Mooney for scale.

Hey, writers! Where are you in the publishing process?

Denial: I think maybe I’ll write a novel. I have a really great idea for one. My friends think I’m a pretty good writer. I once got a rejection from The New Yorker that referred to the “obvious merit” of my fiction. Sure. I’ll write a novel and then send it to an agent!

Anger: No one is publishing me because they don’t understand how amazing my work is. They just don’t get it. Philistines. Agents won’t even look at my manuscript. The whole system is corrupt. You have to be one of those New York elites to get a book published. You have to be from money. You have to know people. You have to get an MFA. Publishing is a racket.

Bargaining: What the heck. I’ll go ahead and get an MFA. It might be fun to hang out with a bunch of writers like myself—people just trying to figure out how to get their work out for the world to see. It’ll be fun. I’ll learn some stuff about my craft. Maybe I’ll get into a huge argument in a workshop!

Depression: Even though I have an MFA, Knopf has not yet given me the big, Jonathan Safran Foer-esque, two-book deal. This sucks. Why have I been wasting my time? Publishers are only interested in turning people’s mildly funny conceptual blogs into books. Why the hell didn’t I just take a photo of my cat wearing a monocle, and then ask other people to submit photos of their cats wearing monocles to me? I’d have a book contract right now.

Acceptance: You know, it’s actually surprisingly easy for me to just do this myself. Maybe I’ll just start my own small press.

I’ve been thinking about nepotism and croneyism and friends publishing friends because I often hear people talking, complaining, and bitching about the insular nature of (independent) publishing.

Intrapublishing (new word!) happens but not as much as you’d think. Some magazines are largely vanity presses but most are not.

We all know each other, right? We read each other and we publish each other and support each other and love each other and hate each other. It’s a small small community. The longer you stick around, the more inevitable it becomes that you will encounter people you know and/or like (or dislike as the case may be) in your submission queue. Does that influence editorial decisions? Sometimes. If I know you, for example, and you send me a 7,500 word story I will read it but that isn’t a guarantee of publication. Most editors are great people with integrity who can look beyond friendship and/or mutual respect. I get rejected from acquaintances and friends all the time.

READ MORE >

TriQuarterly is moving online and/or ceasing publication depending on who you ask. It is a real shame to see such a fine publication being forced into this transition. I’ve noticed a lot of garment rending, lament and outcry, but how many of us subscribe? Every time a small press or magazine announces it’s going to close or is on the verge of closing, the Internet immediately begins frothing about the loss to arts and letters but as someone who works behind the scenes and knows how few of us actually subscribe to literary magazines, I have to wonder about the hypocrisy of it all. People say they can’t subscribe to every journal or that they can’t afford to subscribe or they don’t believe in acquiring things or a wide range of other excuses but still,  people really appreciate the work  We appreciate your appreciation but we like and need your money more. What magazines are you subscribing to these days? Do we have a right to express our outrage about the “state of publishing” if we’re part of the problem?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about books considered legendary, classics, for their language and singularity in time. And then for how those books, over that time, have become books considered timeless and vital to the cause, innovators without which… etc. Joyce, Beckett, Stein, Faulkner, etc. The big names everybody deigns to have read, often via schooling, and who you often hear the more serious critics and often honchos in publishing referring to at large. Seems like I’ve seen or heard of a lot of speech where people in the publishing industry (particularly the larger sections) are talking about their influences and what they like, and many of them referring to these classics, and even if they haven’t said it aloud surely they would not shake their head at the idea that these books are the foundations of how we’ve come to where we are, and etc.

So, then, it becomes confusing to me, in this reckoning, when I think of how most any of these books, if approached today, would not exist. I can’t think of most any publisher, even the major and innovative independents, that would release Ulysses again right now, if instead of an accepted masterpiece, it were a third book by some Irish guy who had published a collection of short fiction and a weird novella. I can’t see even the more edgy presses like Dalkey doing it, or FC2 (EDIT: actually, FC2 recently published Vanessa Place’s La Medusa, which is the closest thing I’ve seen to doing what I’m talking about, which means they might have, maybe), or any of the other countless innovative-based upcroppings. Even the more “languagey” presses often don’t do books that are super-languagey, despite the seeming overwhelming admission that those monsters are the ones that defy time, and sell, perhaps gradually, forever. Maybe it would happen, but it would be a long fight, and a wellspring. I certainly can’t see a major doing it. That kind of freaks me out. Not only in that these works would not exist, but that their influences would not exist either, effectively turning off the power they’ve had in moving things forward over the time they’ve been around.

But those books sold then and sell now (and are curriculum!) for a reason, and part of it is because people since then are being taught not to read what they do not understand. A gradual and stuttered concept that could, over another gradual and stuttered period, be reversed.

READ MORE >

What are 3 literary journals that you feel would “change your life” if you were published in them? Do you believe your life could be changed by publishing a writing? Does it matter?

at the risk of eliciting the charge of “stupidest ever” from justin taylor, i realized today that i have never felt like i was the shit for having done anything. granted, i am assuredly a piece of shit, and not at all successful in some ways, but has anything you’ve done made you think, “i am the shit?” usually, if i get something published this is what happens: i go “hell yeah” in my head while nodding, and then i think “wait, am i really happy?” then the feeling is gone. is it good to think, “i am the shit?” or is it bad? does it help you or does it hurt you? i don’t mean these questions as hypotheticals, i mean, how do you the reader feel. if you don’t want to discuss that, then you can use the comments sections to demean me. oh wait, i remember this one time i was at a gym and i pointed to a garbage can and said to the person next to me, “check this out.” then i punted a football right into the garbage can. i definitely thought, “i am the shit” after that. do you feel more like the shit when you are in a print publication? is it the people also in the publication? is it the editor? the journal?

Literary Multiplier / Critical Mass

And here’s Norman Lock on small presses & print vs. digital, via Eugene Lim’s wonderful blog.

A select bit from Norman, and my thoughts:

…To acknowledge such a limitation is to accept a reduced role for the writer.  I do not believe that what I write can change the world or the people in it. I don’t believe that anything written by a contemporary literary artist has that power over a mass audience. There are some who believe they can restructure consciousness using language and narratives that defy convention. But their visionary writing will scarcely be read by the people most in need of a transformed consciousness. The only work that has power to engage a mass audience is sentimental (which is a lie) or pornographic (which is also a lie, though perhaps a more entertaining one). We can rue this. We can set down the causes to mainstream publishing or to a degeneration in popular taste and appreciation that have little to do with literacy. But we can and should seek out our own margin and make our literature there.

READ MORE >

Oh, hey! Another editor has managed to convince his bosses that his internet addiction is not a huge drain on company time and bandwidth by getting a freely accessed photo blog turned into a book!

Harper Big Wig into phone: Nelson? Get into my office. Now.

Nelson, entering: Yes boss?

HBW: Nelson, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but all the office computers now have spyware on them. According to our records, you spent all of last week surfing the internet.

N: Uh. Well, sure. I was…doing…research?

HBW: Research? Why weren’t you reading the slush pile? Did you find anything?

N: [Pause.]

HBW: Well?

N: A blog with pictures of fried foods?

HBW: Nelson, you’ve done it again! Let’s get a contract drawn up.

And scene.

Keep throwing shit against the wall, fellas. Something is bound to stick.