It all started, as it so often seems to these days, with a blog post. Facebook posts were made. Said blog post was echoed by another, bigger blog. Before the day was over, a publisher had gone from being a leader in independent publishing to apologizing to rescinding a practice to promising to shutter his operation to promising to stay in business—and explaining his business model publicly.
The resurgence may have something to do with the blowback—BlazeVOX authors have been defending the press since someone first told the blogger and others to “go fuck themselves,” because they have no clue about the realities of publishing today.
I’ve spent much of the last day trying to sort this story out, and in some ways, I feel I’m no better off than when I started, mostly because of all the screaming, and because everyone, it seems to me, is a little bit right.
Brett Ortler, who wrote the post that might have killed BlazeVOX, does come off as entitled, and makes some unwarranted conclusions about Geoffrey Gatza’s honesty. His comparison of Gatza’s request for money to help defray the costs of publishing to a 419 scam was, in my view, irresponsible. If you’re going to accuse someone of dishonesty, you’d better have more to go on than a gut feeling.
But Ortler did raise some important questions about BlazeVOX’s business model, and I think it’s important to remember that in the end, a press, even one which focuses on experimental literature, is a business, and this business, as Michael Kelleher points out, is how Geoffrey Gatza makes a living. It’s a “meagre livelihood” according to Kelleher, and I have no reason to doubt that—it’s not a revelation that nobody gets rich publishing poetry.
One of the primary expenses for any press, by the way, is paying people to do the work of selecting, editing, and designing books. Evan Lavender-Smith’s comment at The Barking showed a complete disregard for the work Gatza did in running BlazeVOX himself. If people who run presses are expected to do it for nothing, then only the independently wealthy or those with other sources of income will be able to run them. Workers deserve wages (an especially important sentiment given that yesterday was Labor Day in the US).
When I was an undergraduate and was waiting tables to make ends meet, I occasionally got customers who were never satisfied, and I would remark to my fellow servers that if only they did our jobs for a week, they’d change their attitudes. I think perhaps the same goes for the relationship between writers and editors. As a writer, I see editors as gods, powerful beings who can create happiness by selecting the acceptance form letter rather than the rejection form letter. As an editor, I see myself (sometimes at least) as a janitor, wading through piles of muck from people who have sent out work without bothering to see what the submission requirements are (or if they exist), and without bothering to see if their work even fits the journal they’re submitting to. Caroline Crew’s short rant at We Who Are About to Die does a good job of describing this feeling. Editing is hard work, and people sometimes forget that it is work at all.
And I don’t even publish books (yet). I’m learning firsthand the amount of effort that goes into book design, and let me tell you, the learning curve is steep.
There’s never enough money for poetry. The amount that Gatza was asking some of his poets to contribute toward the cost of publication was roughly the equivalent of ten poetry prize entry fees. Back when I submitted to contests, if someone had told me that if I enter ten contests, I’m guaranteed to be published by one of the presses I sent to, I’d have jumped at the chance, and I know I’m not alone in this.
And authors today, even established, popular authors, must expect to spend money and time promoting their own work. The problem here has to do with when Gatza asked for the money, and how. Ortler’s complaint that the acceptance felt like a bait-and-switch is a legitimate one, even if Gatza didn’t intend it that way, and by all accounts, he didn’t. But when HTMLGIANT introduced the term “vanity press” into the discussion, they raised questions about the legitimacy of the other books BlazeVOX has published in the past.
What does it mean for a publication to be legitimate? A friend of mine had a publisher offer to put out her collection of poems as a handmade book, in a very limited print run. It’s the sort of thing that’s right up her alley, as she works in visual arts as well, and yet she hesitated because she is also a university professor and she was afraid that the book wouldn’t count toward her tenure. She was also worried that the poems, once published in that format, wouldn’t be eligible for inclusion in a book by a more mainstream publication. Concerns about legitimacy aren’t limited to people on the tenure track.
As Shanna Compton points out, it’s inaccurate to call BlazeVOX a vanity, or subsidy press because a subsidy press takes all comers with the ability to pay, and Gatza didn’t do that—he worked closely with his authors in the design and editing process, and only ever asked for partial subsidies of publication costs. Cooperative or collective publishing seems to be a better term here. What is less acceptable is that he sought submissions without mentioning up front that that was the plan.
The publishing world is in flux; business models which have worked in the past are not working so well now, if at all, and never really worked for poetry. As Bruce Covey writes in his Facebook post on the subject, “Random House 20 years ago couldn’t afford to pay for a book tour for Kenneth Koch in the way they could for first-book fiction writers.” Even a famous poet with a major press in a more auspicious era faced these issues.
Most small presses have responded to harder economic times with the contest model, but that is also highly problematic at best, as David Alpaugh argued in 2008 in Rattle, and (unfortunately), poetry e-books seem to be facing the same problems of legitimacy that online journals faced only a decade ago. But poetry e-books from respected publishers will probably have the reading public’s confidence sooner than later.
They will have to, as the print model of publication becomes even more unsustainable. The poetry collection, designed and printed as a mass-market product, isn’t dead yet, but its days are numbered. I would be surprised if we see them much at all in ten years; instead, I expect to see a continued resurgence in limited-run handmade books and in multimedia poetry e-books.
The question is not over whether authors will spend their own money on their publications—that answer is yes. My payment for publishing A Witness in Exile earlier this year was 150 copies, and the ability to buy more at cost from the press. I might have broken even so far, given what I’ve spent to attend AWP last year and on review copies and postage, but if I have, it’s not by much, and the press has almost certainly lost money. And my story isn’t unusual. Read Daniel Nester’s piece on buying his own books for a penny if you want some more evidence of that.
Geoffrey Gatza’s sin here seems to be one of asking for money inartfully and at the wrong time in the process. Brett Ortler’s sin was assuming dishonesty when poor communication was really the problem. There are no victimizers here, even if more than one person feels like a victim.
I’m glad Gatza decided not to shutter BlazeVOX, but I hope he gets someone to help him on the business end of things. He’s not registered as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, which means he can’t apply for grants and the like. He probably should be a 501(c)3, but that takes time and expertise of the kind that generally charges hundreds of dollars per hour. And that money has to come from somewhere.
Ideally, that money would come from sales of poetry collections, but the ideal and the real are not the same. This is the problem of our age, and the eventual move to electronic publishing will only mitigate the problem, not solve it, because editors still need to be paid for their time and energy and poets still deserve some remuneration for their work. This cannot become a volunteer-only industry, not if we want poetry to thrive.
16 responses
Thank you for writing such an even-handed response to the controversy. I’ve been disheartened by the level of vitriol on both sides.
Thanks for this. I’ve been off the grid for quite a time, so have missed the dust-up. I want to note, in fact to emphasize, that Geoffrey Gatza has done some of the best service to poetry, ever. I’ve followed his work for over ten years, and in fact have also donated to the cause, and gladly so. I have good faith in the vision that is BlazeVOX. To hear it torn up over misunderstandings is an incredible disservice to contemporary poety, to BlazeVOX as a community, and especially to Geoffrey. My word to Geoffrey now, as always, is only this: Keep on!
Chris Murray
I think folks were less bothered by the fact that Gatza asked for a mandatory donation than they were bothered by his subsequent communication with the writer in question — and with his refusal to put information about this mandatory donation policy on the website after multiple requests.
That is dishonest. A bit more than a gut feeling. To wait until you’ve accepted a writer (very, very conditionally) to tell her that in order to publish her book she will have to pay part of the costs herself is the worst kind of bate and switch. You say that you’d be glad to pay $250 to be guaranteed publishing — then why couldn’t he put a simple caveat on his website that said, “Times are tough. While there is no reading fee, should we accept your work, we require that you ‘donate’ $250 to help with publication costs, which is a fraction of the total amount that it will take to put the book together.”
Further, his emails to the writer were completely dismissive and failed to answer his most basic questions, instead repeatedly copying and pasting the same text ad infinitum. That’s certainly disrespectful.
To me, it was not the writer (from the email excerpts and even from the blog post itself) who showed entitlement but Mr. Gatza who was overwhelmingly rude throughout their correspondence and forced Brett Ortler to go public with his frustration.
As a writer, I’m surely biased, but the lack of respect on this side did not appear to me to be from Ortler’s side.
I’m suspicious of his accepting 30 books (per the email exchange documented in the original blog post and correspondence). It seems as if he was trolling for people willing to contribute, rather than being up front and selecting the best books. A prominent local poet posted this among his friends on Facebook and the reaction was entirely negative.
I know something of what it costs to produce a book and the work involved, having started (a so far single volume) small press with plans for more books this year. Design is a lot of work. Printing is increasingly cheap using digital presses (and they need not be cheekils made books. Our anthology was first rate work (I used to run a prepress shop).
I think you’re also partly right. The entire conversation was inartful, but I have to suspect by inviting 30 authors to do this he was trolling for willing people rather than trying to convince the handful of best poets to help get their books out.
Mike Meginnis’s response at Uncanny Valley (http://www.uncannyvalleymag.com/2011/09/blazevox-mess-what-it-opens-for.html) is the first reasonable and well-informed response to this debacle.
Nice recap of the fray, Brian–thanks. As an editor/publisher who also works for no pay (that is, all $$ goes back into the press; I had a day job until I retired), I have to say that it seems the editor at BlazeVox made some poor choices. It makes more sense to have an up-front policy with authors than to surprise them once they’ve been accepted. His cut-and-paste responses to Ortler were troubling, especially since the number of manuscripts he claimed to have sifted the chosen from varied so widely. Here’s some math for comparison: my press’s last book cost $2700 to print (650 copies to start–it was an odd size–plus 20 ARCs at $250), and $200 for cover art. Mailing books out also costs a chunk of change: media rate for under a pound is now $2.41. I do charge a contest fee ($20. My regionally focused press typically receives between 135 and 160 entries), and I pay a $1000 prize + 25 free copies to the winner. I try to publish a couple of extra books per year, but sometimes I can only afford to do one. Those are sometimes chosen from the finalist pile for the contest, sometimes not. One thing BV’s editor has been definitely very generous about is selling his authors’ books to them at cost. I really don’t know of another press that does that. Most of us seem to give our authors a discount between 40% and 60%. That way they can make a little and so can we.
That said, Amazon is doing its best to put us all out of business, and I am sympathetic to any editor trying to get fine work out in the world. I hope BlazeVox can stay in business (with more transparency). I hope all of us can! If the editor would join the Council of Literary Mags & Presses, he would find a voluble, generous group of editors and publishers who are happy to share strategies for success and answer questions. They’ve helped me out a number of times.
Meginnis’s response is long, detailed, and full of high emotion, and if you come down squarely on the “side” of Ortler and against blazeVox you are sure to like it. But I wouldn’t call it “reasonable and well-informed.”
And thank you, Rumpus, for publishing something on this story that isn’t a manic name-calling mess full of accusations and suspicions. No one else seems to be able to talk about what is appropriate and what isn’t in publising without drawing curly mustaches on others’ faces.
Great article, Brian.
I think any model that works is great as long as the press is up front about it. The fact that this “donation” method has been going on for TWO YEARS without any increase in transparency seems really off to me. I know a really good writer who withdrew his “winning” submission after hearing about this whole mess. I don’t blame him. I would have withdrawn mine also. Who wants to be represented by a press that has acted this way?
Hearing a first book get picked up should leave the author elated, without having to actually *make* any decisions. It should NOT leave the author with a sick feeling of, “oh shoot, now what do I do?” If only the editors were up front about this policy, they would be totally in the clear and this whole thing would never have happened.
I should add that I really admire much of the work BV has done. I have more than a few of their books lining my shelves and they will continue to. This is not about BV. This is about one person’s bad behavior. I am glad they are deciding not to close their doors, we need presses like them.
However, in business dealing among artists, I really believe everyone should be treated like family. That means not being flip to your authors. That means being honest. That means doing all the important GOOD-PERSON things in addition to the great work they’ve already done.
We really should all hug and make up. That’s also what families do. Say you’re sorry and mooooooove on. Ultimately, we’re all on the same team.
Well, that’s what some families do. Others throw things at each other and shout and scream and then don’t speak for years.
I think drawing a curly moustache on Gatza’s face is totally in order.
Yes, thanks for some rationality in this entire spat of vitriol and unseemly series of attacks on Geoffrey Gatza and BlazeVox. Geoff published a recent collection of my poems (“Black Lines on Terra Cotta”), and I could not have been more pleased with his professionalism and respect for the work at hand and producing a book everyone who has seen it has praised it for its graphics and overall presentation. I thank him for being deeply committed to the art of poetry and to poets and to supporting my work and that of many other poets. BlazeVox is a bastion for those of us who care about poetry. Let the “dogs of war” who have been barking at his doorstep step back, shut up, and take a long, hard look at what Geoff and BlazeVox does, and has done, for poetry. And, by the way, I was never solicited for a dime. Publishing is not a charity and Geoff’s energy and concern deserve whatever he gets, and you can be certain that is not much in the final analysis.
Geoff works extremely hard in the face of poverty and health troubles that he’s spoken of in interviews: I’m very glad to see such an evenhanded account of Gatzagate in the face of some of the vituperation I’ve seen sent in his direction.
Thanks for this summary. I too was out of town and missed the blow-up, but I appreciate the even-handed account. My mom worked a low level job at Random House for years, and shared with me her concern about big house publishing throughout the 90’s. As some folks have said, we’re all struggling to understand and shape the new publishing paradigms, and it’s messy and hard, but as several have pointed out here and elsewhere, it’s crucially important, too.
Hopefully, Blazevox can pull itself out of this mire, and get back to producing top quality printed books, without the taint of vanity publishing lingering.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.