Best of the Small Press 2012: Nate McDonough

It's that time again, when I ask small press authors and editors to contribute lists of their favorite small press books of the year. Without further ado:

1. Extravagant Traveler by Jeremy Baum (Self Published, 2012)

2. White Clay by Thomas Herpich (Adhouse Books, 2012)

3. Wizzywig by Ed Piskor (Top Shelf, 2012)

4. Afterschool Special by Dave Kiersh (Self Published, 2012)

5. Wild Child by M Young (Smoke Persian Press, 2012)

~~Small Press Picks by Nate McDonough, editor of GRIXLY comics anthology and author of graphic novel DON’T COME BACK (self published, 2012)

Please DO come back. There will be many more Best of Small Press 2012 lists now through Dec 31.

Interview with a Micro-Press: Tiny TOE Press

Today I’m interviewing Michael Davidson about his very small press, Tiny TOE Press. Davidson is a writer, a blogger, and a publisher. He is the author (under the nom de plume, herocious) of the novel Austin Nights (2011), the debut title on Tiny TOE. This micro press has a short but intriguing (and growing) list of titles, which you can find here: http://theopenend.com/

I have a special affection for Tiny TOE, as they handpress their books in a similar way to how I self-published/self-produced my first novel which started my own micro press, Words Like Kudzu. When I finished writing my novel, I wanted to put it out in the world immediately, so I took my bookmaking skills and my love of the Xerox machine and made my own books. Tiny TOE does this, only better. They use rulers, box cutters, and a homemade book-pressing machine they call a jig. Me, I just used my hands and my back and a stapler, and frankly, my back is still paying for it 12 years later.

Karen: How did Tiny TOE get started as a press? 

Michael: Tiny TOE Press got started because of TheOpenEnd.com [TOE]. After ~2 years of building content for TOE, commenting on blogs, and emailing with like-minded people, I managed to meet some publishers/writers who were putting together some good books, but none of them, at least none that I knew, even considered the idea of handpressing their own paperbacks. Tiny TOE Press realized the modest potential of this niche market and made it an option.

Once I made the first copy of my book I felt like this was what I was supposed to be doing: making and writing books. But for this adventure in self-publishing to turn into an adventure in publishing it took the jig. That's really what started Tiny TOE, the jig that was built in a shed.

The jig is made out of wood and bolts. It functions as both a square and a clamp. The jig is crucial for making the spines of our books. We started out with a jig that presses one book at a time. Now we've progressed to a jig that presses four at a time. 

Karen: What place do you think the micro press holds in the publishing world? In the literature world? 

Michael: To use metaphor, the publishing world is a vast bucket with micro presses being occasional droplets into this bucket. Micro presses can and do ripple and splash with some of their titles, but it's rarely anything tidal.

Now in the literature world micro presses are vital because they democratize the written word. So many people can't escape the draw of writing literature, but it is a meteoric event indeed for this breed of writing to break out into the publishing world. I think it's because most of the publishing world can only take so many risks each year, and this number is less than the number of manuscripts in the literature world worth taking a risk on. Micro presses noticed this imbalance and made it their mission to discover these manuscripts that deserved a readership and turn them into consumable books.

Karen: How are you finding authors--do you seek them or do they find you? 

Michael: From the start our jig has been responsible for getting submissions from some talented writers. Our jig put us on the map. It made us discoverable, and writers love discovering new independent presses.

ML Kennedy, the author of The Mosquito Song, is one of the first contributors to TheOpenEnd. After he bought and read our first book, and after he read the post roughly going over how this book was made, he emailed me about the possibility of Tiny TOE Press representing his novella, which TheOpenEnd had published in serial format the year before. We were very proud to collaborate on this sardonic vampire narrative. It's New Pulp.

Mitchell Hagerstrom, the author of Miss Gone-overseas, is a similar kind of story. She contributed some of her prose to TheOpenEnd before the existence of Tiny TOE Press. Once she learned of my book she emailed me a manuscript she had worked on over the span of several years. Her novella read then as it reads now, like a timeless piece of prose from the viewpoint of a nearly unrepresented voice in WWII history.

Joseph Avski and Mark McGraw, author and translator (respectively) of Heart of Scorpio, had no affiliation with TheOpenEnd. They got in touch with me after they watched the time-lapse video of me handpressing a book. I read their multi-voiced novella about a famous Colombian boxer and immediately saw how the story of this boxer mirrors the history of his country. Being Colombian, I knew this would be our next book. It was written in the stars.

Writers have been finding us, and new ones are finding us always, but now that we've been around a little longer and have a better idea of the small press world, we have our eyes on a few writers that we'd love to work with.

Karen: I love the particular variety of formats you are offering--you sell each title as both handmade book and e-book. How did you arrive at that model and how is it working for you? 

Michael: While writers care a lot about distribution and reach when it comes to their work, and this requires a more industrial approach to bookmaking, they also value the way their book is produced.

Handpressing their book gives each copy an energy that the industrial approach--with its offset or POD printers--cannot imitate. When handpressed, their book is not only a work of literature, but also a piece of craftsmanship.

The ebook does what the handpressed book cannot, namely, reach thousands of people wanting to read good books on their ereader in an instant.

I like the model. It has gotten our books some interesting press and their share of readerly activity.

Karen: What other micro presses do you admire and why? 

Michael: Several come to mind immediately. In no specific order, Publishing Genius and Mudluscious Press. They put together clever bundle packages and experiment with marketing strategies to move their stock. Lazy Fascist Press has released some notable titles and seems to leave a lot of control in the writer's hands re: overall design. Calamari Press and Dzanc Books for their painstaking care in designing book objects. O/R Books for their incredible website and progressive ebook business model. Featherproof for their Free Mini-Books. Tyrant Books for their hype. Civil Coping Mechanism for their roster. Melville House and Spuyten Duyvil for their novella series.

*****

You can find interviews with Michael Davidson on further topics here and here.

Don't miss recent interviews with Spencer Dew, on book reviewing, and Mike DeCapite, on writing. And stay tuned for more interviews about The Art of the Book Review.

The Business of Micro Press

Art Noose sells her writing at PIX: Pittsburgh Indy Comics Expo (October 2010).

As a publisher, I am currently seeking viable options for funding future titles on my very-very-small press. Here are the primary options for funding small press projects, as I see it:

1. Out of pocket funding. Fine if you have it (especially if you have it over and above your monthly expenses). Obviously, sometimes very small runs on micro press operations don't have to set you back much--say, $300, or maybe $100 or less. That could be a good run of a zine, or a short run of a chapbook or xeroxed novella, or a POD book, etc. However, I believe that a not-insignificant portion of my credit card debt is made up of such "lo-fi" ventures.

2. Collective out of pocket funding. I have known small presses that were literary collectives, and I assume (though I'm not positive), that some of their (early?) books were funded by everyone chipping in. Still, this theory breaks down, because everyone in the collective eventually wants to do a book of their own, so that really points back to similar expenses of a one-person small press.

3. The pre-order. Recently a friend had a poetry book coming out on a respectable small press, and he wrote to all his friends saying that the book wasn't going to happen until X amount of people ordered it. The order fee was higher than the normal price of the book, but it included a deluxe package of a signed poetry book and an extensive sound recording by the author and a collaborator. The pre-order might be a pretty solid option, but someone involved (either the author or the publisher) has to have a lot of loyal friends, or have made a name for themselves. This method is not necessarily recommended for totally unknowns.

4. The grant. Need I say much more here? Grant money is very handy if you can get it, and I believe that after you've gotten one grant, that greases the wheels for future grants. But if you're not in the grant habit or the grant circuit, it can be a long road: learning how to write a great-looking proposal, researching appropriate grant opportunities, figuring out how to become eligible for a grant (ie 501c status, etc.), waiting and hoping to get a grant. I also know several small presses and authors who don't believe in grants, who think of them as shady tax loopholes where people with money can get more money. The grant option is not for everyone.

5. Subscriptions. I am thinking of one micro-press that publishes quarterly runs of his mini-poetry journal. This journal has a decent subscription base, and in any case the prices seem to be geared to cover the cost of printing (which he does on a good black & white printer out of his home) and postage, but not much more. This seems like an utterly sane equation to me. The poetry journal in question is a labor of love, yet it basically covers its own costs. Over the years, the journal has gained a loyal audience, but it is almost exclusively distributed through the mail; the publisher does not have to deal with other types of distribution; and if he chooses, he can gear his print runs to the number of subscribers.

I think that one question I am posing in this blog post is, In an age of such widespread debt, how long is it before a Labor of Love is no longer loveable?

6. Sales revenue. Whether a book, zine, or other small press project proves to sell as much as it cost to create is still a crapshoot in my experience. The cost of getting a book noticed by and sold to people who will read it is counted not only in material or printing fees, but also in time. We may not pay for advertisements--we of the small press, we of the savvy social media age. But bothering to put out a small press book means bothering to spend massive amounts of time promoting the book on Facebook, posting on blogs, talking it up to reviewers, finding the right distros, making fliers, dropping books off at bookstores, and of course arranging or doing readings. One of the best ways to promote your book is by doing lots of readings, preferably around the country.

In other words, the small press might ask for your whole life: Make sure it's something you enjoy doing. (Small press might be a verb disguised as a noun.)

7. The fundraiser. Hosting a reading with a door fee (at a venue willing to keep their own fee low) comes to mind, but I don't actually know that many presses who have used this method besides:

7a. Kickstarter. Kickstarter, the internet fundraiser site, has some great potential for very small and micro presses. I have seen authors and presses use Kickstarter as a pre-order vehicle, as a publicity vehicle, and as a flat-out donation vehicle. Check out one successful literary project here and one still-fundraising graphic novel project here. You can browse their Writing and Publishing category here.

8. Patrons. Do they exist anymore? Are they common? Are some small presses funded by parents and families of the publisher? And, more importantly, when patronage is involved, is it ever disclosed? For some reason, I feel that the transparency of how the small press is funded is crucial to creating a fertile soil for the free press. Can the greatest number of people get their words, views, and work into the public sphere if the Haves are hoarding and protecting knowledge of the financial side of publishing from the Have Nots? The small press world is still overwhelmingly white and very college educated. Surely this is not because we have that much more to say than other Americans, or because our stories are so much more valuable. The means of production must be transparent, and hopefully made widely accessible as well.

I also feel that we need the freedom to contradict, critique, annoy, and piss off the generations that came before us (if need be), and patronage in publishing could stand, explicitly or subconsciously, as a hinderance to frankness of literary content.

*****

I'm not trying to make the small press all about the bottom line. The small press is not about money. Life in America IS about money, and we get involved in the arts to retain some of our humanity. But, life in America is about money. The cost of living is constantly going up, up, up, while wages are not keeping pace. And if we're always spending more than we earn back on the small press projects we produce, we're going to burn out. I want us to be sustainable.

How do YOU fund your micro press endeavors? What's your perspective on the subject of money and the small press?

If any small press, lit mag, or micro press publishers are reading this and are willing to share their thoughts or experiences on financing literary endeavors, please speak up.

Recent Acquisitions: March Edition

Above left and below, Julien Poirier's new book El Golpe Chileno, on Ugly Duckling Presse. Poems and drawings.
http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/catalog/browse/item/?pubID=139

Above right, Amir Rashidd's chapbook of poems, Sweet Blood Call, with drawings by Lois Griffith.
Available at Awesome Books: http://smallpresspittsburgh.wikispaces.com/Awesome+Books


Below, I Hotel on Coffee House Press, ten novellas by Karen Tei Yamashita set in the heart of the Yellow Power Movement of the late 60s through late 70s.
http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781566892391/i-hotel.aspx

Glass City, Poems by John Grochalski is new from Low Ghost Press and will be reviewed soon on this blog.
See a review on Burning River Press' website here: http://burningriver.info/?p=1128

Below, two new zines from ArtNoose: xXXXx: Straight Edge Erotic Fiction, and the newest issue of Ker-bloom!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/artnoose

Below, issue 54 of Public Illumination Magazine, drawings and short-short stories on the theme of SPICE.
http://www.mondorondo.com/pim/

And finally, a beautifully-crafted new book (below pic is a detail of the cover) from Encyclopedia Destructica: Public Record is a book of poems by Justin Hopper, written from 19th Century crime reports in downtown Pittsburgh. Illustrated by various artists.
http://publicrecordpgh.com/

Challenge: The Revenge of Print

I have been surprised to run into small press friends lately who have NOT heard of the REVENGE OF PRINT 2011 Challenge, sponsored by Quimby's (Chicago) and Atomic Books (Baltimore). So I'm here to tell you about it. It's very simple, really. If you've ever made a zine, mini-comic, or other micro-press serial, make another one in 2011. Make one more issue. If you're sick of hearing about the "death of print" and the "end of books" and the "e-publishing revolution," remind the world about the Mimeograph Revolution that got you into this biz in the first place. If you've been taking a break, if you've gotten lazy or complacent, if you had a falling out with your co-editor, if your plans for the next ish are so elaborate that it's taken you three years to work on it....make 2011 the year that you get on with it. Be a comeback kid. Just do it.

You can join the conversation here on the Revenge of Print Facebook page. And no, that's not irony, or foreshadowing, or inevitability. That's the way we live now, in a world where digital communication and print publications can CO-EXIST.

What will you publish in 2011?

SMALL PRESS MEETS THE LIBRARY: some of the questions

How can small press authors or publishers move beyond relentless, hit-and-run self-promo and instead situate their records in contextualizing databases? How might particular small press items be discovered by particular libraries which may or may not already collect similar materials or overlapping subjects? How can catalogers better describe micro press items, or where can they find online help cataloging or indexing zines? Which details about their books and items do small press publishers/distributors need to provide to a librarian browsing a catalog? How can the small press better be discovered and bought by libraries? How can acquisitions librarians use the web to better find small press books they are looking for?

These are some of the questions I am interested in exploring.

Small Press (in) Databases: Towards a Metadata Analysis

Using Kim Addonizio’s fabulous book of poetry, “Tell Me,” as an example, I looked at a number of small press databases--or databases in which I might find small press books or poetry books--to see what kind of information was given in each site, and what different features each site offered the user. This project is a step towards the aim of helping readers, book buyers, and especially librarians better find small press titles and their bibliographic information, and towards the ultimate end of getting more small press titles into library collections.

LibraryThing.com
http://www.librarything.com/work/4047526
One of the best things about Library Thing is the tags. Users can create a catalog of their own books, and can add as many “tags” as they want to each book to describe them in their own terminology, a word or a phrase. Users can view the tags that *everyone* gave to the book, and each tag has a live link to let the user see what other books were given the same tag. LT uses different font sizes to give a visual (called a "tag cloud") of which tags are the most popular for each book.

This is a social site, and each book entry can be clicked on to retrieve its "social information," like how many people are posting a conversation about this book, or who else has this book in their LT catalog. Other [potential] descriptors for each book in LT include: cover image, Library of Congress number, MARC records, link to author page, starred ratings, reviews, recommendations and suggestions, Amazon.com recommendations, commercial and library links to buy or borrow the book.

[Note that some of these options are only visible when one is logged into one’s LT account. For others, see links to the left side (such as “details”).]

World Cat (Beta):
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44916571?tab=holdings
This is the user-interface for the OCLC, an American cataloging database that draws from numerous libraries worldwide who join OCLC and share their cataloging info. This database will let you see how many of the member libraries own the book you are looking for, and gives you links to those library online catalogs. You can also get instant citation formats, click on a link to view the author’s additional book or article listings, and add reviews or notes to the record (i.e. some parts of the record are "open-source", while other parts are not).

Small Press Distribution
http://www.spdbooks.org/Details.asp?BookID=1880238918
SPD offers a healthy paragraph-sized description of each book, as supplied by the publisher and often quoting eloquent and noted authors. Information offered per book is very basic and standard; for findability, the site offers category links as well as updated links for New Fiction, JUST IN!, bestsellers, staff picks, SPD recommends, and their seasonal catalogs, free by mail to those who request them.
SPD—Librarians’ Resources:
http://www.spdbooks.org/GENlibrarians.asp
Open Stacks, a quarterly newsletter aimed at librarians, contains synopses of new books along with lists of libraries that have already purchased them. Other library-targeted services include lists of new titles of multicultural interest, and biweekly fax or email recommendations.

St Mark’s Bookshop—Online store
http://www.stmarksbookshop.com/NASApp/store/Product?s=showproduct&isbn=9781880238912
This bookstore record features some basic bibliographic info, item availability, series title, as well as links to a general classification in which to browse—Fiction and Lit>>Poetry>>Single Author, or one step further from Single Author>>American. There’s an author link to tell the user what other titles by Addonizio are available, and clicking on a link beneath the cover image provides a larger image.

But like SPD, the site offers some great ways to stay current with new titles. Although the store carries much more than just small press, they’ve had a formidable small press selection since they opened in New York’s East Village in 1977, and are well-known especially for their finely-curated poetry, film studies, design, contemporary philosophy, and left-wing political offerings; some collections development librarians like to browse there in person. Barring that, the online browser has the chance to click links to: Store Bestsellers, This Week’s Arrivals, New & Recommended, and currently-stocked Autographed copies. Another great feature is the Custom Catalogs by Email, allowing the user/customer to sign up for email updates on the store's latest titles in the customer's chosen sections or genres.

The St. Mark’s online bookstore is also an example of one run by Book Sense, a consortium of independent bookstores. Book Sense offers member stores a maintained website at a reasonable price, and each store has the chance to custom-design certain elements of their site. The books found in this database reflect not only the store’s actual holdings but books which the store can obtain through certain distributors. Some noteworthy Book Sense features on the site include links to Book Sense Picks and Book Sense Bestsellers, reflecting nationwide tastes according to indie bookstores.

Brooklyn Public Library
http://catalog.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/search~/a?searchtype=t&searcharg=tell+me%3A+poems&searchscope=63&SORT=D
This record is typically library-simple: call number, branch locations, title, author, height, page numbers. But check out the “More Information” button off to the right:
Brooklyn Public: “More Information” http://contentcafe2.btol.com/ContentCafeClient/ContentCafe.aspx?UserID=BROOKLYNPL&Password=BT0137&ItemKey=188023890X
Still new for online library catalogs is the idea of offering descriptors that more closely resemble Amazon and other sites people actually use online. Here you get three published reviews, a table of contents, an enlarged cover image, and a brief synopsis of the book.

Poets House Directory of American Poetry Books
http://www.poetshouse.org/title.asp?title=1719

http://www.poetshouse.org/directory.htm
This is a database of 20,000+ poetry books that publishers and poets have donated to Poets House’s archives; Poets House has an annual spring Showcase of poetry titles that have come out in the previous calendar year, and older books can be donated for the Directory-only. Each record contains general bibliographic information, cover image, brief prose description, and a link to buy the book from your choice of a short list of booksellers—Amazon, Powell’s, ABE Books, and some foreign sites, among others. Notably, however, there are no distributors connected to this feature.

The "quick search" in this database offers a Google screen, but the "advanced search" lets the user browse by year, title, author, type of book (such as "chapbook"), keyword found in the description, publisher, or editor.

Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Me-Poems-American-Continuum/dp/188023890X/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-7527052-6279048?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191785560&sr=1-2
And of course, Amazon. This one is a particularly good page, with ten customer reviews, and the Look Inside feature: The user can see, either by clicking links or using the “page-turning” feature, a reader-friendly image of the colophon page, the full table of contents, two poems, and the front and back covers.

As usual, Amazon has a whole (long) page of what we call “metadata”—supporting-info about the book in question. There are tags, a visual (starred, priced, and linked) list of "What other customers bought after buying this item", two published reviews, starred ratings, percentage point statistics, the usual bibliographic info, and of course links to booksellers with this book. Additionally, there are links provided to the paperback edition, to all other editions available, and to the reviewers’ Amazon profiles--not to mention a link to add the title to your wedding registry.

New York Public Library—Research
http://catnyp.nypl.org/search?/ttell+me%3A+poems/ttell+me+poems/1%2C1%2C1%2CB/frameset&FF=ttell+me+poems&1%2C1%2C
Just the basics: Author, title, publisher, place of publication, year of publication, edition, page numbers, height, call number, physical location in the stacks.

BOA Editions Ltd. [the publisher of “Tell Me”]
Title page:
http://boaeditions.org/books/tellme.html
The publisher gives us the cover image, a generous prose description of the book/author, and two praise blurbs by other poets. This page includes one short poem from the book. In addition to basic info like price and ISBN, the page has a link to a page offering the relevant information needed to buy the book through the publisher: online, by mail, or by phone.

The title page also lets you click over to the:
Author page:
http://boaeditions.org/authors/addonizio.html
This page has an author photo, a paragraph about the author’s works, education, awards, and city of habitation. There’s a [dead] link to the author’s website, and links to the two titles of hers that BOA published.

And of course you can learn much more about the publisher itself by looking around this site.

Columbia University—Full View
http://clio.cul.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v2=1&ti=1,1&SEQ=20071008164505&Search%5FArg=tell%20me%3A%20poems&SL=None&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=50&PID=6Djw7gUlk3QgbOv0WhQ_8fTGlEtMOsI&SID=1
Click on FULL VIEW in the middle if this doesn’t already come up. This is a library record that has cataloged almost everything conceivable from the available book information. In addition to the basics, the Full View includes a listing of every poem from the table of contents and the descriptive blurb from the book jacket. The author’s official “authority control” name appears at the top of this record, with a live link to lead the user to her catalog record and thus, her other titles. And the MARC record view is another click away from the Full View record, for librarians who can best use that info.

Wikipedia—List of Small Presses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_presses
“List of Small Presses” contains a fine, alphabetized, if incredibly abridged list of small press publishers, both past and present. The alphabet up at the top is helpful, and the Web 2.0 aspect is a promising one, allowing users to add entries for their own small press or for small presses they know of. There is almost no bibliographic information offered via this database, but there are links on each press' page to their publisher websites.
Wikipedia--Small Press
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_press
The entry for “Small Press” is alright, fleshed out in prose describing what small presses are and are not, what a micro-press is, a very abridged history, and some random external links. Again, this has some promising potential, as anyone can add more history, prose, or external links to it

Wikipedia, of course, has a search engine one could use to look for poets, authors, or publishers, but the vast majority of Wikipedia has nothing to do with small press. In other words, it is not a good environment to BROWSE in for small press information.