Making It (Yourself)
Small Presses Are So Punk Rock!
At the Small Press Festival this weekend on the campus of CU Boulder, a panel of editors turned their attention to the notion of “making it” as a writer today.
While making it in our recent past consisted of getting large advances from major publishers, Jeremy Davies, editor for Dalkey Archive Press of Champaign and London, described making it today as: “You have a book out? You’re okay? You’re eating? Regularly?”
“As a poet,” added Anna Moschavakis, editor for Ugly Duckling Presse of New York, “making it is if someone I don’t know has read something I wrote.”
Victoria Blake, founder of Underland Press in Portland, OR, added the idea of being chosen to the discussion. She said she realized she could make more money publishing her fiction herself than if she waited for another publisher to pick it up. Why wasn’t she self-publishing? Because, she realized, she wanted “to be picked by someone.”
Blake does not come across as someone who sits back waiting to be picked. On the panel, the three speakers passed around a tiny lapel mike. Blake continuously reached for it, having something to say in response to virtually every question the audience offered and also to comment on what her fellow panelists had to say. Everything she says sparkles: “I’m very interested in the Market. I am a democrat,” and “I started Underland with money I didn’t use to buy a house. Which means I’m terrified. Which means I’m very motivated to sell books.”
It seems once we realize that waiting to be picked is not what being a writer has to be about, the role becomes a hell of a lot more exciting.
I have friends who only submit to very competetive journals. Eventually they have been published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, and Tin House. Others have chosen to focus on publishing in small journals and small presses. Some have even self-published, a practice many find scoffable. But to musicians, waiting “to be picked by someone” is crazy. So much of the music we listen to today is not “signed.” Who wants to be signed by a record label anymore?
What is the real question here? I want to be published in order to join a literary conversation. Many of us recognize that the general public may not be interested in reading much poetry or even short stories. Or even very literary novels! Of which conversation do we really want to be part? If it’s other writers and literarily minded people we want to talk to, or can talk to, small presses seem to be a good choice.
“Our circulation has gone down,” said Andrew Zawacki, co-founder of Verse in Richmond, “and I like that.” He believes in the ethic of “finding an audience one by one” and argues that “people who want to read [Verse] will find it.” For him, and for many who choose to publish in small batches, it is appealing to know every book store that carries his magazine, to create a society through the act of publishing, and to know who is in that society. Zawacki says he doesn’t read Poetry magazine, since he doesn’t believe in its society. He has never gone to AWP and hopes not to.
What conversation or society do you want to be a part of? Which conversations should we as writers, editors, and publishers be cultivating? What do you think about self-publishing? Making it? Small presses? Who would be your ideal publisher and why?
I sure wouldn’t mind winning the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize for a first book by someone under forty. I’d have to publish in the next seven years to make it happen, but that’s realistic, right? The Yale Series is just so Yale! I know there are prizes out there just for women, so I wouldn’t mind winning one of those. Seems like eliminating half of the competition is a good idea. As for what kind of conversation I want to be part of, I’m a poet and have been trained that no one cares about the genre I write in. I don’t know if this is true. Every seventh grader I’ve ever met writes poems in their notebooks when they’re supposed to be studying. There’s something to that, I think. But just in case everyone else is right and no one is reading poetry, I suppose the most important person to please is myself. Having said that, I feel weird about self-publishing. (Disclaimer: I self-published a chapbook of my poems nearly ten years ago and sold about 100 copies in and around Fort Collins, CO, but when I look at that collection now, I’m a little embarrassed that those poems are out in the world. Oh well.) I think it’s nice to have someone else tell you that your stuff doesn’t suck, and that’s what getting published does. For me, making will be getting my first collection published by a press I’m satisfied with. Maybe one who has published poets in the past who I admire. But I’m sure once that happens I’ll have to redefine what making it means.
Jaime, I like what you said about how making it will mean being published by a press that you are “satisfied with.” And I also like your clarification about what that might mean–a press that has published writers you admire, for instance.
I was not so sold on small presses until I saw that the work they were publishing doesn’t have to be totally weird, boring, inaccessible, experimental stuff.
The comparison with music is interesting – i just talked to a guy who’s a local musician who’s recording his own music and selling it himself, getting it on itunes and Amazon, etc. And in an earlier age, bands would simply drive themselves around, sell records and tapes out of their van — whatever it took.
It seems like an honorable and vital way to be an artist. And yet I find i have the same desire that Victoria Blake does — i want to be picked. And, while i do want to be picked by bigger magazines, I’m also excited any time i’m picked by any editor.
I wonder if Blake is still fettered by that desire. I love the idea of being able to transcend that desire.
I think that’s well articulated. I want to be picked. Why would we want to transcend that desire?
Because it is so passive.
To clarify, I said that when I sat down to do my spreadsheets, I realized two things: 1) that I could potentially make a heck of a lot more money if I published myself, and 2) that I realized that, up until that point, part of why I wanted to be published didn’t have anything to do with money, but was, instead, a desire to be picked.
Because of Underland, my relationship with my writing and with the practice of writing has changed. It’s been an unmitigated good for me in my life, although I’m still trying to tease out all the implications.
I brought this up on the panel because writers often talk about money but we don’t often talk about ego or about wanting to gain access to a perceived society.
Victoria! It’s so great to hear from you. As this discussion was unfolding, I began to realize I was going to have to write to you to clarify what you meant and, voila! there you are. As weird, strange, odd, unsettling, and DELICIOUSLY INCREDIBLE as the books you publish at Underland. Thank you for joining our conversation.
Hi, Victoria — the new anthology looks awesome, and so are the stories i’ve read thus far. Now there’s something i was happy to be picked for. Shawn
Hi Guys! Shawn, did Shira mention that I read from your story during the festival? It was tons of fun to do aloud.
Best American Fantasy, V3, out now in bookstores.
I like the music comparison. Makes total sense.
I think Small Presses are great. I’d be happy to published at one, just as I would with something bigger. Part of me at the moment wants something bigger just for the help in promotion since I’m neck deep in 2 Small Children Land. But I’m no snob, to be sure.
Self-publishing shouldn’t get the bad rap it does either. You know, if no one is inviting you to the party, make your own party and make it BETTER. Make it THE party, right?
That’s sort of my epiphany from the small press weekend–that we have so much power in creating our own parties.
So many of the people teaching (at good universities!) around here have books (that are published by small presses!) and it seems to me that having books published helps one get a (damn!) good job. I want a real, full-time teaching job.
(That is also not to say that small presses don’t promote. Sorry, I just meant that a bigger press often means more widely available.)
Though so many people I’m talking to these days are realizing that the big presses aren’t doing much promotion, either. The big presses publish several books and see which sink and which swim. What I’m hearing, is that regardless of who publishes you, it is the writer’s job to get the book out. What do the rest of you hear about this?
Book buying has changed so radically in the last several years, and as bookstores have become less relevant, as buying online has become more prominent, the big houses seem less significant, though they can get you wider distribution and more reviews in bigger venues. But fewer of the bigger venues are doing reviews now, with many of the big newspapers dropping their book sections, and if they run any reviews, running them from the wire services. Still, a bigger house will likely get a book more attention. That doesn’t mean the book will “sell.” It just means it might have a better chance, and will likely have broader distribution and a better shot at reviews. It’s also more likely that a book with a major house will go out of print faster. So that’s a trade. But “making it” might just mean being able to write and publish — in big houses or small — and having people, strangers, read your work, and occasionally letting you know that it meant something to them. And if part of “making it” includes landing a full-time teaching gig, small presses can play a significant role there. As long as the press is reputable, big or small is fine. But the bigger houses still create more opportunity for a wider audience because of distribution and reviews. That’s not to say a small press book can’t reach an audience, just that a big press still creates more potential for a bigger audience.
Sam, thanks for helping me come to terms with what making it actually means to me. I assume sometimes that teaching is THE GOAL (as in the ULTIMATE goal), but for gobs of people it isn’t. I want to teach full time and convincing a press–any reputable press–to publish something I wrote can help me with my making it.
Great post, Shira. I’m curious to see if and how the parameters of “selling out” become established. It’s so easy to independently publish and self-promote these days – just as it is in music. The Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP immediately comes to mind. The literary underground is expanding and although we may be broke, I think it’s a pretty exciting time to be a writer.
(I’ll check back with you guys in a few years, when my student loans begin multiplying, my idealism erodes, and I start burning rejection letters in the fire pit to stay warm.)
This is a great topic, Shira.
There’s something about the music comparison that is a little off, though – I toured with bands many times through the ’90s and I can tell you that every musician I knew would have been more than happy to foresake the DIY approach for an advance from a record label, preferably a big one.
“Making it,” for me would mean someone reputable publishing me. Beyond that, I’m not sure what it would mean. Ultimately it would be awesome to not have to work, but that is not realistic.
Here is an important link if you are concerned with “making it,” in the world of literature…
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/fleshing-out-the-narrative/Content?oid=3581659
Thanks, Pete. I just opened this in the office I share with about ten other adjuncts at the community college. You do keep life interesting. And delightfully so.
I’m glad I could be of help. And now, thanks to you and that article, I have a much clearer definition of what “making it” as a writer would look like for me.
Which I imagine (not too vividly) involves being read to by naked women.
No, it involves people I don’t know paying money to have naked women read my work to them.
Ah, yes. Who could deny that THAT is making it.
Things are changing. Self-pubbing has had such a bad rep for so long it may just take a bit longer than we’d all like. The irony is that hardly anyone knows who pubs their favorite books…but if they’re self pubbed then they must be bad. Don’t buy it. We don’t. In fact we created a website (www.indiereader.com) just to sell and promote indie books. In the end…it’s the READER who counts…and an indie author can reach them these days just as well…or maybe better, than trad publishers can. Vive la indie!
Yes! Viva la indie! Thanks, Amy, for showing us your website. I’m excited to explore the books indiereader.com is promoting.
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