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Peter Riley asks if I have any actual statistics about edition sizes. The big publishers are notorious for not wanting to release this sort of information. David Hart, who kindly allowed me to use his unpublished research called 'Life Doesn't Rhyme: a documentary survey of current poetry writing, publishing and selling in Britain', for my New Relations book, found that most responded with a 'sorry that's confidential'. Nevertheless: some figures do emerge albeit on a hearsay basis. The average print run for first collections from someone like Bloodaxe or Chatto is about 1500-2000. Even so, I've heard stories over the years that big London houses might print 2000 copies but only bind and distribute half that qty so they can pulp the rest at minimum cost. I also read a comment somewhere recently - sorry can't remember where! - that at the start of his career Heaney books would have been a 2000 run whereas now they merit a 20000 run. Incidentally, the initial print run of The New Poetry was only 5000. There's a lot more in your reply that I want to come back on but won't do so tonight. BY the way, I'm not accepting a new centrality: I'm trying - coolly as you note - to observe something in the process of being formed. It seemed to me that the last ten years or so have provided a unique opportunity to observe taste being created and manipulated in the so-called mainstream. It seemed valuable to me to get something down before it all started to look like unassailable gospel. And as I think I said in an earlier mail to the list, being able to observe value in the process of construction obviously has wider implications - and, dare I say, value? And a quick note to cris: I think my own taste is to go for the camp as opposed to the crunchy. Best wishes to everyone, David %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%