{"id":1328,"date":"2011-08-11T15:47:09","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T19:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bsuenglish.wordpress.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2019-04-23T16:46:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T20:46:09","slug":"prof-victoria-barrett-writes-about-her-experience-of-starting-her-own-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bsu.edu\/english\/blog\/2011\/08\/11\/prof-victoria-barrett-writes-about-her-experience-of-starting-her-own-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof. Victoria Barrett Writes About Her Experience of Starting Her Own Press!"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Do You Think You\u2019re Doing? On Starting a Fiction Press When the Book is Supposed to Be Dead<\/strong><\/p>\n

Teaching in BSU\u2019s Writing Program is a deeply fulfilling, collaborative, ongoing learning experience. But it rarely ever leaves me feeling like the definitive expert in anything. This is as it should be; I seek to learn from my students as I help them to learn from me and from one another. Still, at some point in a professional life, a time comes when expertise\u2014and the confidence that accompanies it\u2014is required. For most of us who teach at the college level, this requirement is met by the practice of scholarship, where we contribute new ideas to our respective fields.<\/p>\n

But for a creative writer\u2014or any artist\u2014the practice of scholarship is fraught with insecurity and struggle. This, too, is as it should be. While all good scholarship is a process of discovery, of reimagining and rethinking and challenging each idea, for most creative writers, the work never quite reaches the point of asserting its ideas. Few of us ever know when a great story is done. (Most of us don\u2019t even know, as regards our own work, what \u201cdone\u201d means.)<\/p>\n

For years, at first in graduate school at Puerto del Sol<\/a><\/em>, then for the past several years at Freight Stories<\/a>, <\/em>the online fiction journal I co-edit with Andrew Scott, I\u2019ve exercised my expertise in fiction as an editor and publisher of short stories. Last year I began seriously looking for something bigger.<\/p>\n

What<\/em> do you think you\u2019re doing?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The book is dead. Long live the book.<\/p>\n

The death of the book is greatly overestimated. While total U.S. book revenues have declined since their peak in 2005, it\u2019s only been six years<\/em> since more money was spent on books than ever before<\/em>. Further, the decline of book revenue does not necessarily reflect a decline in the total number of books sold. Consider that many small presses price their eBooks ridiculously low, generating, obviously, less revenue per copy, for one example of a mitigating factor. Details like this are boring, so they get left out of trend articles and internet conversations. But ignoring them plays into a narrative about the production and consumption of literature that is both inaccurate and damaging. Actual sales figures do suggest that hardcovers may be in death throes for everybody except libraries and collectors. But books\u2014both electronic and paperback\u2014are doing just fine.<\/p>\n

What may be dying are old ways of working in the book industry. In the seven months since I announced my presence as an industry insider, big New York presses have taken dozens of steps toward the working models of small presses\u2014they\u2019re moving more quickly from contract to pub date (traditionally no less than a twelve month span) and from hardcover to paperback editions<\/a>. (The linked New York Times article attributes this to the rise of eBooks, but I don\u2019t think that explains it.) The rest of the system\u2014where Kirkus<\/em> and Publisher\u2019s Weekly<\/em> won\u2019t review you if you don\u2019t send them a copy of the book three to four months in advance of release\u2014will struggle to catch up. But it will <\/em>catch up.<\/p>\n

Formerly locked doors are opening to small presses. I ended my work day last Thursday with a lovely conversation with a buyer at Barnes & Noble\u2019s corporate headquarters about my first original title, a story collection by National Book Award finalist Patricia Henley. Last year\u2019s National Book Award winner in fiction was published by a tiny press. The Pulitzer before that was, too.<\/p>\n

It seems the world of publishing literature is circling back to its beginnings\u2014family businesses, real relationships with authors, equitable royalty splits. It was possible to be profitable in the old mode, before huge corporations ate the family businesses and imposed a profit demand 400 to 500% higher than was previously expected. I want very much to have a role in that rebirth.<\/p>\n

What do you<\/em> think you\u2019re <\/em>doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was in high school, there was a Reebok print ad with the slogan, \u201cWhy be perfect at one thing when you can be pretty damn good at everything?\u201d It was selling cross-trainers, of course. But also something else. I tore it out of a magazine. I\u2019ve kept it for twenty years.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t a writer yet then, but I see now how the ad speaks to a novelist\u2019s work. A novelist creates whole worlds, has to know enough about the world\u2014both the real one and the imagined\u2014to get it right. She has to understand structure, style, image, narrative theory, all of it.<\/p>\n

For a one-woman press (Engine Books has no employees), publishing is like that, too. I read a query letter to see whether I might want to work with a writer, to see potential and professionalism. I read a manuscript to see what\u2019s there, and perhaps what should be there, and whether it belongs at Engine Books. Once a manuscript is accepted, I advise the writer on both large and small revisions of the book\u2019s next draft, and begin to imagine it as a finished product. I design its cover and lay out its pages. I generate publicity, create a web campaign. I make phone calls and send emails to reviewers, bookstores, foundations hosting contests. I stuff envelopes with advance copies, promotional fliers, personalized letters. I write follow-up emails to the recipients of the envelopes. I arrange appearances.<\/p>\n

The inflection of that subheading\u2014the suggestion that someone else, someone male, or older, or already on the inside\u2014would be better equipped for this work is not at all unfamiliar to me. There are only a small handful of presses run by women, and among them, even fewer wherein the women are more than figureheads, for one example. But \u201cYou can\u2019t do that\u201d was a familiar refrain to me long before I even thought about the publishing world, one I\u2019ve heard all my life. All my life, it\u2019s been a source of motivation.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ll spend the remaining days until the fall semester begins finalizing contracts with the four authors whose books I\u2019ll publish in 2012, editing those books, answering and returning phone calls from reviewers and retailers, building the necessary relationships to get those books into readers\u2019 hands. During the academic year, I\u2019ll stuff envelopes and design covers in the evenings, after teaching and grading and answering student emails. I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s anything more fulfilling or valuable a teacher of writing can do than bring new literature into the world.<\/p>\n

For more information about Engine Books, please visit the press at enginebooks.org.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Do You Think You\u2019re Doing? On Starting a Fiction Press When the Book is Supposed to Be Dead Teaching in BSU\u2019s Writing Program is a deeply fulfilling, collaborative, ongoing learning experience. But it rarely ever leaves me feeling like the definitive expert in anything. 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