
Some Things I Think I Think…

The following items are things that I have been thinking about lately but have not had enough time to write a proper full column about yet. But I want to mention them because they all relate to aspects of the small press publishing business and they are all important.
The VIDA count absolutely matters. If you are an editor and you want to publish more women, please don’t claim the “I would, but I don’t receive enough submissions from women” as the reason why you can’t. That is a weak excuse. If you are not getting enough submissions from women, or any other group of humans for that matter, there are many things you can do. Most importantly being, what you as an editor decide to publish definitely influences who will submit to your publication or press.
*
Most/many independent small press publishers and editors are doing what they do because it is something that they like to do. Most/many of them have a “real” other job that they do to support their press or publication. Most/many of them just one day decided to do it and did it. There are many great interviews with artists, designers, writers, etc… in The Great Discontent. One such with artist Rebecca Rebouché, sums up two of the most important things that every person looking to start/break into/continue any creative output would be wise to heed, especially in the independent small press world:
*
There are some similarities between independent small press editors/publishers and big time literary agents as per this recent interview at Guernica with literary agent Chris Parris-Lamb. Although the work of independent small press editors/publishers is not only limited to “finding and selling” a writer’s work. And of course, the scale of things is much less for small press than it is for literary agents like Parris-Lamb. But there is much agreement about the state of Amazon and their influence on the publishing world and why they can’t seem to get past books as only a means to an end:
*
One really can make money selling books on Amazon for a penny as per this article in the Guardian from yesterday: The price point is partly a result of the market’s downward pressure: at a certain level of supply and demand the race to the lowest price swiftly plummets to the bottom. What remains inflexible is the $3.99 fee Amazon charges the buyer for shipping. From that $4, Amazon takes what they call a “variable closing fee” of $1.35. They also charge the seller 15% of the item’s price – which in the case of a penny book is zero. That leaves $2.64 to cover postage, acquisition cost and overhead. “All told,” Mike Ward concedes, “we only make a few cents on a penny book sale like that.” Now that hardly seems like much, true. “But keep in mind,” he adds, “that last year we sold 11.5m books.”
- Female Brazilian Writers Talk About the Difficulties of Publishing in Brazil - April 20, 2017
- A Few (by Luna Miguel) - April 11, 2017
- Thank you for publishing poetry - December 20, 2016