David, you're still in the minority with your
shopping habits - it's a problem for the many poets who are publishing books and
trying to sell them through the book shop system, which still, thus far,
accounts for the great majority of poetry sales in this country, whether they're
generated by word of mouth or not. More and more books, less and less
space. The distributor Signature dropped several small presses last year
as shops just weren't taking / selling their books. Even with bigger
publishers, shops now have a magic system through which they can track sales of
previous books when faced with the rep offering the new list. They're
increasingly turning down even stocking one or two copies of a book by a poet
who sold just a few hundred last outing - which covers a great many poets even
at the commercial publisher level. A problem too for the reader or browser
who is left with a choice between dead Faber stars, Maya Angelou and John
Hegley.
The poetry list editor at Chatto is Rebecca
Carter, who may be an editor in the commissioning / administrative sense more
than hands-on, 'get rid of that tautology in the third stanza' stuff, but ain't
they all these days.
Roddy
"but the sprawling amount of poetry
versus the ever diminishing galley space for it in book shops was / is a
problem." For who is this is a problem? Isn't the reality of poetry
distribution/selling more a case of word of mouth, person-to-person,
social exhange, Peter Riley, Paul Green, lists like this. The last place
I go to buy poetry these days is a bookshop.
Cheers
David
PS: I assume the black line you've put down the side
of this message is an ironic black armband for the passing of
OUP?