Publishing
These last couple of weeks I have been digging around the internet for information on publishing, printing, binding, selling various volumes. I know a little bit about hand-binding, because I had a desperate need to upcycle a hardcover book of finished crosswords. I contacted a bindery somewhere in the upper midwest that specializes in rebinding old bibles [Grimm Bindery]. Their information was so detailed and complex that it took hours to navigate it all. Their services are very adaptable and also very expensive (read: well out of my price range). My local Alphagraphics will print and bind, but only paperback with glue (not a long-term form of binding). I even grilled my neighbors for their experience. I live in a college town, so they have a lot, and that was the most helpful. On their advice, I even threw together a quick collection of poetry ("quick" meaning "only took three days to format") and pushed it through CreateSpace and Amazon.
It's there, if you're interested. Just saying. A brief volume of mediocre and somewhat-adolescent poetry. It's called (rather unoriginally) "A Crooked Path" and before they'll publish hard copies I need to examine some proofs, which are apparently in the mail. Wahoo.
Anyway, because so many of my colleagues are professional poets, I know what poetry is supposed to look like, and this isn't really it. I'm not trying to match them or compete with professional publishers like Red Hen Press, which most of my poet friends use. I don't have those kinds of pretensions. I'm trying to experiment with the apparatus of publishing not only for my own benefit as someone interested in publishing fiction very soon, but so I can help others (family, editing clients, etc.) who want to use those kinds of systems.
Publishing is a whole world of things I don't know about - I know a little bit about major presses and slush piles and letters of inquiry. I know less about agents, and only as much about editors as I need to know to be a freelance/independent editor. And I think the industry holds on to some of that obfuscation simply because they'd drown in inferior manuscripts if they didn't. So instead, we the readers get to drown in our own manuscripts that are vanity published, self-published, and inadequately proofed. Well, I have some of the skills to build a raft and float to the top. Maybe. We'll see.
It's there, if you're interested. Just saying. A brief volume of mediocre and somewhat-adolescent poetry. It's called (rather unoriginally) "A Crooked Path" and before they'll publish hard copies I need to examine some proofs, which are apparently in the mail. Wahoo.
Anyway, because so many of my colleagues are professional poets, I know what poetry is supposed to look like, and this isn't really it. I'm not trying to match them or compete with professional publishers like Red Hen Press, which most of my poet friends use. I don't have those kinds of pretensions. I'm trying to experiment with the apparatus of publishing not only for my own benefit as someone interested in publishing fiction very soon, but so I can help others (family, editing clients, etc.) who want to use those kinds of systems.
Publishing is a whole world of things I don't know about - I know a little bit about major presses and slush piles and letters of inquiry. I know less about agents, and only as much about editors as I need to know to be a freelance/independent editor. And I think the industry holds on to some of that obfuscation simply because they'd drown in inferior manuscripts if they didn't. So instead, we the readers get to drown in our own manuscripts that are vanity published, self-published, and inadequately proofed. Well, I have some of the skills to build a raft and float to the top. Maybe. We'll see.
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