I found this year's festival, the second so far, motivational for several reasons. Last year felt like a "get to meet you and acknowledge we're all in the same boat" kind of process. While this year I still met several people I've corresponded with for years but hadn't met face-to-face, the event overall was less innocent for me.
I've been working with So New since 2001, and the goal has always been to publish the best books we could, but we never really defined anything beyond that. We also worked in a vacuum, focusing on the writers and their events, and not so much on synergy with other publishers, festivals or cities. We have always been willing to send out another publication's promo materials with orders, but hadn't done a lot of real trading for anything.
So this year I had in the back of my mind, "What's going to be different than last year? How will you have made this better? How will we not be talking about the same things next year?"
This was a hard year for me, publishing-wise. The near non-publication of
What Happened to Us These Last Few Years made me realize that I just couldn't afford to do it anymore. It was a very frustrating realization, but led me to do something I hadn't done previously: ask for help.
I asked, finally, and things are happening at an amazing rate. Steve Himmer has turned
Necessary Fiction into a place for amazing writing. Amy Guth brings energy and vision to the press as a whole. David Barringer just designed another gorgeous book in Savannah Schroll-Guz's
American Soma. Things are happening again, and that feels great. Such a simple thing -- ask for help -- but hard to get through my thick skull.
So now we've fixed the car. Where do we want to go?
Two statements stick out to me from the festival panels:
Todd Zuniga said, "You have to do it different, or better. Nothing else." (He also said "Spigot of Dicks" but I'm not sure what to learn from that.)
David Barringer said: "The thing you have to ask yourself is, What is your lasting value? What among these things you're doing will have a lasting effect?"
Between these two statements, I see that I had become so worried about how to pay for projects that I stopped dreaming big. If I've learned anything from managing a small not-for-profit, it's that if you ask for something, you will often get it. But you have to ask. For some reason I have a hard time doing that.
I had the opportunity to host the State of Small Publishing panel, which consisted of all the people I respect and consider my peers. I tried to not sugarcoat the questions (which may have been selfish, I don't know how valuable the answers were to the audience) and asked pointblank: How are you paying for this? Where are you finding your great authors? How can you afford to distribute? Where are you printing?
And Matt Herlihy asked from the audience: Why are you really doing this?
To some extent, we're all writers who decided to start publishing. How many of us are still able to write while trying to run a small company with all its demands. . . and hold down a day job?
To summarize, none of us are able to do it full-time. Several have become non-profits, or banded together with other presses to form a sort of conglomerate that shares resources. Distribution is a constant frustration that doesn't see a lot of return. Events are what drive excitement, but trying to make sales during events is hard. We find authors everywhere, most often by recommendation from people we trust. Watching an author at a reading is vital to the selection process. An author must, must be excited and able to do their own promotion. They must have a burning desire to sell books (entrepreneurial, really). All of us are so exhausted by the process of selecting, editing, designing, printing and paying for the book, that the marketing and selling is often the last thought. The author must be thinking about it from day-one.
Most of the people in the group admitted they weren't business people. As someone who is starting another business, and going through vetting by banks and accountants, I know what a shortfall this is. I think we all acknowledge it. We seem to be willing to suspend disbelief and hope things will work out. I think we all need to ask for help in this arena. One press did have someone write them a business plan, but the plan required outlandish start-up capital and too much time to turn a profit. That's the wrong kind of help.
And, as we said in the Army: Hope is not a method.
As
Gina Frangello said, "We are now the vanguard of literary fiction, especially short story collections, in the country."
We are the American voice, and big houses are increasingly using us as their extended vetting system for authors they can't afford to develop themselves. We're the indie rock labels passing bands off to the big labels. Our problem has always been the problem of start-ups and small businesses -- we don't have the capital or time to make really big things, so we constantly struggle with the challenges of small things. Then corporations reap the reward from our labor.
I keep coming back to what Todd and Dave said: Do it better or different. What is the lasting value?
Herlihy's question is great but mostly moot: We do it for the same reason we write -- because we can't imagine not doing it. We have to do it.
So how, then, can we do it better? We need to get smarter at the business aspect of it. We need to find smart ways to raise capital. I had a great conversation with Todd about the ways Opium is able to pay for printing, and it's obvious he's devoted a lot of thought to the problem. His fundraising begins with something at the very core of Opium: The Time to Read System. Every story in Opium comes with a Time to Read indicator beneath its title.
I used to not understand this, or think it was a joke he had played out a long time ago, but he explains it this way: "If I can get someone to commit to a thirty second story, then I can get a minute, then two, then ten, until finally they've read the whole magazine, and really know what a value it is."
He does the same thing with fundraising. Small contributions pay for Opium. He started to use real marketing-speak when he said "Payment Funnel" but stopped himself.
We all acknowledged that we aren't competing with each other. We're competing with the mainstream, with every other draw for time and pocket change out there. Dave Barringer kept musing: How do we get our books where people are going to buy them? Really. Independent bookstores are amazing, but people buy most of their things at Target and Wal-Mart. (That's everyone in the world's problem, really.) And we want to support indie bookstores, but are we all losing money, here? Are printers the only people getting ahead?
We didn't have an answer for that, but we need to consider the question. Our captive, excited, interested audiences are coming to events. How do we get them to leave with books?
And this is why we need business people involved. I'm a writer and a guy who loves to make books. I enjoy selling books because I believe in them, the stories they tell, the power they have to change someone's life. It's hard for me to talk about books like some kind of novelty keychain because it feels demeaning to everything we're doing. We have to, though. And if we don't want to do it ourselves because it's distasteful, we need to ask for help.
Our lasting value will be nothing if we don't pay the bills. Like any business owner, we have to make the right decisions so the business can grow. Because we love our products, we need to be even harder on ourselves to protect the books and their authors. One of the tragedies of last year was the loss of Impetus Press -- all it took was a reorganization at their distributor, which resulted in distribution charges they couldn't pay. Hope won't run a business.
So for me, the space between Pilcrow 2009 and 2010 will be the time I ask for help where I need it, I get smarter on the business, and I dream big.
In other related news, I'll be starting a reading series in Eugene. The other thing I saw was the amazing support network for writers in Chicago. Readings, writing spaces, events, etc. If you're a writer on the West coast, your book tour consists of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA. And each of those cities is 8 hours apart. We need more events in the West. If I'm totally wrong about this, please let me know. However, I know that literary culture has to start with me. I know how to throw a kickass event -- I need to start doing them in my home town.
Everyone at the small press panel agreed that events are what drives excitement, is one of the really fulfilling things about what we do. So we need more of them.
So here's where I ask for your help. I need you to start a reading series in your home town. I'll help you get writers there. I'll give you the template for how to make it awesome (the Giving Good Read panel at Pilcrow was awesome this year, tons of great ideas) all you have to do is get a location and tell people about it. It's really not that hard. All you have to do is ask.
I'm asking.
James Stegall
