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On Wed, 15 Apr 1998, Anthony Frazer wrote: > I suspect a British SPD is unlikely to come into existence, partly because > it would have to depend on (extensive) public funding - yup. I've been dealing with SPD for years, love 'em, they pay bills and re-order. I recall that when the protoPassword was being set up (Pig Press was a member then) the model was very much SPD - no restrictions on book format etc were made (and no readability tests either!). Time passed, and Password increasingly placed strictures on our book production, so we jumped ship - and entered our "most successful" period of UK bookshop sales, with Pete Hodgkiss repping Pigs alongside the highly diverse range he covered at that time. We were the only poetry publisher on the list (tho Pete had a few Galloping Dogs with him I dare say) - the rest were farming books, walking books, and Yale University Press. Don't get me wrong, we hung onto the day job - but we were, briefly, supplying books to shops I've never heard of in towns I've never visited, rather than the konner-sewer market we're more familiar with. Fingers were cut on the packing tape dispenser, and we fully appreciated the difficulties of packing non-standard formats - that sort of thing. Most of the bills got paid too. > What's needed is a website... - again, yup. Whenever I've mentioned a title on this list, a tiny trickle of orders follows, not all from the usual suspects, not even from members of this list (remember the britpo archive is scanned daily by more folk than are actually members. Hi, list-scanners!). So, whilst there are still (self-evidently) many people who we aren't reaching, there are a few more who we are reaching. Anthologies help too - attract small numbers of new readers who wouldn't otherwise etc. Cause for unbridled optimism? Perhaps not - but maybe cause enough for an end to that negativism which says that nothing can be done, that it's all gone to hell in a bucket and we're calling it wrong and no-one could possibly understand it anyway. RC %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%