Hi Mark,
   The figures you give for the States are dispiriting - your Kozer, for a 
start, deserves a great deal better - and they confirm my sense that poetry 
has a tougher time selling in the States, but I haven't got the figures to 
go on.
Wasn't it Enzensberger who said that there are 1,347 (or some such very 
precise figure) readers of poetry in every country, and that this is a 
constant whether you're talking about Iceland or the U.S.
That figure might now have to be lowered.
Best wishes,
Jamie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Mark Weiss
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2013 5:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: print/web duplication

Jamie: Within my memory as a publisher and poet, in the US one could count 
on two or three hundred library sales for just about any book of poetry. 
That hasn't been true in several decades. Examples: Stet, my selected Jose 
Kozer, is in 89 libraries, despite many glowing reviews and the fact that 
translations of prominent poets usually outsell new English-language 
originals. When Kozer won the Neruda prize the spike in sales to individuals 
was exactly six copies. Jerry Rothenberg's Retrievals is in 72 libraries, 
despite his large following. Anthologies tend to outsell individual author 
books. My Cuban anthology, from a major university press, is in 549 
libraries. Library sales used to be the guarantors that helped keep presses 
afloat. In those days over-all sales of several hundred to a thousand were 
common. Nowadays most poetry books can hope for a hundred library sales, 
with any luck. My most recent publisher says he considers a book a best 
seller if he sells 300 copies, and nobody disputes that. And one's best 
customer is the poet.
I don't know if the situation is different in the UK.

My thoughts on print versus net. Until very recently I didn't consider the 
two to be in conflict, and whatever the publisher might say I would submit 
poems for print publication that had already appeared on the web. I simply 
wouldn't raise the subject. This is harder to do--publishers will in fact do 
a search on occasion, and it doesn't help one's status being found out. Some 
publications consider publication in someone's blog, or even in facebook, a 
first publication.
Web publication, it seems to me, partakes of the event saturation of the web 
in general, where the glut of information makes all but momentary attention 
unlikely. A longer poem is less likely to be read, rather than skimmed, and 
any poem is likely to be read on the screen. The readers I think most of us 
want will have a poem in hand, to be sat with, hopefully repeatedly. The 
poem on the screen is ephemeral in comparison, no matter how well-archived 
the web site.

My opinion, anyway.



-----Original Message-----
>From: Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Nov 25, 2013 11:46 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: print/web duplication
>
>I'm probably echoing what others have said but I think the problem is
>removed if you inform both parties. I think the financial aspect is
>relevant. If an online publication has paid for a poem, rare as that is,
>you're more obliged to make this effort. I've had the experience of a print
>magazine turning down a poem they had accepted because it had been 
>published
>online. That seems fine to me if that's their policy, but maybe mistaken in
>the assumption that there's such an overlap of readership.
>   A question I have is about the unauthorised posting of poems on the net.
>It's a practice by now very widespread, and usually done out of enthusiasm
>so it would seem very ungrateful to object, as long as the thing is
>correctly printed. But I think posters should at least signal the book, if
>it's in one, and I've noticed that doesn't happen very often. This question
>is presently being discussed in the music industry with some vehemence.
>Perhaps there where the financial losses are considerable, it's a more
>relevant topic.
>
>David's image of vigorously interred poems (VIP) is entertaining, but I'm
>not convinced by his example of the Penguin Modern Poets representing a 
>lost
>moment of poetry's entry into the culture. I don't have any knowledge of 
>the
>sales but I've a feeling only The Mersey Beat trio was a kind of
>best-seller, and that reflected their huge popularity at the time. Unlike
>the Modern European Poets, which made poetry available through translation,
>I never cared much for that series. If there was a good poet in the three,
>he or she was often mismatched with a couple of duds, and even if the poets
>were all fine they didn't much profit from being bundled together. I don't
>mean to knock the venture, nor even the updated second run, but the only 
>one
>I own from either series is the  Ashbery, Harwood and Raworth book and even
>that I don't think shows the poets to best advantage.
>   And is poetry in Britain really so 'furiously' uncirculated? My
>impression is that, small as they may be, the average sales of individual
>volumes here would compare very favourably with those in, say, Italy or
>Spain. Maybe even good against the US...? I'm neither sanguine nor resigned
>about this, merely unconvinced the situation is that 'woeful'.
>Jamie
>
>
>
>-----Original Message----- 
>From: jim andrews
>Sent: Monday, November 25, 2013 12:07 AM
>
>Well said, David. I agree entirely.
>
>Editors who concern themselves with such issues must be considered a bit
>obtuse, or at least not to have come to grips with these issues. Whether
>work is on the web or not does not affect my decision to buy books or
>magazines. Web and print publications do not seem to be in competition with
>one another. In the best cases, a publication has both a web and a print
>version or endevour (not versions of one another) and the print and web
>projects are quite distinct.
>ja
>On 2013-11-24, at 2:04 PM, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
>wrote:
>
>> I think it rather woeful that magazines with circulations comparable to
>> the attendances at Scottish Third Division football matches claim
>> exclusive rights on work which will be thereby read by hardly anyone. It
>> is part of the ever-assured circle of non-circulation of poetry (EACNCP)
>> that poets almost all complain of. ALMOST ALL POETRY IS READ BY ALMOST
>> NOBODY and poets, editors, magazines, the (ugh) scene et al all furiously
>> work away at ensuring the situation continues. I know poetry can be
>> elusive, shadowy, ambiguous, difficult to trace but please no not a
>> captive in the petite-bourgeois shackles of single publication little
>> magazines. After all, wasn't it once those Penguin Modern Poets and
>> anthologies which for a time made it seem poetry was coming back into
>> somewhere like the language? I would certainly not regard web publication
>> as relevant to print appearances.