"Resistance is Futile" by Shanna at DIY Poetry Publishing.:
"It just seems pointless and uninformed, frankly, to resist a decade-old technology that's already become the Way It Is, particularly when there are many benefits to leaving offset printing and overprinting behind. . .
. . . Did anyone make these same kind of arguments about the advent of movable type? "Movable type and the printing press means instant books can be produced in 1000 hours vs. the usual 10000000 it takes Irish monks to hand-illuminate them. It's cheapening the process!" Grumble, grumble. I think any letterpress printer (bless their hearts and gorgeous work) will tell you that to print complete books by that method you must be kind of insane. They'd also tell you their goals and concerns have very little to do with the market. As it should be. Treating the book as a fetish object is natural for people who love books--why shouldn't they be as beautiful as possible?--but that kind of bibliophilia is AT ODDS with the sort of bibliomania that compels us also to find and read as many good poems as possible."
Labels: DIY, POD, Shanna Compton
posted by RL @ 8:25 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
how does POD help you "find and read as many good poems as possible"? That's a means of printing but I don't see how it changes the market. These books don't go up on shelves much... The market only grows on the internet... so if you wanted to find and read as many good poems as possible why not just skip paper and publish strictly on the web? Books don't make poets more read, do you think? But they do help publishers make some money. At least with traditional book printing one knows where the money goes. Where does the money go with POD printing? Does anyone even care? Does the POD mark up not bother anyone at all? By this reasoning for POD the books should be less expensive. But they only seem to be more expensive. And I don't know why.
I think what Shanna means is that POD allows more books of poetry to make it into print -- and challenges the assumption that quality is the only real reason a book would have trouble finding a publisher.
It changes the market because it helps different books, books that corporate and university presses won't touch become available. POD helps put out-of-print books back in print.
I agree that more books doesn't make more poems be read, but it gives more poems the opportunity to be read (in book form) -- I agree, if one is really concerned with reaching as many readers as possible, the web is the way to go.
As for the cost, yeah, POD books are generally more experience (now at least) -- but with any printing traditional or POD, the discount is applied to bulk. If I was to do a short-run of a POD (which I do for author, review, and in-person sale copies) -- it's way cheaper for me to print out 100 than 20.
p.s. At this point I haven't come close to making any profit on any NTB titles -- POD has just made it affordable for me to publish books. I still have to pay for advance copies, cover designers, postage, ISBN/distribution and other misc. expenses.
maybe i didn't phrase that very well, but yeah, what i mean is, lots of good books are never published--and many terrible ones are--but for all the wrong reasons. i've had to turn down books, when working at for-profit presses, that i would have very much liked to publish because i couldn't justify them to my boss(es) as financially viable.
i really don't understand why talking about this makes people so grumpy.
unless maybe scott thinks i'm being dismissive of letterpress printing or hand-sewn bindings or other kinds of book arts? but i've got no idea why he'd think that, since i do it myself and he knows that. (hi scott. i also responded to yr note over at the diy blog.)
i'm talking about how *commercial* publishing--and frankly, contest-supported small press publishing--sucks ass for poetry, cripples it, kills it, and restricts it for purely economic reasons. i'm saying that if we (i) want to get poetry books out to any kind of general readership we have to figure out some other way(s).
as a craftsman printer, scott probably isn't too concerned about poetry reaching a general audience. i am though. call me crazy. i'd like to see more nonpoets read poetry, and i think expecting them to seek out letterpressed editions to find it is unrealistic, as fun as it is to think about.
i post (write, talk, teach, yammer, drunkenly argue) about internet publishing all the time too. i just don't happen to be doing it right now. to summarize my thoughts on internet publishing: i am a fan.
also, the POD systems i'm talking about do change the market in a substantial way. if a publisher opts for the distribution networking, the book is available to practically every bookstore and library in country, and often globally as well.
in that case the *potential* readership is much larger than a book printed in a limited run and distributed only by SPD. (SPD is great, but not all stores will bother to order from them--just an example.)
the money goes the same place it does when you buy any commercial book, a percentage goes to the press and its employees, the printer and its employees, the distributor and its employees, the author as a royalty, and the rest is usually frittered away on shipping, taxes, etc. it's not really that POD is less expensive on a per-copy basis, its that it eliminates the expense of waste and overprinting, shipping, warehousing, etc.
really, it's just too much for me to type out. what the new model does is lower the intitial financial threshold. some of the processes are automated and digitized and others are not. there are still plenty of real people making the books, albeit in a very different way than days of yore.
my theory (and plenty of small press's practice) is that this lowering of the financial threshhold allows *more presses to print more poetry.*
I hear all of that. And I'm not grumpy, I'm upbeat! Just kidding, I'm grumpy.
I'm concerned for the fat intake of our fellow poetry publishers. And actually, I print effing books digitally, I merely offset and letterpess the covers. Only because I love it. It's not necessary of course. But I have these machines, digital and old skool. I understand and enjoy them all.
My concern in a nutshell: A different industry is merely replacing the old. A network of distribution maintained and controlled by entities that still couldn't give a shit about poetry profits from it (poetry) even still. And the product is lacking, in light of all the material choices that exist these days. But I acknowledge those concerns are not as interesting as a book getting to market more quickly with less expense.
I am a DIY'r hell yes I am, and I wish more people made books like I enjoy to make books. Wishful thinking I know. I see POD as a kind of DIY of the mind and that has value, sure. And I'm all for bipassing the usual book printers. That is an idea I am fond of. But I am weary of replacing the old paradigm with a new one that seems, frankly, a little too Walmart for me.
Perhaps in my relatively young age of 30 I have become a dinosaur. Say it isn't so!
Oh it isn't so.
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