I think we can also make a distinction there.
I think you're talking about legal rights.
And that's one thing.
But obviously, a magazine or press can at any point
make a house policy if they don't
like the idea of publishing something
that's already been out there.
That's obviously a perfectly legitimate stance to take.
But I think that in a larger sense, when
I think about the question like what
does it mean to be published, I kind of go back to like--
I hear some other question behind it
which are sort of a social relationship which is like,
what does it mean to be published,
who gets to say that, why are we concerned
about that in the first place.
There are a lot of-- and maybe that's part of the reason
that I was hoping we could-- to bring
for this long history of printing
and long history of bookselling.
There are social structures that are obviously
in place that are the explanation for why
some of these quirks exist.
And some of it is borrowed, I think, from the larger presses
without thought.
And not only is it true that nobody
could go to court who's really a poetry publisher
and sue over anything, it's also true that in American courts,
there has to be dollars at stake.
You have to be able to put a lost amount on it.
And there are no dollars to speak of at stake
in our beautiful field.
But from a writer's perspective, it's like, what do you want.
What do you want out of this?
Are you trying to get a job?
Yeah, actually, those academies in various universities
do care about publication credits.
Are you applying for an NEA grant?
They have a set of rules.
These different groups have different rules.
But as a writer, you have to say,
what am I actually after with this idea of getting published.
And to me, it's interesting and important to those people
that's interesting too, people that have a shot at getting
a tenure track job.
And I understand why you want to be published here and not here.
The sense of poetry as involving status is--
it's a reality.
And being part a way to create cultural capital that then you
can cash in for some very small prizes here and there.
That exists.
I mean, but I think if you're not interested in any of that,
it becomes an entirely different question.
I mean, if you have a day job and you're just
focused on the art, which is really most
of our publishers at SPD are--
they have day jobs or one two people
are not taking paychecks.
If they're lucky, each book is paying for the next book
if they kind of know what they're doing
and learn the ropes.
I think in that world, can ask different kinds of questions.
Do you want to have input on your cover?
In the small press world, that's really common.
And if you go up a notch, even to a University press,
certainly to the very few majors who publish poetry,
that the habit there, the custom is that the author
has zero input on the cover.
That's not a decision authors make.
That's a decision the marketing people make, so
on for tons of others a little small decisions.
You might sell a little bit less,
but I personally try to get the message out there
that really, I don't think those numbers are very dramatically
different.
I think that there are some very good University presses.
They do have that status thing so
that if you imagine the library out there,
they're like, oh, well, the University of Blah Blah Press.
So we've got to get that because they're
University or something.
And Free Will Press, just whatever-- they're small press.
But for the actual buyers, the people are really
reading things, I think those numbers, when
you boil them down and look at them,
are closer than people would think.
It's kind of small potatoes for everybody, especially
the majors actually.
I've talked to a number of people,
and I'm just curious when I run into these sort of big agents
and it doesn't happen too often, but every once in a while,
I get one in a room.
And I'm like, what's up with poetry.
And the answer is usually that it
is something the large presses plan to lose money on.
And they do it for in order to attract high-high level fiction
people who like the idea of being
with a more literary press.
And that's the only reason large publishers--
Cool!
--publish poetry.
With some exceptions, but they're
very few, just the handful, where they actually
go into the thinking.
So it's a cheap way to lose a little bit of money
because you don't have to print very many anyway.
You print about 3,000.
For them, that's grounds down to zero.
And they have the aura of being a literary press
that maybe Michael Cunningham will stay with them
or something like that.
And if you want even more depressing news--
I don't-- but I will say that to me, that's not depressing.
To me, it's empowering.
And there's a flip side of it, which
is like, if that's what you think you're in poetry for,
get out.
But you have to come back and ask the question,
why am I in poetry then, why do I care about this art
form, what am I trying to get out
of it, what's my relationship to it, what is the there that I'm
shooting for.
And it puts in a different context quickly
the question of where to get published and how and who
to say no to and what demands to make.