Graham Nunn at Another Lost Shark has been doing a fascinating series of interviews with various Australian small press poetry publishers. There’s an interesting array of opinions here, some consensus but also a lot of divergence on issues such as the value of electronic publishing and the commercial opportunities for small presses.
Small presses have arisen in response to the decline in interest by the corporate publishers, to meet the need for poets’ voices to be heard and read. I doubt if any of them actually make money out publishing, but that’s not the point of it, though it would be nice. Lyn Reeves, Pardalote Press
I was interested that more poetry publishers, such as John Knight at Post Pressed, are not turning to print on demand to help with the economics of small print runs. I’ve also been wondering for a while if Australian poetry as a genre is ripe for a cooperative marketing/distribution arrangement between small publishers. This worked particularly well in the independent music scene in the last 10 years. Ralph Wessman in his interview suggests that the Small Press Underground Collective (SPUNC)is not focused on assisting with distribution, yet distribution is the key problem to solve of all creative industries. I could imagine a successful collective that pools its resources to promote and sell (for best results, online and probably POD) poetry in all forms – chap books, full collections, CDs, digital downloads and merchandise. And yes, marketing is an issue. You’d have to work hard to drive an audience to such a site, but I imagine that would be a lot easier to do working collectively as part of a co-op than for a small press and/or their poets to do on their own.
Kate Eltham is a writer and creative industries professional based in Brisbane, Australia. She is Chief Executive Officer of 
kate.eltham {at} gmail.com
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Kate,
So true… it is getting harder and harder for individuals and small presses to keep their heads above water and keep themselves alive in the market. I am really optimistic about SPUNC and am hoping that they may fill the role of the Small Press co-op that we so need.
Graham
Another Lost Shark: grahamnunn.wordpress.com
Hi Kate,
Something has to be done. I blogged recently about trailing ’round the bookshops of Brisbane looking for poetry. Most of the shops don’t even have a poetry section! When they do, it’s tiny and shared with something else (e.g. Poetry and Classics) with almost no poetry stocked.
If the bookshops are not even offering poetry, it won’t matter how many presses are producing it.
Graham.
Hi Graham, you’re absolutely right – trade publishers and booksellers don’t want a bar of poetry, but I don’t necessarily agree that poetry’s survival (at least in print) is dependent on whether it can be distributed to bricks and mortar booksellers. What matters is that it can reach a market, and the channels for poetry are likely to more direct from poet to audience, via live performances and touring. I think sometimes modern poetry is actually more like the indie music biz than it is like other literary forms.
Kate.
Hello, Kate. I haven’t had any trouble selling my independantly produced poetry and podcasts. In fact the internet makes it all quite simple, communities form around blogs like this and it all happens quite naturally. The only problem I’ve found is getting the ‘old school’ publishing world to say ‘independent publishing’ rather than ‘vanity’ publishing. Hello, by the way.
This post struck a chord with me because last week I got an e-mail from the publisher of a US on-line poetry ‘zine which had published me a few years back, explaining that he was taking a year off in part to rest, and in part due to the economy of the operation. I thought that here was a “new media” solution to publishing, and yet the same economic imperatives applied.
I’ve often thought that poets not only should use collective publishing arrangements, but also should use widespread dissemination of material with Creative Commons licenses. I think that integration of poetry as spoken word pieces into remixes (a hobby of mine) is also a good thing.
Notwithstanding the progress of the “slam” movement in one sense (and on one front) in creating a more populist approach to poetry appreciation,
the reality remains that “serious” poetry continues to look towards commercial publishers to validate works, when there is little evidence anymore of the kind of curation that the Oxford UP, say, might have provided in the 30s and 40s.
This is a time of unbundling of things that once, for economic or hiearchic reasons, were bundled together. In the music situation, netlabels using Creative Commons licenses have created a vibrant scene filled with listeners. I think that poetry presses based upon similar concepts are inevitable–and that the shift in technology means that small presses
can create their own curation and advance poetry better than the behemoths of old media can do.
I am motivated in part, too, by the sense that curation in the US among literary poetry magazines is rife with cross-institution “scratch your back by scratching your young poet’s back” indirect nepotism. A collective organization could create a different form of “selection” or “curation” criteria–and multiple collectives could create disparate curation.
In short, I think that traditional publishing does not serve poets very well any more–and other routes are the way to go.