Before this discussion vanishes back-channel I just wanted to say as
quickly as possible because I'm in a dreadful rush---

While there's certainly room for a new imprint and possibly need for it, I
don't think the big problems at present lie in publication, but in
publicity, distribution and retailing.  The small press scene works
efficiently within its limits -- small imprints such as Equipage, Writers
Forum,  produce small things in small editions and get them round OK and
almost any kind of writing however esoteric can usually find its way into
print through such enterprises ... Larger scale specialized production in
the "real paperback" zone (Reality Street, Carcanet, Arc, Invisible,
Etruscan....) get a lot of very varied material into print though there is
more competition for print-space there and backlogs tend to build up
(Carcanet currently takes 2 years to publish a book, which is a sign of the
need either for more focus or for more publishing). Occasional publishers
of substantial collections such as Infernal Methods also help fulfil this
need.  It's certainly very much in the area of the substantial book, the
Selected or Collected Poems or very long single works, that there is any
major gap in the country's poetry publishing capacity. Anyone with a
manuscript of 100+ pages on his her hands still has to cross fingers, join
very long queues or abandon hope, for the most part. Quite a lot of poets
of significant achievement now in their 40s 50s 60s still lack
retrospective collections.

There is a far greater problem in the marketing of books once published and
any new imprint set up really should before it even starts work out
strategies for publicity distribution and retailing.  Things get published
and just pile up somewhere. Shops won't  take them (because "shop poetry"
as I said in a previous occasion, has become a seperate category of poetry
in direct competition with popular books of other kinds such as cookery).
So the books have to get around by mail-order which is slower and lacks
channels. Poets are expected to become travelling  performers in order to
sell their books because immediately-after-a-reading is known to be one of
the occasions when almost anything can get sold in the heat of the moment).
There is a tremendous lack of help from official and subsidising bodies,
especially with regard to distribution abroad. Dozens of free copies are
sent to periodicals which don't review them or if they do they are so small
themselves that the sales result is insignificant.

As a retailer I am constantly frustrated by poetry publishers (not just
very-small-presses either) who either cannot or will not attend to
distribution.  Things are published which I can sell and I order them and
they just don't arrive, and no amount of requesting and badgering will ever
make them arrive. I eventually have to report back "unobtainable" to my
customers knowing perfectly well that heaps of them are stacked up in
someone's cupboard. There are publishers where you literally have to turn
up and knock on the front door or you don't stand a chance of getting the
books.  It may be for political reasons I don't know. It may be because
they can't bear the trade discount I expect, though I find it hard to
believe they can dispose of whole editions at full price so easily as to
spurn these sales. It may be because one-person spare-time publishers just
can't find the time or organisation to despatch orders, I could quite
understand that.

But in saying all this I think we need to recognise that most poetry (and
especially the kinds I think we're talking about here when we think of
setting up new imprints) is very limited in appeal and cannot be expected
to become a successful commercial proposition in the normal course of
events, whether because of intrinsic qualities such as difficulty or
absurdity, or because the potential readership is miseducated and
distracted by easier commercial and official versions....  or because of
"The Stink of Britain" in world-wide radical/intellectual/poetical circles
(a subject I keep meaning to write about)....   Anyway it is the case and
publishing of new  poetry needs to be realistic about this and cut its
cloth in accordance.  I don't know exactly how you'd do this while being
committed to "real publishing" there is possibly a contradiction in the
whole enterprise.

I've said it before, but the basis of the problem is internal, it is what
poetry has become in this country which makes it such hard work in the book
world, and what do you do about that?


//PR


PS
Erin Moure, who is reading at Subvoicive on 3rd November, is a poet worth
knowing about, in my opinion. Her visit to this country seems to have gone
somewhat unnoticed.




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