| Public Poetry | |||||
|
Subscribe to RSS Feed
|
home :: business
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 I've updated the tool that we use to connect new postings at this blog--the news feed for WordTech Communications--to the sites for each of our imprints. The previous tool worked OK, but it was slow, and the server to update the tool was often offline. We've since moved to rss2html, which is fast, lightweight and easy to use. I'm very pleased with it. Sun, 21 Sep 2008If you've tried to visit this blog, or any of the related sites I host on this server (see the "home" link on the side of the blog page), you have undoubtedly noticed that the site's been down intermittently. Put the blame on Hurricane Ike. Even though the storm made landfall in Texas, it retained a surprising amount of strength as it moved inland, northwards. My city, Cincinnati, was hit hard by winds. As a result, nearly a million households in the region lost power, some for several days. Hurricane in Ohio? Yup. Generous neighbors allowed my family to tap into their generator for a few hours each day, enough to cool off the food in our refrigerator, and also to power up my server long enough to answer e-mail, and get the dozen or so websites I host up for a while. The worst, thankfully, is over, and the lights are back on. And we're back in business. Sidenote: This situation--a power outage knocking out my Internet access--is the usual argument made against hosting your own websites on your own machine. Point taken. I'll never achieve the 99.9% uptime that commercial ISP's offer, and as a result, I have no desire to host anything but my company's sites. On the other hand, a hosting presence on the scale that my company uses would cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month. That's a lot of overhead, and the argument doesn't change even when the sites are down for a few days. I am going to be getting a generator, however. Mon, 14 Apr 2008
Changes at Amazon
Until now. Amazon has recently made some distressing moves against print-on-demand (POD) publishers, which is the kind of printing my organization uses. Here's a brief summary:
We're concerned with this development. Based on these facts, here is how we will be responding to the situation:
We think it's important to offer our readers multiple outlets to purchase our titles, so that the decisions of a single vendor don't affect customer choice. For more information on Amazon's actions, this site offers a useful overview of information and the industry's response. Thu, 27 Sep 2007I took a little break from blogging because the task of updating the WordTech Communications sites--all nine of them--proved to be a herculean task. I pretty worked on nothing but the websites for more than two weeks; this is a once-every-few-years project because of its scope. The sites don't look much different--they still have the same content, the same font, and a similar layout to before--but, "under the hood," their foundation has been substantially rebuilt. Fortunately, this will make future updates much easier, because they are now much cleaner and more streamlined. With that done, I'll be getting back to poetry, including blogging about poetry, over the next few days. We have a lot of new books out, and I'm looking forward to discussing them. Fri, 31 Aug 2007I'm in the process of updating the WordTech Communications websites, all seven of them, with a new look and a new structure "under-the-hood," which will make future updates easier. It's a huge undertaking, because there are several hundred pages there, and also because there's a lot of bad, crufty HTML there that dates back to my earliest days doing web pages, when I knew a lot less than I do now. Before I can even begin to implement the new design, I have to remove vast quantities of junk from the HTML--font settings, extraneous tags that come from exporting HTML from another program such as Microsoft Word--and this is time-consuming. Many editors wouldn't do this kind of work themselves, but I'm technically inclined--I'm comfortable with writing HTML by hand if necessary. Still, it's time-consuming, and I'm trying to reduce it to as few steps as possible so that it can be done in a couple of weeks instead of several months. I can't think of a better indicator of how much WordTech has grown than by the size of this project. The number of web pages we have is directly related to the number of books we have in print: each book we publish gets a minimum of two pages, one promoting the book, one featuring sample poetry. (For the past year or so I've also been blogging about each book we publish, trying to offer a personal take on the book rather than PR/jacket copy, so that's an additional writing task.) What's amazing is that it's still just the two of us, Lori Jareo and myself, plus our large family of authors. Lori handles nearly all of our marketing, production and sales tasks, and I handle the editorial and technical side. And our authors are also partners in our work, by writing outstanding poetry, and helping to organize readings in their communities. To all of our authors, thank you for your wonderful work. And to their readers, thank you for supporting poetry. We're looking forward to many more years of publishing, and even bigger websites! Wed, 16 May 2007
Consolidation in Poetry Distribution: Harmful or Helpful?
A recent article at the Poetry Foundation website notes, with alarm, the trend toward corporate-style consolidation in literary book distribution. A large distributor, Perseus, has been buying up smaller distributors that specialize in literary publishing, including poetry; its largest acquisition is Consortium, the Cadillac of poetry distributors, which includes such venerable publishers as Copper Canyon Press and Tupelo Press among its clients. Another acquisition was Publishers Group West, which was in bankruptcy. This kind of corporate acquisition, while not unusual in other industries, is unprecedented in the smaller-scale, frequently non-profit world of poetry publishing. The Poetry Foundation article sums up the concerns of many poetry publishers this way: Perseus's acquisitions---startlingly aggressive, corporate moves in the mom-and-pop world of poetry presses---have changed the small press landscape, undoing an infrastructure that might have had its weak spots, but was familiar and established. It means the transformation of companies that small presses have worked with for years. Now the small press publisher is asking: who am I sending my books to, and can they be trusted?...When Perseus bought Consortium, the move came as a shock to Consortium's clients, and it had many of them wondering whether or not their hard-earned positions within the distributor's roster might be undermined by the new management. Apparently Perseus sees commercial potential in small-press distribution, so, despite the uncertainty, it is hard to see how their investments are a bad thing. These purchases mean that distributors such as Consortium are on firmer financial footing; they may be able to grow in ways that they could not under independent ownership. This, in turn, may mean more distribution opportunities and channels for their clients. These distributors haven't exactly been driving huge annual increases in poetry readership, as noted by the Poetry Foundation article: "it's a truism in poetry publishing that most books simply aren't getting out there." Some publishers fear that the consolidation represented by Perseus would lead to fewer, rather than greater, sales: "How can we maintain our visibility when we are becoming an ever-smaller piece of a larger puzzle?" asked Michael Wiegers, the editor of Copper Canyon Press. (For what it's worth, I doubt Copper Canyon has much reason to worry: their 2006 financials, which you can access at their website, show gross revenue of nearly $1.2 million, and a surplus of more than $98,000.) Of course, the flip side of Wiegers' question is this: Would poetry be better served by distributors such as Publishers Group West going bankrupt, and having their poetry clients just tossed on the street? I doubt it. The move to bring a more business-like structure to the world of poetry publishing may be unsettling to those publishers who operate as much out of a love of literature as a desire to earn a living. Corporate values--to maximize profit--are not much loved in the world of poetry publishing, where most organizations are incorporated under a not-for-profit basis. Revenue from sales are only a small portion of the budgets of most such organizations; fund-raising, in the form of grants, donations, and so on, are as much a part of the organization's daily work as editorial tasks such as reading manuscripts, proofing page layouts, and designing covers, and as marketing tasks such as sending out news releases and placing advertisements. Obviously, it remains to be seen whether Perseus' consolidation of small-press distribution will have a beneficial, benign, or harmful effect on literary book sales and readership. I'm hoping that it will be beneficial. However, the issue of bringing poetry to a readership is a vexing one. As the Poetry Foundation article asks: if the American public will read poetry when they can find it, and if all over the United States warehouses are stacked with books, how, exactly, can we get these books to move? How can we get the poems within them to be seen? Perseus? Anyone? It's a good question, one without easy answers. Paradoxically, bookstores are a lousy place to sell books--at least, poetry books. When we started WordTech several years ago, we looked at the hurdles we'd have to leap to become a publisher of any size. Under a traditional publishing and distribution model--large press run, warehousing books, and trying to push books into bookstores--it seemed an impossible task. Fortunately, print-on-demand was maturing as an alternative publishing model, and this approach seemed ideally suited for a field such as poetry. (I've discussed the economics of traditional vs. print-on-demand approaches to publishing poetry in a previous blog entry.) Our approach is one way--one that works for us. I hope that Perseus is able to do a good job for its clients, as well. Wed, 05 Jul 2006
The Economics of Poetry Publishing
A recent article in Poets and Writers magazine about the economics of literary publishing provided some useful food for thought. The author, Joseph Bednarik, is a respected figure in literary publishing, having served for nearly a decade as marketing director of Copper Canyon Press and, before that, in a similar capacity at Story Line Press. (Full disclosure: I knew Bednarik when he worked at Story Line and handled the marketing of two of my books.) Bednarik's thesis is grim: finding manuscripts to publish is easy, but finding readers for those published books is hard. The proliferation of Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs in creative writing has greatly increased the number of literary/creative writers, but there hasn't necessarily been a corresponding increase in the readership for creative writing. As a result, Bednarik notes, an increasing number of publishers must turn to outside subsidies--whether from grants, donations, or contests--to publish, because book sales alone are insufficient to repay production costs. To those of us who work in literary publishing, there's no news here. But some of the details that Bednarik uses to support his thesis are illuminating, even startling:
Assuming an average reading fee of $20, Bednarik's figures show that more than $200,000 was spent on the publication of those 15 books. Though Bednarik doesn't say, one may presume that his employers did not earn back that $200,000. Astounding. Bednarik goes on to suggest that creative writers have an obligation to support the presses that publish literary work. His main recommendation to increase the readership for literary writing is for creative writers to buy more books. In his words: "One solution is simple enough: If you write, read. A lot. If you want a book published and sold in the marketplace, then buy and read and recommend enough books to nourish the system you want to enter. Advocate on behalf of literature." At one level, it's hard to argue with what Bednarik is calling for. Of course creative writers should buy work from literary presses; given a choice between reading fees for contests or buying a couple of books from the press that sponsors a contest, I can't imagine a writer who would opt for the former. Still, I suspect, many writers already do buy as much work from literary presses as they can afford. I'm not at all certain that creative writers represent the future of literary audiences. More importantly, I think that asking how to increase the audience for literary publications is looking at the question from the wrong angle. A more realistic approach to the question of literary audience is to recognize that the audience for nearly any literary writing in America is likely to be small or tiny. Rather than trying to increase the audience size--and therefore sales--to an impossibly high number to meet the overhead associated with publishing, it's more sensible to align the overhead with the expected demand. In other words: Don't focus so much on growing sales. Instead, focus on driving out costs. Based on Bednarik's figures, I'm estimating that the 15 books published cost an average of $13,000 to produce. Even if one counts the cost of administering a contest among these expenses, $13,000 sounds absurdly high to me. How is this money being spent? I don't have access to the financials of Bednarik's employers, but I can reasonably guess that printing costs, design costs, and marketing/advertising costs form the bulk of the $13,000. At least, that's a typical breakdown for any kind of book publishing. Here's an overview in more depth:
It's not hard to imagine the production costs on a title approaching $10,000 if the press does a large offset print run, uses a graphic designer or design studio, and has an aggressive advertising program to promote the book. If a press does in fact spend $10,000 or more on a single book, what do they get in return? Plenty of copies for distribution. A beautiful book. And lots of audience awareness of the book. But what they may not get--at least in sufficient volume to earn back that $10,000--are sales. Sad to say, but it's true in the vast majority of cases. It's actually quite respectable for a small-press book of poetry to sell 500 copies; 1,000 sales is excellent. Statistically, few titles even approach Bednarik's "break-even" point of 2,500, let alone 5,000. I simply can't see any justification for publishing books of poetry, or other literary writing, in this manner. A system in which expenses so greatly outpace revenue is simply unfeasible from an economic standpoint. The only way for a press to survive in such an environment is to receive massive infusions of cash from external sources--agencies, wealthy individuals, or contest entries. And this makes the press especially vulnerable, because government budget cuts or a decline in donations starve the press of revenue it needs to operate. A literary press could easily go out of business if cuts to its external funding are severe. How does this serve literature? I believe a saner, less-risky approach to literary publishing means that the press must reduce the cost of publishing a book to the point where the book has a fighting chance to earn back its investment. Our press has taken these steps in accordance with this viewpoint:
This approach means that our books don't have to sell 2,500 copies to break even. We've been able to align the publication of our books with the demand that actually exists for them, rather than hoping to increase the size of that demand exponentially. For better or worse, my press remains a bit unusual in its approach to literary publishing. Most presses still work according to the model promulgated by Bednarik. That's fine, especially if they are able to stay afloat financially to continue publishing. But with literary presses going out of business every year, it's puzzling to me why more presses do not embrace a business model that gives them a better chance to survive and even prosper. Literature certainly isn't well served by presses going out of business. |
||||