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I very much agree with Tony about Forward. Some years back there was a court case brought by Forward against a man (can't remember his name) who campaigned ceaselessly against the vanity publishers. He accused them of being a vanity press in disguise. I don't know what happened in the end - I think Forward must have won. I wrote an article about Forward for Terrible Work but I never put it in the magazine in the end because basically I was saying something similar to the man they took to court, and I got cold feet - a good job I did. The essence of my article was that they were purely a business who had very cleverly seen a gap in the market and were milking it for all it was worth, and that they had no interest in the actual poetry.

They were part of a wider phenomenon though - that populist and patronizing wave that plagued the small press through the 90's, turning the scene into a muddy slosh that was just as much its downfall as the arrival of the web-zines. I can at least forgive, to a degree, those populists who did this out of some sort of political conviction - 'poetry for and of the people' etc, but I think Forward used those sentiments for plain old marketing reasons. They were very successful at it for quite a while.

Tim A.
   
On 27 Nov 2010, at 19:13, Tony Frazer wrote:

Well, I don't know about that, Alec. They flew pretty close to the vanity-publishing flame -- in fact to within an inch. And Poetry Now might just be the most dire publication I've ever seen. On the other hand it made some people happy, and I've no problem with that, especially if it means they stayed there and didn't submit here....

I would like to know what went wrong there though, as they seemed to have a solid little business (£5 million p.a. turnover, quite a bit of which may have come from the printing business). The only news is that they were insolvent and were going through a "creditors voluntary liquidation", which I believe means that someone to whom they owed money made a final demand which Forward couldn't meet and has then been put into receivership. 

I do wonder what will happen to the Forward Prize, though. If it goes, there'll be a big hole.


Tony



On 26 Nov 2010, at 11:23, Alec Newman wrote:

this is a major loss.  they had an excellent set up.  i thought they were in a good position to ride out the storm too.  looks grim for the rest of us.

alec.  

> Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:37:12 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Poetry publisher Forward Press ceases to trade with 100 staff redundant
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> http://www.printweek.com/printbuying/news/1042509/Forward-Press-ceases-trade-100-staff-redundant/

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