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The CLMP Newswire
A Biweekly E-mail News Dispatch on Independent Literary Publishing
A Project of the Council of Literary Magazines and Press

WELCOME TO THE CLMP NEWSWIRE

We are pleased to bring you the second issue of The CLMP Newswire, a biweekly news dispatch on the world of literary publishing. Los Angeles-based journalist, Leslie Schwartz, will cover the literary publishing beat, reporting new and underreported news of interest to independent publishers of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction nationwide. The CLMP Newswire is distributed free of charge to CLMP members and to non-members for $12 a year. Suggested news items should be sent directly to Leslie Schwartz at lschwartz@clmp.org. All other questions, concerns and commentary should be directed to newswire@clmp.org. We hope you enjoy this newest service from CLMP!

Peggy Randall
Executive Director
Council of Literary Magazines and Presses

Table of Contents for April 1, 2001 (Volume 1, Number 2)

• Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry is the Talk of the Literary World
• Painted Bride Quarterly Weds the Web
• Sarabande Books Uses $25,000 NEA Grant to Spotlight Mid-Career Writers
• Marketing on the Run at Breakaway Books
• News Shorts

"DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS THROUGH POETRY" IS THE TALK OF THE LITERARY WORLD

In 1998, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2001 the "United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations." Its aim? To foster tolerance, respect and cooperation among peoples of the world.

In response, New York-based Rattapallax Press in conjunction with Poetry International-Rotterdam, Australia's Salt magazine (http://www.geocities.com) and the USA's Kenyon Review, (http://www.kenyonreview.org) co-hosted an international literary conference at the United Nations on March 25 and 26.

The two-day conference attended by literary magazine and press editors from around the world was created to cultivate discussion on how best to generate a true dialogue among an international community through poetry and literature.

Several ideas were generated and discussed during the conference, including how to build an international web site devoted to the writing, review and dissemination of world poetry and the development and organization of an international poetry week.

"I asked myself, what does the United Nations symbolize?" says Ram Devineni, conference co-coordinator and founder and editor of Rattapallax Press (http://www.rattapallax.com). "I realized that as an entity the United Nations belongs to no single country. It belongs to everyone."

With that in mind, Devineni mobilized his colleagues in the literary community and, along with the United Nations Society of Writers, organized a series of worldwide literary programs to run in conjunction with the conference. The result is a global word fest featuring more than 200 poetry readings in over 100 cities throughout the world. All of the readings will take place between the last week of March and the first week of April.

A few exotic venues include a reading from Mt. Everest, one at Casey Station, a research outpost in Antarctica, and another aboard a scientific vessel in the West Philippine Sea. More traditional settings include the Guild Complex in Chicago, Chinese University of Hong Kong and the 14th Street Y in New York City. A reading is also planned at the United Nations in New York City and will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa and poets and writers, Joyce Carol Oates, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and James Ragan.

To ensure some kind of unity among the readings, Devineni organized a contest to select one poem to be read universally at every event. Marilyn Hacker, renowned poet and former editor of the Kenyon Review, chose the winning poem, "Planet Earth," by Canadian poet P.K. Page from hundreds of nominations.

Devineni, who sheepishly admits that he never took a poetry or literature class in college, (he did get a C- in Expository Writing, however) used the bonus money he earned at his day job as a computer technology specialist to organize the international event. The cost was just under $12,000.

It has been money well spent for Devineni who frequently uses the word "passion" when describing his press and poetry in general. That passion had its beginnings while Devineni was filming an independent feature. After a chance meeting with a group of poets, he was inspired by them to launch Rattapallax magazine that debuted 2.5 years ago. A year ago, he founded the press, publishing eight books of poetry in the United States and Europe, fulfilling his goal to create an international presence for the press by the end of its first year of operations.

"I wanted Rattapallax to be an international publisher from the start," says Devineni. "In that regard, you can't beat working with the U.N."

PAINTED BRIDE QUARTERLY WEDS THE WEB

After a long and sometimes rocky marriage, Painted Pride Quarterly has ended its union with the printing press. Using a recent $5000 NEA grant, the 28-year old magazine, known as PBQ, has gone cyber. Though it will continue publishing a print annual, the magazine itself will now appear four times a year on its web site, http://www.webdelsol.com/pbq/about/new_about.html.

"It's like Dylan going electric," says Senior Editor Daniel Nestor. "Some people love it and some people hate it." Whatever the emotional fallout from PBQ's loyal following, one thing is certain. In its first 10 days on the web, the magazine had over 16,000 hits. And more importantly for Nestor, for the first time in years, PBQ will live up to its name as a quarterly and actually appear four times a year.

"The reason we haven't been able to publish quarterly has not been due to any lack of great writing," says Nestor. "The problem is lack of money." Though PBQ is supported in part by grants from the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, it hasn't been enough of a cash flow to guarantee publishing the magazine with any regularity.

Tired of doing what Nestor calls "brownie sales" to generate the revenue required for print publishing, and disheartened to see stacks of magazines languish at the distributor's warehouse, the editors of PBQ finally decided to take the online publishing plunge. It was not an easy decision for the seven-member board of directors and the staff of fourteen volunteer editors and associate editors. Some saw the Wild West mentality of e-publishing as a risky venture. As a long-standing print publication, there were fears about maintaining the magazine's reputation and credibility in light of some outside naysayers who were loudly decrying the web as a gateway for bad writing.

Others on staff understood that the magazine didn't have to compromise its quality simply by turning to the web. Instead they saw it as an opportunity to homestead its already widely- regarded reputation without changing its standards, thereby reaching more readers for less cost. "Money is not the base reason for doing this," says Nestor. "No one goes into publishing literary magazines thinking they'll be able to feed their children. But we wanted to be able to access our readers in larger numbers. The web provides that opportunity without the expense."

The recent $5000 grant from the NEA will be used to support an online archive of work previously published by PBQ. The archive will include stories and poetry from as far back as 1973 and will feature work by John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and Sonia Sanchez.

For those readers who still want to hold the pages of the magazine in their hands, the bride hasn't completely divorced print publishing. Each year PBQ plans to produce an annual print edition featuring the best-of writings from the web.

SARABANDE BOOKS USES $25,000 NEA GRANT TO SPOTLIGHT MID-CAREER WRITERS

Sarabande Books has done it again.

For the third time in its seven-year history, the press's co-founders Sarah Gorham and her husband, Jeffrey Skinner, recently applied for and just received a much-needed NEA grant. This one, for a hefty $25,000, will be used to support the production and promotion of mid-career writers.

"We all like to discover writers," says Gorham. "But sometimes a writer's best work comes in the second, third and fourth books."

In an attempt to re-ignite passion for writers who are midway in their careers and often go overlooked after the buzz of their debut comes to an end, Sarabande Books began putting the grant to work. The first publication to benefit from the funding is the eighth collection of poems by award-winning poet, Michael Burkard, which came out in February.

Two other books of poetry are in the works. The second, due out this summer, breaks nearly a thirty-year silence by inaugural Juniper-prize winning Brooklyn poet, Eleanor Lerman. And in the fall, the press will publish a book of poetry by Ralph Angel.

"Publishing Ralph Angel is a remarkable event for us," says Gorham. "We feel lucky to have his book on our list."

The fourth book supported by the grant is a collection of essays called "Passing the Word - Writers on Their Mentors" due out at the end of the year. The collection features writers discussing their mentors, and includes work from Jay McInerney on Raymond Carver, Dana Gioia on Elizabeth Bishop and Tess Gallagher on Ted Rothke.

While a portion of the grant money is slated to support the nuts and bolts production and publication costs of the books, the bulk of it goes into the kitty to pay for promotions. "Marketing was always our first priority," says Gorham. "From the start we hired a marketing director, not an assistant." Sarabande's three-pronged marketing approach includes creating a brochure for each author to use on his or her book tour that includes the book jacket copy, a picture of the cover and a sample of the work. The brochure is also mass-marketed to the press.

Secondly, the authors are given between $500 and $1000 to promote their books through tours. Sarabande arranges upwards of 25 hard-to-get readings throughout the country for its authors. Finally, the press spends a large portion of its budget on advertising, placing display ads in trade publications like Poets and Writers.

Sarabande Books was founded in 1994 and thus far has 39 books under contract or in print. The press was named after an Aztec mating dance that was later adopted and banned in Spain and finally made respectable in Britain. Its mission, according to Gorham, is to publish poetry and fiction and to disburse the works of its authors "with diligence and creativity." The press also serves as an educational resource to teachers and creative writing students.

The Katherine A. Morton Prize for Poetry and the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction has helped put the press on the national map, especially with writers vying for publication. But much of the press's bread and butter is derived from books aimed at the writers themselves such as a reprint of the hugely popular, "They Have a Word for It - A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases."

Sarabande Books can be found on the web at http://www.sarabandebooks.org.

MARKETING ON THE RUN AT BREAKAWAY BOOKS

Looking back at the launch of his press, Breakaway Books, Garth Battista can't resist the urge to call himself names. Foolish, mainly.

He started the press, which publishes literary sports fiction, knowing next to nothing about publishing. In his own words his only previous experience had been as a "peon" editor at two large New York publishing houses.

Even more frightening, the first book published by the start-up press was funded by using cash advances from Battista's personal credit card. And he knew nothing at all about marketing. But necessity is the mother of invention and, as Battista says, "When you're desperate to sell books you'll do anything."

Battista's personal desperation eventually drove him to turn his newborn first book into a small press publishing success story in just a few short months via one very creative marketing technique. He took the book, "The Runner's Literary Companion" which featured poems and stories on running by W.H. Auden, Joyce Carol Oates and Walt Whitman, to the organizers of the Chicago Marathon. He offered them several free copies as prizes. In exchange he asked that they insert an advertising flier that he had made up for the book inside the runner's packets. That's how 12,000 registered runners of the Chicago Marathon heard about the book and, by association, Breakaway Books. (www.breakawaybooks.com).

After that the publication began to make huge strides in the race to bestsellerdom, garnering a full-page review in Runner's World and eventually hitting the mainstream. In the end, Battista initially sold 25,000 hardcover copies of his first book. The splash of the press's first bestseller made Breakaway Book a favorite among literary-minded sports enthusiasts looking for more than just fluff fiction and clash-of -the-titans newspaper reporting on running, cycling, rowing, mountain climbing and extreme sports.

Last fall, "Perfect Silence" by John Hutton made the Book Sense 76 and in May, Breakaway will publish "Woman Runners," a collection of stories and essays about running and personal transformation. "I was very lucky," says Battista who now uses all manner of road races including marathons, 10K runs and half-marathons to market his books. "It could have very easily gone the other way."

NEWS SHORTS

--- According to figures released by the Association of American Publishers (http://www.publishers.org) U.S. Book Sales totaled $25 billion last year. This represents an overall increase of 3.4 percent compared to1999. However, trade sales dropped 3.7 percent with adult hardcover books showing the largest decline, plummeting 11.6 percent.

--- On March 20 The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association filed separate lawsuits to block a controversial Internet filtering law that was passed by Congress last December. The law requires that public libraries and schools receiving federal technology funds must install filtering software on all computers with access to the Internet. Both lawsuits claim the law seriously infringes on First Amendment rights.    

According to ACLU Legislative Counsel, Marvin J. Johnson, the bill could have far-reaching repercussions for literary publishers and magazines whose stories and poems find their way to the web. "Aside from being constitutionally invalid, there is no software out there that can look at a word contextually and determine whether it's being used inappropriately." Stayed tuned to this latest First Amendment debate as it unfolds by logging on to the American Booksellers Association's web site http://www.bookweb.org.

AND FINALLY—

Better late than never. Parnassus Poetry in Review celebrates its 25th year with a monster issue containing a large section on classical and modern poetry in Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. Never mind that the magazine is currently entering its 28th year. "It took three years to bring this into the world," says Parnassus Poetry in Review founder Herbert Leibowitz. Notwithstanding financial roadblocks, editors were faced with translating work in English from 15 languages and assembling an international list of contributors. For a copy, write to Parnassus Poetry in Review, 205 West 89th Street, #8F, New York, NY 10024.

The CLMP Newswire
© The Council of Literary Magazines and Press.
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Issues are distributed on the 1st and 15th of each month.

News reported by:  Leslie Schwartz (lschwartz@clmp.org)
Edited by:  Peggy Randall (prandall@clmp.org)

Generous funding for the 2001 editions of The CLMP Newswire has been provided by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds.

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