. Many self-publishers are putting out Kindle editions for 99 cents or $2.99, figuring that they’ll make up on volume what they lose in percentage. Small presses, given that we tend to have to support ourselves as well as the author, often charge more – from $4.99 to $9.99 seems to be the average for a small press eBook. At Candlemark & Gleam, we’re playing around with dropping our prices to see if we make up revenue on volume. It’s important, though, to remember the authors – is 99 cents really a fair price for a novel that someone’s poured perhaps years into creating? I think the sweet spot for a well-formatted, well-edited, finely crafted digital novel is going to end up being somewhere around $3 to $5 – cheap enough for the average Joe to grab without thinking twice, but still enough to support the author.
2. Serials. This is a fascinating concept – splitting up a novel into chapters or installments, and asking the reader to buy each. Charles Dickens wrote serial novels, and serial novels were common in the 1930s pulp magazines. They died out as fiction magazines went the way of the dodo, but the time to revive them is now. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently had an article about the resurgence of serials, noting that luminaries like Stephen King have tried it, and pointing out the Huffington Post’s experiment. At Candlemark & Gleam, we’re about to release our first serial, Hickey of the Beast, a YA fantasy novel in 30 parts. We’ll be pairing that serial experiment with some more of that “playing with prices” thing – the first two chapters will be free to try, while you’ll then have the option to buy each chapter individually, or to buy a subscription at one of several prices that entitles you to a finished eBook at the end, plus some extras. Which brings us to our next new-old idea…
3. Bundles. Pulp fiction often included several novellas in one book, or packaged a short story along with a novel. Why the heck don’t we do this anymore? Sure, the Big Six have been putting “teaser” chapters in the back of novels in a series for awhile, and you can sometimes find author interviews at the back of a paperback, but what about extra goodies in a bundle? Small publishers are starting to take this idea and run with it. Have you bought the paperback of a novel? Here, have a download code for a copy of the eBook version. Why not have a set of bundles or packages at different price points? At the low end of the spectrum, you get a plain-jane eBook with no complex formatting or graphic hyperbole (a lot like the bare-bones books you often get for 99c on Kindle, self-published). For a few bucks more, you get a fancy eBook with lovely formatting and layout, plus an exclusive short story. Step up from there, and perhaps you get all of the above, plus an autographed poster of the book cover. Feel like shelling out $25 for the eBook? Get all of the above, plus something really special, like a custom-made action figure of your favourite character from the book. Makes a great gift, don’t you think? The sky’s the limit here, and small publishers, with their lower overhead and ability to move quickly, are in a great position to really experiment with this idea.
And that’s just the beginning. Licensing models that offer book-library subscriptions to readers, free back catalogues, enhanced eBooks – there’s a lot going on in the small publishing realm these days, and there will only be more coming up. It’s exciting and awesome, and as a small-press mastermind, I can’t tell you how cool it is to be able to try to put some of these ideas to use, and see what holds up to the test of time . . . the second time around.
Thanks, Kate, for participating in today’s Celebration of Small & Indie Presses!
About the publisher:
Candlemark & Gleam is an experiment in publishing, specializing in fantastika and genre-bending fiction written by new authors. We consider ourselves modern anachronists – creative types dedicated to preserving the beauty and individuality of age-old publishing forms while adapting them for the digital era. It’s time to go back to the future of publishing – won’t you join us?
Some of you have been following the Celebration of Indie and Small Press Month on the blog for sometime now, and you’ll probably recognize today’s guest reviewer, Sara from Wordy Evidence of the Fact, because she reviewed Confederate Streets by Erin Tocknell earlier in the month.
Today, she’s brought us a review of another Benu Press publication, which is poetry, 200 Nights and One Day by Margaret Rozga. Enjoy.
Title: 200 Nights and One Day
Author: Margaret Rozga
Publisher: Benu Press
Year of Publication: 2009
I received this book from the publisher packaged with the proofs of my friend Erin E. Tocknell’s book Confederate Streets. I was thrilled to get this unsolicited copy because I love to read poetry, especially new voices. This collection also had promise because it was from Benu Press, so the thematic material would likely be something I was interested in. Benu Press is an indie publisher committed to “inspiring and thought-provoking books about the practical dimensions of social justice and equity.” Unfortunately, the one-sentence review of this book is not altogether favorable: I’m glad to have read it, but the poetry was not terribly good.
The life material this collection is based upon is truly inspiring. These poems revolve around the open housing movement in Milwaukee, WI in the 60s, with particular focus on the events of 1967 and 1968. Though I consider myself well-versed in the Civil Rights movement, I was ignorant of this strand of protests and found the collection to be informative and revealing.
The collection opens with a foreword from Dick Gregory, which provides a little background. There is also a chronology of the movement and some fascinating photographs. I was immediately intrigued by the images of Father James Groppi, the white priest who provided much of the visible leadership for this movement. The photos show him in sunglasses, holding a bullhorn on a bus hood, in the back of a police wagon. He is a fascinating character, the very picture of incongruence: rebellion in religious vestments.
The poems tell the story of the movement, fragmented among several voices. We hear from Pam, Shirley, Curley, Lawrence, Mary, and even the US Supreme Court. Rozga (known as Peggy) includes only a few poems from her perspective; the rest attempt to channel the voices of her African-American counterparts in the movement. Let this be said: I do not doubt Rozga’s commitment to the movement, and I admire her willingness to get involved in a difficult fight where she was a member of the racial minority. However, I take some issue with her poetic rendering of these other voices. They simply sound too much the same. Creating memorable characters in a novel or short story is certainly difficult; to do so in a poem is to do the same difficult work on a much smaller scale. She tries to tell their stories, but when the poems don’t distinguish themselves, when you have to look at the titles to identify the narrator, when you finish the poem and realize it doesn’t matter what name is on the top – these things add up to a amalgam of poems that don’t do justice to the people they are intended to honor.
A few of the poems were lovely. “City Limits” does a good job of conveying the conflict while doing the work of rendering vivid details about the neighborhood and the neighbors. I like the image of Mr. Stanisch cutting his grass, “as he did every other day, / alternating with setting out the sprinklers to water the lawn.” The normalcy of tending to the suburban lawn provides a nice contrast to the abnormal conflicts that were broiling in their neighborhoods. I also thought “On the Bridge” was a strong piece. Ironically, this poem is the most tangential to the history. The overlap appears to be merely the celebration to open the James E. Groppi Unity Bridge, so thematically it’s a stretch, but the final two lines carry a thoughtful emotional weight: “I relish this moment there, there, where time / had space, where boys had hope and almost stood still.”
Too many of the other poems read like first drafts, like she was forcing the history into a form, into a collection that didn’t suit it. In fact, in the epilogue, Rozga tells the reader that when she got stuck she would turn to a traditional poetic structure (such as sonnet or ballade) to get things moving. She explains “What the open housing marches did for set territorial boundaries in Milwaukee these poems do with traditional poetic forms. The old boundaries are questioned, rearranged, expanded, and maybe abandoned.” I want to believe her; however, the poems indicate less intention. Doing the hard work of making your efforts sing within the structure is what makes the structure so powerful. When you read a stunning villanelle or sonnet, for example, you are struck by what the form contributes to the poem and how the poem spins within that structure in seemingly effortless fashion. If your construction of the poem is actually effortless, it won’t spin at all.
Only once does Rozga identify the poetic structure in the title, and it is in that poem where the most egregious disregard for structure lies. “Vel’s Villanelle” is not in fact a villanelle. A villanelle is a 19-line poem made up of 5 triplets and 1 quatrain, and there is a beautifully cyclic repetition of line and rhyme that creates a breath-taking effect when done well. This poem is 25 lines long – it has two additional triplets – and it does not adhere to the repetition or rhyme scheme intended in a villanelle. Without the repetition, the poem loses the strength as well as the mystery of how the same words can convey such different meanings. Beyond working within this difficult scheme, the poet must also craft those repeated lines with precision. They have to do more than some 80’s pop song chorus. In Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking” (a shining example of villanelle), the opening line is “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.” That is no casual dashing off of words; that is craft. And a villanelle demands such a love affair with craft to be successful. “Vel’s Villanelle” begins “Henry issued a proclamation forbidding marches.” A direct statement can certainly have a quiet strength, but in this form, these words were inadequately prepared for the job they needed to do. Rozga’s villanelle indicates to me that her primary purpose was conveying the truth of a history, her secondary purpose was putting together a book, and craft was only a subsidiary to these two goals. A poem cannot breathe within such a hierarchy. Or at least, for this reader, it cannot.
All that said, if telling this story was her purpose, Rozga’s book is a success. I learned about the movement through the book, and I’m glad to have done so. I was informed about a slice of history that I would not otherwise have known of. Thanks to Benu Press for representing these voices; and thanks to Serena for the chance to celebrate Benu and their authors this month. It has been an honor.
Thanks, Sara, for providing a review for the Indie & Small Press Celebration!
Jennifer Flescher, the editor of Tuesday; An Art Project, kindly volunteered to participate in the Celebration of Indie & Small Press Month with an interview of Adam Deutsch of Cooper Dillon Books. This press is based in San Diego and has a number of books headed to the market, including Pretty Rooster by Clay Matthews.
Without further ado, please welcome Jennifer and Adam.
This is a great blog project – it is important to celebrate small presses and the very exciting projects they produce! I’m not, on the other hand, a writer of reviews . . . I was trained as a journalist and prefer to keep my opinions out of the conversation – I think by exploring motivations and stories we have a better in road to discovering new experiences and voices.
Cooper Dillon Books, a new poetry press out of San Diego, and their book, Pretty, Rooster, are just the kind of projects worth talking about. The book, third out of five titles for the press, is a collection of sonnets, interspersed with cartoons, including a flip-book of a clucking rooster. I was interested to hear about what the motivation behind this endeavor of the traditional and non-traditional.
So I offer for you an interview with the editor/publisher of Cooper Dillon Books, Adam Deutsch.
JSF: It’s a very cool book — tell me a little bit about how you see the creation of this book in relation to the creation of the press, if that makes sense . . .
AD: Clay Matthews’ Pretty, Rooster is very much a reflection of he intention that helped create the press. We decided, before we even had our first title, that we would approach artists for covers rather than use stock art, or work in the public domain. We never wanted to see an image from one of our books also printed on a copy of a coffee table book, or on a billboard for an erectile dysfunction drug. Just as the press involved a number of like minds coming together, so does this particular title–poems by Matthews, comics by Shannon Wheeler and Micah Farritor, a flipbook and section breaks designed by Max Xiantu, and a cover photograph by Misha M. Johnson of a sculpture by Spencer Little. The press was developed with the idea of art and community in mind, and Pretty, Rooster is a communal effort.
JSF: How important was the art to you?
AD: Working on the art was great fun. Clay had mentioned that, because it was a collection of sonnets, it might be fun to add something that could interact with the 14-line shape on every page. He had a chapbook that came out with a little horse in the corner. He told us he loved that horse. Max was in a flippy mood, and made the strutting bird to put in the corner. Meanwhile, I know Micah Farritor (The Living and the Dead) from days in the Midwest, and had just met Shannon Wheeler at ComicCon, and got to talking with him because I use a Too Much Coffee Man Lunchbox. It didn’t take much to talk either one into picking a sonnet and drawing a little 2-page comic. Their styles are so different, and they chose poems with such different energy, and they worked beautifully as end caps to the collection. The cover was just the topper–Taylor Katz keeps a wire rooster sculpture from Spencer Little in her kitchen, and Misha Johnson photographed it in front of a fence in their yard. Considering the flipbook and the larger section breaks, we didn’t feel the need to have another entire rooster on the cover, so we just decided to show a little leg.
Art is always important. The cliche about judging a book by a cover is just a poor philosophy if you’re trying to draw people to a book that is supposed to share art. Any publisher is taking a collection of poems they have fallen in love with; why dress it up in rags? The idea is to make a cover interesting, inviting, and have it visually capture something that relates to the atmosphere inside the collection. So many collection of poetry come out every year with covers that are poorly designed–sometimes straight ugly–and we’re not sure why this happens. I leave the visual design to Max (a successful artist) because he understands details about composition and color and the process of printing color that I’m only just learning. We also don’t print a single thing unless the poet love the way his or her own book looks.
JSF: How do you see those elements fitting together with a collection of sonnets?
AD: Jason Schneiderman (Striking Surface) writes, “The sonnet was invented as a vehicle for self-examination, and Matthews takes that literally, driving each one like it had a manual transmission.” The sonnets are full of scenes and living things in motion. But it’s a book for form, and with form comes a shape on the page that doesn’t vary much over the course of 72 pages. For Pretty, Rooster, the art is somewhat of a companion while you travel through the pages.
JSF: How did you choose the manuscript — was it solicited? did you fall in love at first pass?
AD: It was kind of solicited, but not really. In our first reading period, Clay had sent in a full-length manuscript, and it really kicked us, but something about it didn’t knock us over. I’d seen his work around in journals for years, and told him that I’d love to see something else, and didn’t hear anything until the next reading period. He could have just emailed me with an attachment, but Clay Matthews is such a humble guy, so respectful and easy going, he simply submitted according to the guidelines the next year with Pretty, Rooster.
And I did fall in love at first pass. I read through it, and immediately emailed, asking if anyone else was considering it. I wanted to take some time with it, but I also knew that it was a magical collection, and I didn’t want it to slip through our fingers. Turns out he’d sent it to Cooper Dillon, exclusively. I must have read it 5 times in a few days, then made an offer.
JSF: How has it been received?
AD: We release our books, typically, in the fall/winter, so AWP becomes something of a coming-out party for our titles. People were drawn Pretty, Rooster, and once they saw the comics, they got really excited. People are enjoying it. We don’t set out to make giant splashes with our books–we believe the poems we’re publishing are timeless. With that in mind, we like to let the buzz swell in its own time. When people are excited about a book, they tell their friends, and they share it with classmates and loved ones, and that’s a process that needs to breathe. Some presses insist that their authors line up readings, and use a lot of resources to get the word out. Sometimes it can be pretty forceful. But we don’t demand anything from our authors. We just want them to love their own books.
Besides, we don’t do contents. We don’t want $25 dollars from anyone to read a manuscript in the reading period, and we hope we can take two full-length books, and two chapbooks each year. Rather, we ask poets who submit to buy a book (or pay $10) as a reading fee. I think a number of people who are excited to pick up Pretty, Rooster, or any of our other books, are waiting for that submission period to open on April 1st, so they can order the book, and send us their manuscript.
JSF: What did Matthews think of all the animation?
AD: He loved the flipbook. The little bird has made a lot of friends.
JSF: What did you learn from this book?
AD: If you would have asked me when we started the press if we’d be interested in a collection of sonnets, I would have politely smiled and thought, probably not. Every book that’s come in and really excited us has been something that’s challenged my perception of what I think I love in poem. Each one has shown me something I didn’t think would do anything for me. It’s like when I discovered the chocolate shake, only about a year and a half ago. I had tried one as a kid, and didn’t like it, so I thought I didn’t like chocolate milkshakes. Then I had one down at Hodad’s in Ocean Beach, and thought, “Holy cow!” I’ve learned to fall in love with the sonnet–all over again, really–because of Pretty, Rooster.
It’s a healthy thing to let your mind change, and to discover new joys, and to let go of what we think we know. Some of us insist that we won’t be interested this or that. In poetry, I’ve heard people say, “I hate form,” and “I hate prose poems!” They use the word “hate.” They almost build an identity around the insistence and resistance to the decisions some artists make. Not only does it keep them away from so many wonderful pieces of beauty and art, but it stifles their growth as writers because they aggressively fight against trying new things, and experimenting with their own creativity.
JSF: Why did you want to start a poetry press?
Cooper Dillon Books came from the same inspiration as many small presses do–we read all these books, and we’re always searching for a kind of craft or experience or event, but there are small voids out there. It seemed like the poems I wanted to read weren’t available to me. I wanted to produce books of poems that embraced certain values that I found when reading some of my favorite contemporary poets, but, more so, turned toward a certain transcendentalism. We (Colleen Ryor, Max Xiantu, and I) boiled those values down to “joy in aesthetic, beauty, honesty, and intimacy.” We also felt that there is always room in the community for people looking to make positive contributions, and we’ve been embraced by so many good people.
Cooper Dillon does not receive grants, government funding, endowments, or donations. We do not publish (select, print, advertise, etc.) at the expense of our authors. We earn money by selling books we believe in, in service of art and community. To buy Pretty, Rooster and to look at other titles please visit the website CooperDillon.com
About Tuesday: An Art Project Publisher/Editor:
Jennifer S. Flescher is publisher/editor of Tuesday: An Art Project. Her publications include Lit, The Harvard Review, Jubilat, Agni-online and The Boston Globe. She has an MFA in poetry and an MsJ in journalism. She teaches writing and editing to college students.
About the Publisher/Editor of Cooper Dillon Books:
Adam Deutsch was born on Long Island, New York and has his M.A. from Hofstra University (2005) and M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008). He’s been on the editorial staff of a number of presses and journals, including Ninth Letter and Barn Owl Review. He presently teaches at community college, and keeps a fairly active blog over atadamdeutsch.blogspot.com. He lives in San Diego.
About the Author of Pretty, Rooster:
Clay Matthews has published two previous full-length collections: Superfecta (Ghost Road Press, 2008) and Runoff (BlazeVox Books, 2009). He’s also published a couple chapbooks, and a handful of poems and etc. in journals such as The American Poetry Review, Willow Springs, Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. He completed his Ph.D. in creative writing at Oklahoma State in 2008, and he’s now teaching at Tusculum College outside of Greeneville, TN, where he also edits poetry for The Tusculum Review. He’s got some poems floating around out there in the internet he’d love for you to look up and introduce yourself to, and he always enjoys hearing from folks.
Thanks to Jennifer and Adam for participating in this month’s celebration of Indie & Small Presses.
Mailbox Mondays (click the icon at the right to check out the new blog) has gone on tour since Marcia at The Printed Page passed the torch. This month our host is I’m Booking It. Kristi of The Story Siren continues to sponsor her In My Mailbox meme. Both of these memes allow bloggers to share what books they receive in the mail or through other means over the past week.
Just be warned that these posts can increase your TBR piles and wish lists.
Here’s what I received unsolicited this week:
1. Mothers & Daughters by Rae Meadows from Henry Holt and Company.
2. Friendship Bread by Darien Gee from Random House.
Here’s a book I’ve been waiting for:
3. Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning from Random House
What did you receive in your mailbox?
However, security wasn’t first and foremost on the list of qualities I was seeking in publishers when I first started submitting poetry manuscripts in earnest. From 2005 through 2007 (my first two years of submitting work for publication, period), my poetry and short fiction had met with reasonable success in magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. By early 2007, I had accrued enough poetry to assemble the earliest version of what is now my first collection, Lost Books. I aimed high in the first few rounds of submitting it to publishers; any high-profile US or UK operation open to unsolicited poetry manuscripts at the time doubtless got my query letter and a sample of the manuscript. I spent a little over two years receiving responses that were split between the form-letter “Sorry, this isn’t for us right now” and “Hey, we like your sample, would you please send the whole thing,” only to eventually meet with rejection. During that time, I continued to write, and my list of magazine and anthology credits grew. It was sometime during late 2008 when I decided to assemble a chapbook-length manuscript made up of some newer work, 
