Surely the fact is that it is the *marketing* and 'learning how to sell
books' that makes presses succesful. You can do this with anything. You can
sulk about packaging and the booktrade, supposedly 'kick against it' - or
you can get on with packaging books you want to sell in ways that the
booktrade will deal with. Bookshops are still where the most readers go to
buy their books. Mailorder people are much rarer.
SPD are great - but they sell a few books [1000 at most] of the titles they
choose across a vast continent. Im sure success/percentage-wise they are no
better or worse than [say] Peter's mailorder lists in the UK.
I agree wholeheartedly about writing not necessarily being difficult. We've
argued/discussed here before though about openness to *all* types of
writing [at least the possibility of many types of writing being
interesting: I refuse to think certain types of poetry, or concepts such as
narrative are necessarily 'dead', for instance]. If people read, buy and
want poetry then the presses will exist - with or without
Signature/Password. But if Stride etc has to rely on the mythical 'public',
'out there' then we will continue to produce books that conform to bookshop
ideas, at bookshop pricesŠ
Having said that I think there has been a resurgence of pamphlet publishing
recently. I am tempted to see this as a definite step away from attempting
to 'infiltrate' or enter the commercial booktrade, and a delibereate chance
to utilise DTP and networking channels [email, relatively low mailing
costs, etc]. In this age of computers etc I think samizdat publications are
back - and maybe its fine that we publish 20 copies of something for the 20
readers we have.
I also optimistically think that the UK media are slowly [oh so slowly]
changing their perception of 'British Poetry'. Iain Sinclair's anthology,
the Paladin stuff, Carcanet's openness, etc has made a difference. I think
the more readable end of experiemntal work *is* accepted now. The
Independent used three days of their poems from our STATE OF INDEPENDENCE
anthology, publishing lists are changing. As I've said before it may be a
case of utilizing non-academic language [and who says poetry has to be
talked about academically?] to explain poerties we take for ganted to those
who are uncomprehending. This isn't charity - and it doesn't mean we have
to accept crap narrative poetry either - it may be the way we get the
nation's perception of poetry changed. If we, who use language, can't speak
to people about how/what/why we write, in plain everyday English, then we
deserve being ignored.
enough rant. Back to the publishing scheduleŠ
Rupert
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