PEP TALK IN THE SMALL PRESS MINEFIELD
If William Duryea ever interviewed me about small press publishing...
We finally found the little gremlin bastard thatās been running things, finally. Itās the tongue. Heās been running shit for years, heās humanityās puppet master. Itās time to get rid of him, asap.
And books. God, theyāre the worst. Fuck books. Speech and writing are two of the biggest blunders of mankind. I mean I have dreams about what a big dead end they have been for me. Earlier this year I wanted to self-publish books. I still might do it in 2023. Iāve been listening to a series of interviews that William Duryea has been conducting as he questions his level of interest and curiosity about maybe one day starting a small press. Heās mentioned maybe talking to me, and I will pick up the phone if he asks me, but I think what I would have to say to him about publishing books would be very limited in its usefulness. Because I was only involved in publishing one book, and even then, my involvement was kind of ethereal and the opposite of practical which I perceive is more what William wants to talk about.
I was a spiritual publisher. No, I donāt mean I published Christian books. I mean I was spiritual in the sense of being opposite to the āletter,ā or the practical technical publisher, of Cialis, Verdi, Gin, Jag by Adam Johnson. My actions did not take effect where the rubber hits the road in this instance of book publishing. If publishing is a material endeavor, I know nothing about it. I have talked about Cody Sexton, Adam Johnson, and I creating the publishing contract for the novel (we call it CVGJ to save time and spaceāit looks like a synthetic chemical compound now, maybe a caustic detergent). In the contract, I specifically requested that I be left out of any financial matters for the novel; I didnāt want to be paid a cent for it out of royalties or anything else. When people buy a copy of the book (and I hope they do, including you reading this) I donāt see any of that money. I did this mainly because I didnāt want to have to explain another income source to the IRS or to my social services department that evaluates income for eligibility for SNAP benefits. I also felt like since Adam did the hardest job as writer of the novel, he should be paid for it, and since Anxiety Press was the technical publisher of the book, Cody should be paid for that. I as the embodiment of something hazy called Prism Thread Books functioned almost as a kind of imprint for Anxiety Press in a sense, in that I found the book and supported its publication and was involved in discussions with Cody and Adam about decision-making for how to present the book. But I did not push any of the buttons or arrange anything financial or contractual (I did run through the novel and did some editing/formatting, but Cody finished that off). On some level I wanted to disappear and not leave a trace. My relationship with Adam as it stands, is more of where the substance lies from my POV, regarding CVGJ. We are in relatively frequent contact about the fate of the book and as the representative of the esoteric āimprintā Prism Thread Books, the collaboration is not over, and I think about the book all the time. How to push the game piece down the board a little further. Iām just not very good at the game.
If William ever called me and asked me to talk to him about small press publishing, I would say āI have nothing practical to share with you. I have no idea how Adamās book is selling or how to analyze the decisions we made. We did this for esoteric reasons, to my way of understanding, that donāt make financial sense, 100%. I suppose if you wanted to press the question, why materially did you get involved with this? I would say it was because I wanted this book to exist. I wanted it as a work of art to take shape and be within the grasp of some idealized reader. And that idealized reader might not themselves really exist yet. I was thinking about the future, about getting Adamās books out there into the libraryācall it āmarketplaceā if you insistāso that when he writes the next book, CVGJ will already be there as a book some reader can backtrack to and seek out if they liked CVGJ part two.āĀ
I probably from a financial and business perspective did not serve the author very well. I feel like maybe we talked him into a bad deal. But the book is out there now. That was the first step. The eternal mystery of how to get it into readersā hands persists. I know for my own novel Blood Trip that the majority of book sales for that have taken place at in-person events that Iāve done locally. Far more copies of the book were sold face-to-face by me at readings and markets than online via my publisher or on Amazon, or through the mail via PayPal. I havenāt heard from the publisher about book sales for months because I assume it hasnāt sold anything on Amazon for months and is dead in the water, functionally. I wrote a book that did not catch fire and therefore Iām part of a very large group of writers all with our hearts in our collective throat looking at the wreckage and gasping āWhat happened?ā
My promotional strategy for CVGJ was just to publish the book and then try to get it into peopleās hands with some idea of finding influential voices to testify about the book. It got reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald the excellent reviewer and the writer and journalist Gabriel Hart read the book, interviewed Adam for LitReactor, and then included CVGJ in his round-up of āintrusive thought as high art literatureā of 2022. This book which had no marketing behind it has reached some interesting places, some of which Iām not at liberty to talk about yet. Iāve cared about this book, some might argue, more than my own books. A scientific evaluation of book promotion and marketing might say āYou failed. You had no idea what you were doing.ā Ok. But CVGJ was not a genre piece of shit. It is a literary work of art. I think in some cases it must radiate its own aura, put out tentacles of its own accord, and draw readers to itself somehow, and not be run through a procedure that you learn from watching āhow to market booksā on YouTube. That could be a case of studied naivete. If William Duryea wants to talk about it, I will probably steer the discussion away from the practical question āhow to publish booksā and more towards the spiritual and aesthetic āwhy books should be published.ā Thereās no payoff in dollars and cents in the why.Ā
We live in a sea of āifs.ā If I was going to try to publish another book it would need to be a similar situation to CVGJ: I would almost need to feel like the book was using me to publish itself. Like I needed to be involved on an instrumental level because I read the book and was so moved by it and felt like if it was the last thing I did, I had to act as a doula for the bookās birth. Maybe thereās no other book that will make me feel so possessed. I would tell William (who as founding editor of Misery Tourism, probably knows something about this already): if youāre going to start a press, donāt just publish any old thing. Publish a book that simply must exist and only you can help it get there. Publish something high quality that speaks to you.
But also, William, itās good that youāre getting a clue about how to make practical decisions on how to publish books, how to market books, how to set up contracts, etc. I donāt know any of that stuff. I have idealized fantasies about being not a one-man publisher but working collaboratively with a group of others, and Iām in acquisitions or something. I go out and find the book projects, I evaluate a book for quality according to my own ideas about āwhatās good,ā then I hand it off to the people who actually do the practical executive actions to publish the book. This is going to sound so maddening and possibly elitist, but in this fantasy, I donāt want to get my hands dirty with contracts, royalties negotiations, dealing with the printers, or any of the rubber hitting the road. Itās an esoteric spiritual thing. Maybe this is privileged. I want to just enjoy discovering a manuscript, see its potential, make the managerial decision that it should be published, set the machinery in motion, maintain a relationship with the author, facilitate communication between the author and the press throughout the process, support all parties involved and brainstorm about promotion, have post-publication conversations and planning sessions about what to do next, etc. That is where I could see myself involved with a press. I donāt mind working in the context of an organization.Ā
Is this being an āeditorā? I donāt know. I just know that as I read a lot and review books for various venues, Iām getting a pretty good idea of what is frankly garbage out there in the indie lit world and what is good stuff, what is chicken feed and what is gold dust, to draw an allusion to John LeCarre. I would want to be in a trusted position that people would say āJesse knows whatās a good book and we trust him to see the potential in a book project.ā This might, again, be pure fantasyland and I donāt really know, I just know what I like to read and what Iād like to see more of out there. But this doesnāt necessarily correspond to a market, to what will sell. I desire a niche in indie lit where people, in some sense, donāt yet know what is good but I can tell them, by demonstration. Thinking that youāre the only one who can open up a hitherto unknown niche of book publishing in the indie lit space is probably delusions of grandeur. Itās a gamble, if youāre keeping your eyes on the practical prize. Itās also very much about the publisher-author relationship. I donāt know what takes place in Manuel Marreroās inbox or on his phone, but I have perceived that for him as the captain of the ship at Expat Press, as the publisher, so much of what is important resolves to his relationships with his authors. Itās a social thingānot in the sense of publishing parties or schmoozing, but with maintaining relationships and alliances with the author. I think for some introverted people who are cut off from the rest of humanity either geographically or physically or otherwise, this could be challenging. More on this later, Iāve rambled too long.
Basically, a book is an idea, and a press is an idea, but there comes a time when you need to contemplate making the ideal material. How to make it intersect with reality and reach readers and make money. I hope that William Duryea calls me up so I can try to explain some of this to himāI, as an example of someone who went into the minefield before he did, with some advice about where to avoid stepping, perhaps. This is not to say that CVGJ was an explosion that went nowhere. Itās too early to consider it a dead end. I still think the bookās ultimate fate has not been written, and I believe readers for it may still be out there.Ā Ā