Publishing oneself - thoughts? (1 Viewer)

Self publishing?

Zines?

What are your thoughts about poets and writers publishing their own works and also the revival of zines where it seems anything goes!
 
go for it - you might even like it so much you start a small press.

did you ask for tips? well, here are some tips:
1) make it cool - there are way too many cheap, stapled pamphlets floating around. do something interesting with the cover, sew it instead of stapling, pick out nice paper for the guts, really sweat the layout, etc. zines are cool, but not when they look like someone barfed some text and images onto a page and called it a day.
2) give away your first issue, but have somewhere online that people can return to if they want more info - a blog, website, etc. use this resource to build excitement about your second issue.
3) there are a lot of self-published/vanity-published poets - and nothing is more off-putting that people who seem like they expend the least amount of effort foisting their shitty poetry onto you. edit yourself heavily - take the 20 poems you were going to publish, and cut it down to 10. wait a few months before you publish them to see if you still like them. cut it down more if you need to - 6 great poems in a little well-designed book is better than 6 great poems and 14 mediocre-t0-bad ones in a xeroxed/stapled piece of junk.

good luck!
 
zines are cool, but not when they look like someone barfed some text and images onto a page and called it a day.
You just dismissed the first two decades of zinery! ;)

there are a lot of self-published/vanity-published poets - and nothing is more off-putting that people who seem like they expend the least amount of effort foisting their shitty poetry onto you. edit yourself heavily - take the 20 poems you were going to publish, and cut it down to 10. wait a few months before you publish them to see if you still like them. cut it down more if you need to - 6 great poems in a little well-designed book is better than 6 great poems and 14 mediocre-t0-bad ones in a xeroxed/stapled piece of junk.
That's good advice, but unfortunately not many poets have the nerve or the distance necessary to self-edit.

In general, "self-publishing" is losing a lot of the stink it once carried. I think about this a lot, because I have been praying for the death of big record and publishing companies for a long time. They grew to the point where they relied on mediocrity and lowest common denominator to prosper, and that did a disservice to art.

Problem is, the Internet is the new publishing and distribution standard, and while in many ways it has become the perfect answer to the mediocrity of the corporations, it has introduced the much more overwhelming and disturbing mediocrity of the masses.

The great stuff is out there, but there is simply too much material to digest. It becomes difficult to find the gems. And since everything is available, we've become ridiculously fragmented in what we consume ("Your book? Eh, no, sorry. I only read novels about one-armed homeless Lithuanian transvestites written in Esperanto or the Lakota Sioux language.") and we are losing our common culture.

So yeah. Go for it! Ha. There is an audience for everyone. Finding that audience is going to be your primary problem, not the publishing end of it.
 
I am a bit opinionated on this, so apologies in advance. I only speak for me and this is meant as a slight to no one. Plus, I hear that I am, no offense, "full of shit.", so take this with a grain of salt...

Self publishing seems fine in some cases. On cases where the author is ONLY published by their press and their press ONLY publishes them, then I think that is looks a bis desperate. EVERY small press publisher that also writes has, at some point, published themselves (myself included.) Of course, sometimes you may have an idea for something that no other press could pull off or you believe in it, but are having a tough time publishing it.

Also, if you are going to self publish, then make it known, or at least don't hide it. I have seen poets that self publish themselves and then talk about how in demand their work is when it is, in fact only being published by them. Even if you only published yourself, it all probably depends on the volume. If you put out a book of yours yearly that would seem to be one thing. If you release 10 books of your work every year then you have to wonder what the point it. Is it, at that point, building your resume? Is it to satisfy your self esteem? Is it because you want the words to be published, but have not sent it out to publishers? None of these questions are wrong, although poets have a hard time judging their own work. what may seem great to you may not be seen as decent by anyone else and your throw away poem could be seen as brilliant.

By ZINES, are you talking about e-zines? I know that in the 90's there was an indie paper-zine revolution, which was very DIY and cool. The e-zines seem most often to have the right idea, but I'm not sure who reads them. Plus, when it is as easy to publish a poem as uploading it to the website, it allows for far too many poems that would not be published in print as print has a different economy. Someone has to like your words to post them, love them to desktop print them, absolutely adore them to letterpress print them and bind in morocco leather hardcover. That is not saying that the morocco leather is a better poem, but the publisher sure stood behind it with massive amounts of time and money. Plus, there are SO many e-zines, blogs, etc, that I am not sure getting published in 99% of them is anything that I would even mention to anyone. There are some big ones, I am sure where you could get exposure.

Anyway, i hope that i wasn't too opinionated or preachy.

...and remember, i may be full of shit.

Bill
 
Apologies for any repetition of the sage-like wisdom above--consider it a second-ing of the advice:

1. Know why you want to. This is the most important thing. If the reasons are right, then you can be truly happy self-publishing. If they aren't...well, it's only madness down that road.
2. Do it as well as you possibly can (or get as much help as you can to make it special)--and don't do it until you can.
3. Find happiness in doing something you love as well as you can do it.
4. Assume/accept that no one will care--and anything beyond that is gravy.
5. Then go do it again--for another piece you love, (by you or someone else).

Best of luck to you. There will never be enough great little publishers, but there's already far too many half-assed ones.
 
Doing it because you LOVE it is so important. Unfortunately some people self publish to "be cool", "avant-garde" and to be "in with the scene". I have seen and met these assholes.

Zines...hmmm...some are great and some are just overly packed with images that the words never speak for themselves.
 
Yes, that is one thing that I left out, but Jordan & Hosh hit it on the head. If you love the words, do them justice in the printing. At a minimum don't use a $49 ink jet printer with a refilled cartridge. Don't use 20lb paper (not sure what they call in in the YouKay, but use something heaver than copy paper.) Make sure that the paper is guaranteed digital. There are many papers in office supply stores that look nice (like resume papers) that will look great when printed, but will rub away quickly. They are NOT meant for laser. Don't make the book too thick. It needs to stay closed like a book when it is closed and not open up. Pre folding each sheet before collating and binding helps. Make sure that you trim the three edges. You can get a stack cutter ($300-$800), or better yet, just visit a local printer and they will cut it for you for a few quid. Once you get to know them better you can probably pay them with beer.

At the end of the day, having the recipient torn over if they love the poems or the physical book is a nice problem to have.

Bill
 
between jordan and bill (who is most decidedly NOT full of shit) and mjp as publishers/printers/artists, I'd say that is the good stuff right there as far as advice, and what Hosh, as a widely pubbed poet said, is spot on as well.

I'd only add deciding upon ONE really fine poem and making a beautiful letterpressed broadside, or nice booklet, or some other sort of presentation, then make it available for free is a nice way to "self publish" and also get your work out there without trying to get folks to buy a whole chapbook of poetry. it also gives people a taste of what you got goin' on chapbook-wise when you do decide to put out a bulkier package (heh, yeah, I said it) that they might then spend a portion of their "entertainment dollar" on...

and don't forget: submit also. be bold. send your work out there. you never know what might happen. send to places you read first, then try other spots.

oh and also: the internets are ephemeral tools to be used and not depended on: print, in the end, is cave painting...

good luck...
 
4. Assume/accept that no one will care--and anything beyond that is gravy.

this is really important - if you think you're gonna get rich or famous, think again. i've asked some of the best small press publishers around how they make a living doing what they do, and most of the time they have laughed and replied "a LIVING??".

we just did our taxes and while we were stoked to see that we'd made about +$4500 in sales for 2010, after subtracting expenses it came out to about $350 - and in fact we didn't even make that much, we fudged it because we had to look like we'd made some kind of profit (stupid tax redtape etc.).
 
Lots of good answers above. I see nothing wrong with self-publishing (with restraint) and have done it all my life, but I also like getting published by others. I've generally limited self-publishing to one book a year, if that. Ten books a year would look a bit desperate, as Bill (I think) said. The one area I differ in from people commenting above is in the question of "quality." Maybe I'm a product of the 60s, but I have no problem with simple and even crude publications (as much as I love well-made books using fine materials and craftsmanship). For example, I never trim the edges on my self-published chapbooks. I could do it easily, I have the tools, but I just don't bother. Partly because I don't care if they're ragged and uneven, and partly because I like that look. I'm sure better small press publishers think I'm an idiot for neglecting this, and they're no doubt right, technically, but what the hell. And I love the way some primitively made chapbooks look -- such as d. a. levy's. What I like about these humble productions is that they are far away from the sharp-edged, crisp and clean, professional products of the commercial publishers. They are fringy, against the tide. Maybe that aesthetic became a cliche decades ago -- I wouldn't know -- but it still works for me. But DON'T follow my advice on that; the advice to make your books as nice as you can, with the finest materials and care to design and detail, is far sounder. I'm just a crackpot. So go ahead and get your words out there. Posting poems on the Web is like throwing them in the ocean (sorry, e-zine publishers).
 
surprisingly, i see where you're coming from - especially since, at least from my vantage point as someone who didn't live through the 60's but has seen it's influence, a lot of the underground publishing back then *was* a lot more vital and countercultural, given the new availability of cheap and easy ways to reproduce content. it's kind of like how the original punk rock bands - not like the sex pistols and the ramones, but the kids playing hardcore shows in their friends' garages - sounded so terrible that they're practically unlistenable, whereas today there are a handful of bands that keep the same ethic alive* but have production values that actually make their music enjoyable to listen to. another example is the underground comics "rags" from the 60's (to use bill's favorite term)... they were made to fling shit at the comics-code authority, and they did exactly that. but today, adult graphic novel publishing has reached a level of quality that even the best commercial publishing houses can't match (certain big ones have nice comics imprints, like random house/pantheon, but their books aren't as consistently impressive as the ones like fantagraphics or drawn and quarterly). and this brings us full-circle back to self-publishing, since most cartoonists used to start out making self-produced mini comics that look like shit (i say "used to," since a lot of people just publish web comics and hope to get noticed that way)... but even within this self-produced state, you get productions like "smoke signal," which is a comics zine printed like a newspaper to hearken back to the underground papers of the 60's, but even with it's cheap paper and cheap printing, the design, content, and curating combine to make it a really quality publication. so i guess all of this is a really roundabout way of saying that sweating over the production doesn't *have* to mean trimming the edges and sewing the binding, as long as it looks like some effort went into the damn book in the first place - because we're not in the 60's anymore, and if you really want people to read your stuff, you're probably going to find a bigger audience publishing your stuff online than in a little book. so if you bother to put it in print, give it a reason to be in print and reward the people who want to find it in that medium. just putting it on paper doesn't automatically make it superior.

edit: i forgot to add this:
* we could get into a whole other debate about whether or not this claim is true, but it's probably not worth it; the forum is hard-wired to send you a private message from MJP every time you make a claim that there are still good punk bands around today, and it reads:
"hey pussy,
enjoy your green day and your offspring, you loser!
your pal,
mjp"
 
Maybe I'm perverse (okay, I am), but I dislike graphic novels with a passion, but I like old Sunday newspaper comics and R. Crumb's rags -- so I suspect your analogy of the small press to modern comics is lost on me. But that's just me. I also hate live music but love recordings. I hate live theater but love films. (I'm not sure these analogies are relevant, but I couldn't resist them.) The fact that comics have risen to an art form in the graphic novel leaves me cold. Graphic novels bore the crap out of me visually and as physical objects. But old Popeye comic books don't. I do agree that even if the production of a book is primitive, the whole should look like some thought, care, and feeling went into it. Now that physical books are on the endangered list, small press books have all the more reason to be unabashedly physical, with all the imperfections that implies. As for publishing poems online vs on paper -- I'm not convinced anyone reads 99% of the poems posted. I'd rather have my poems in an edition of 20 copies that end up in the hands of people who might read them, than be on 100 websites. I'm not anti-Internet. It's a great tool. But I don't consider it publishing at all. It's like a billion phone calls, all chatter that evaporates into nothingness. I don't even keep notes on poems that I get posted online. It just carries no weight in my mind. It's like leaving a xerox copy of a poem on a library table. Maybe someone will read it, maybe not, but I know where it's headed, which is the trash.
 
I was editing the above to make it more coherent and less obnoxious, but then I got a phone call and the 30 minute editing window expired. Oh well...
 
david, you know i like and respect the hell out of you, but i gotta say... you're about a step away from "you kids get off my lawn!" with that last post.
 
I was editing the above to make it more coherent and less obnoxious, but then I got a phone call and the 30 minute editing window expired. Oh well...
Who answers the phone these days?

I think I just gave certain members (you know who you are) a 60 minute editing window. Though it's hard to be sure, since I'm not tremendously familiar with the permissions in this new joint.

it's kind of like how the original punk rock bands - not like the sex pistols and the ramones, but the kids playing hardcore shows in their friends' garages - sounded so terrible that they're practically unlistenable, whereas today there are a handful of bands that keep the same ethic alive* but have production values that actually make their music enjoyable to listen to.

* we could get into a whole other debate about whether or not this claim is true, but it's probably not worth it; the forum is hard-wired to send you a private message from MJP every time you make a claim that there are still good punk bands around today, and it reads:
"hey pussy,
enjoy your green day and your offspring, you loser!
your pal,
mjp"
Ethics aside, it's funny you should bring this up at this particular time, since I'm currently reading a book about Husker Du. I don't know if they qualify for your "hardcore shows in their friends' garages" standards of ethical behavior, but they were certainly lumped into that "hardcore" ball of dough (and helped to define it) before it became a parody of itself in 84 or 85.

But thinking about those early Husker Du records and our own attempts at recording at the time (my band The Reactors was playing around St. Paul at the same time Husker Du was forming on the other side of town), I do clearly remember that no one really knew how to record that...that...barrage of noise at the time. Recording engineers would just look at you and tell you to plug into a direct box. They didn't know what to do with it.

Which is funny, considering the techniques were already there - they were used on all kinds of records in the 70s (Funhouse anyone?). But we may have all been louder and more overtly aggressive than most of these guys were used to. I don't know. I know Husker Du was louder. You could dry your laundry in front of Bob's amp.

The point being, they do know how to record it now, and that may be why today's hardcore records are more listenable than crap like those early Husker Du and SST releases.
 
Well, it was my wife, and I couldn't tell her to call back, I'm busy editing a post on the Buk forum. A matter of priorities. I could use that 60 minute editing privilege. It takes me at least 30 minutes to figure out how stupid I sound and who I've offended.

david, you know i like and respect the hell out of you, but i gotta say... you're about a step away from "you kids get off my lawn!" with that last post.

Ha! You're right. I'm a cranky old man. I work on that all the time but it's so easy to slip into. That was what the editing was about. I was going to tone it down considerably. Too late. I'm outed.
 
EXCUSE ME YOU FILTHY LIAR but i never said i 'hated' graphic novels!!!! i just don't have time for them because there are still so many novels left for me to read. and that kind of narrative just doesn't work for me - it's not linear enough. plus i like to read really fast, which you just can't do with a comic.
 
she was making dinner tonight and said, "sorry dinner is taking so long!"
and i said "oh it's okay! it's been so long that i've had a chance to process my anger and move past it to a state of acceptance!"
 
EXCUSE ME YOU FILTHY LIAR but i never said i 'hated' graphic novels!!!! i just don't have time for them because there are still so many novels left for me to read. and that kind of narrative just doesn't work for me - it's not linear enough. plus i like to read really fast, which you just can't do with a comic.

Yeah! (Bill taught me how to spell that word in a marathon editing session by phone last night...) You hate them too! I don't have time for them, that kind of narrative just doesn't work for me, it's not linear enough ... plus I get really tired of all that dramatic black and white in bold contrast shit. I might be more tempted if the art had greater variety, but I'd still be too busy to bother.

Lest I sound like a guy standing on his porch yelling, I won't get into those Anime things.
 
Use her toothbrush

angry-woman.jpg


say it to my face!!
 
Holy Fur Flippers!! Your toothbrush is safe, it's safe! Christ, I didn't think women ever read the fine print.

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQurKvLDajhsYOrFVjaGS6lcDpe66WiT-ipyI0MPflwYib8wS6XPQ.jpg


How about those zines and all things self-publishey?!
 
I've been self-publishing since the early 1990s and it wasn't until I really stepped it up, quality wise, and made true artists' books before anyone really cared. I never made more than one every year or 2 and I never made more than 50 copies. They were always hand made. The early ones were shit though. They consisted of xeroxes and hand-pasted color copies of art. I drew original shit in some of them, but they were just stapled down the middle and the poetry and stories were just horrible. I had no sense of self-editing at all. I was also in my 20s and thought I knew what I was doing. I probably only sold 10 per edition and gave the rest away.

By 2005 I partnered up with MJP to make a real artists' book with letterpress pages and super nice papers, etc. The Getty Museum bought one, among other fancypants collections. So when Jordan originally piped in and was talking about making your book special and making a quality product - that is the best advice you can get. He's absolutely right. A special, high quality, small edition book can really go a long way and stand out far beyond any stupid xeroxed zine.Woohoo!
 
I've been tossing around this idea for some time, myself.

I love writing, the art form, the written word, every aspect (there are a lot of them) to the game. I would love to publish poetry or short stories or even novels.

My question is a hard one to form, but I'll try my best:

Does the desire to self-publish because I love writing, make sense? Or is it often a contradiction of motive-to-method?

What my concern has to do with, is the fact that it's so hard for me to get published, and not to say that I don't want to put in the hours (I already have, and will continue to do so, and won't even self-publish something below my full ability), but what if my sincere love never gets anywhere with the traditional route?

Basically, if I self-publish, does my credibility go out the window?

Hope this makes sense.

-Billy

Ethics aside, it's funny you should bring this up at this particular time, since I'm currently reading a book about Husker Du. I don't know if they qualify for your "hardcore shows in their friends' garages" standards of ethical behavior, but they were certainly lumped into that "hardcore" ball of dough (and helped to define it) before it became a parody of itself in 84 or 85.

But thinking about those early Husker Du records and our own attempts at recording at the time (my band The Reactors was playing around St. Paul at the same time Husker Du was forming on the other side of town), I do clearly remember that no one really knew how to record that...that...barrage of noise at the time. Recording engineers would just look at you and tell you to plug into a direct box. They didn't know what to do with it.

Which is funny, considering the techniques were already there - they were used on all kinds of records in the 70s (Funhouse anyone?). But we may have all been louder and more overtly aggressive than most of these guys were used to. I don't know. I know Husker Du was louder. You could dry your laundry in front of Bob's amp.

The point being, they do know how to record it now, and that may be why today's hardcore records are more listenable than crap like those early Husker Du and SST releases.
This shit just got REAL.

Embrace, anyone???

-edit: I think Embrace were '88 or so. Whatever, most old school shit, love it.

-edit redux: Embrace was 1985.
 
it's so hard for me to get published [...] what if my sincere love never gets anywhere with the traditional route?
I'm all for self-publishing in a punk rock, DIY kind of way.

But honestly, if you can't get poetry published by others first, you may need to rethink things. I'm not trying to be a dick, but it's pretty easy to get poetry published. There are a million places that are looking for submissions, and if they all - okay, a lot of them - turn you down, you either aren't any good, or you're ahead of your time and no one gets you yet. The odds and the Gods do not favor the latter, I'm afraid.
 
with sites like lulu making it easy for any tom, dick, or harry to set themselves up as a 'publisher', be careful who you submit to. I've become somewhat aggrieved at some 'editors' who have basically made money out of mine and others poetry, without even getting their hands dirty on the printing side, or providing a contributors copy. Try duotrope (if you haven't already), you can spend some time searching out the right places for your work.

If no one is willing to print you, then try and solicit some feedback as to why (hard work that, but give it a go). Also, consider why you want to be published; a friend, and well published poet, said this to me once:

Decide what YOU want to do with your writing.

Do you want to submit to magazines and get paid for it?
Do you want to strengthen your voice, and build a fanbase?
Do you just want to journal, and write for yourself?
Do you want to master writing and be proud of your grocery lists?

Really. Decide what you want of your writing. Once YOU know the rest is easy.

As to self-publishing, you have to either be willingly to submit to weeks of sourcing the right paper, typesetting, folding, cutting, hitting your printer (machine or man), etc, etc. Or, handing your work over to someone like lulu/amazon etc, and producing something which will stand out like a pebble on a beach. Then, at the end of it all, you have to convince strangers to buy a book by someone who has no previous publishing credits. But your mum will be pleased.

I would say a good place to start would be to set up a website, display your writing, spread the word, and then see if you have an audience.
 
I know it seems like publishing = good, and not publishing = bad, so in order to be good you need to get published...

Here's the thing: publishing and writing are two wildly different monsters. You can teach yourself to write (or study somewhere to get better) without publishing at all. Or you can publish something, and in the interest of getting published more, keep writing the same thing--and you might have a lot of credits, but artistically you've done nothing.

Writing is the long, lonely hours. Writing is locked behind a door, neglecting friends and family, and being regimented in your approach to getting better. Writing is reading a lot of different things. Writing is indulging every thread of an idea, and riding it out to see if there's something in it. Writing is a sore back and getting fat because you're always at a desk. Writing is the smile at 2am when you finish an edit and think, "oh man, I think this is really good." And writing is looking at the same piece in the cold light of a blue morning and saying "No, it's shit" (if it is). Then doing it all over again.

Publishing is sending emails, studying and supporting magazines and small presses. It's sending out your shit with stamps, and envelopes, and submitting via mishmash. It's tracking your submissions, and following guidelines, and establishing relationships with editors. It's being professional every time you get a reject. And it's doing it every goddamned day, for years on end, with nothing to show for it but contributor's copies.

They have very little to do with each other. I know you might think that publishing something will legitimize your work for you somehow--and it's true, it might. In that case--it's probably worth it. A writer needs to absolutely believe in their work. But if you publish just to say you're published--then deep down you'll always know you aren't--not really, not like you wanted to be--and that will actually work against you, and you won't get the confidence that you thought being published would give you.

My advice is to be patient. Separate the 2 in your mind and keep working, reading, and trying to figure out what your favorite writers are/were doing. Keep studying and submitting only to the mags where you think your work fits best (and be honest, if you can't get into Scratchy's Xeroxed Zine Crotch then don't submit to the New York Quarterly--you're wasting stamps). And once you garner a few publishing credits, think about putting together a chapbook manuscript. By then, someone might ask you for a manuscript, and all the worrying about it will be moot. Best of luck to you.
 

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