Documenting AWP

Summary of…

F164. The Future of Book Publishing: How Authors Should Navigate the New Market. (Mary Gannon, Dennis Loy Johnson, Jeffrey Shots, Michael Reynolds, Lee Montgomery, Julie Barer) Editors and agents will discuss the changes that have occurred in the practices and policies of literary publishing—from acquiring books, producing them in all of their incarnations, and marketing them. They will also offer timely advice on how authors should best navigate the changing industry and the new market.

This panel was a fantastic look into the varying opinions of the direction of book publishing. Dennis Loy Johnson played the role of the electronic book sympathizer to counterpoint the general physical-paper-book consensus of the rest of the panel (as you can probably guess, the ebook v. paper book debate claimed most of the discussion…and rightfully so, I think). Mr. Johnson embraces the digital revolution. His publishing house (Melville House) was essentially birthed from a blog, so “digital,” he said, “is in his DNA.”

The moderator, Mary Gannon, asked a series of questions. The one that got the most response was: what is the biggest change in publishing over the past five years?

Lee Montgomery: Electronic books and with that, trying to figure out how to use the internet to market. Ms. Montgomery does think the physical book is safe. Though, people should not turn their nose up at the different ways people can hunt down books. She liked the potential for ebook devices (Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader, etc.) to that of the iPod, commenting about how much more music she buys now that she has a device built to allowing just that. Personally, I completely understand this point.

Dennis Joy Johnson: The conglomeration of publishing houses and distribution is one of the biggest changes and is possibly the biggest downfall. The death of independent sellers, and with that, the growth and power of Amazon.com, has made it almost impossible for independent, local bookstores to survive. Additionally, the forced discounts that Amazon.com puts on publishers makes it extremely difficult for authors and publishers to make money.

Mary Gannon: Bookscan is the biggest change. Bookscan, according to Wikipedia, is a data provider for the book publishing industry, owned by the Nielsen Company. BookScan compiles point of sale data for book sales. According to Ms. Gannon, is that the industry relies too much on Bookscan to determine purchasing quantities of an author’s subsequent books. The problem is that Bookscan doesn’t track all channels, so the numbers are often incorrect. My feeling is that the rise of POD printing, micropresses, and the fragmented distribution channels, should be incentive to have BookScan get its act together and adjust to the changing market.

Finally, which this comment doesn’t fit perfectly into the flow of this post, I still feel it important enough to cram in here at the end. Dennis Joy Johnson says that word of mouth has traditionally been a bookseller’s favorite and most successful advertising outlet, and that book blogs are the new word of mouth. So, on that note, read lots of books, so says this blog.

Guys, it was a pleasure to blog with you all, and to see the conference through your eyes. I enjoyed being part of the project.

That being said, I’m not done yet, I have a couple panels worth of recordings I haven’t put up yet, some follow-up interviews promised, and I have even figured out what the deal is with the mannequins if you guys missed it and wondered about it.

I found I’m behind this week in school work, and don’t get started with taxes, but look for some more content from me this weekend.

Best,

Todd

Wow, what a great conference. I was really hoping that I could post a lot during the conference but I overestimated the capabilities of my “smartphone.” Oh well, now I know not to trust modern technology. I’ll upload the videos from AWP that I took. One is Patricia Smith from the WILLA reading, which included roller derby girls, a burlesque troop, and some of the best female readers I heard during the conference. That reading was the most exciting reading that I attended the entire conference.

The other two are of Abe Smith, (no relation) who I heard read twice: once at the Thin Man and once at the Plus Gallery. I’m going to keep posting after this to give short reviews of the books that I got at the book fair. I’ll post those as I finish them.

Enjoy the videos!

A recording of the OW Press The Velvet off-site reading is available in The Velvet Podcast feed, or via direct download, here. It features most of the readers in the flyer below. If you like the material, you might consider subscribing to The Velvet Podcast (see links in the footer of the homepage). Some of the readers are contributors to the podcast.

Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: Heaven (2000, University Press of New England), Harlot (2007, No Tell Books), and Necropolis (2008, NeoNuma Arts). Her first book, Heaven, won the 1999 Bakeless Prize in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in many journals including Poetry, The Christian Century, Image, Gulf Coast, and No Tell Motel. A former NEA Literature Fellow, her poem “On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica” was included in the anthology The Best American Erotic Poems, 1800-Present. A single-poem chapbook, The Devastation, is now available from Cooper Dillon Books. She lives in Austin, Texas. She read at the  Bloof Books, Cooper Dillon & Noemi Press small press party on Thursday evening at Green Spaces Colorado.

Question 1: What book have you read recently that you absolutely loved?

Yellowrocket: Poems, by Todd Boss. On the surface his poems look harmless, appealing, but they grow and change in unexpected ways, until they become something else, something almost menacing. They’re like cadbury chocolate eggs filled with glass.

Question 2: What’s one piece of advice you wish you had been given when you were just starting out?

Marry up.

Question 3: What is something that can always found in your refrigerator?

Well, not a lot really. I’m a vegan, so no meat. But there is always mustard, sri kanchi sauce, flaxseed, poblano peppers, onions. I love onions. (At this point, Jill starts listing foods faster than they can be written down…)

Participants in the panel were, Jeff Streeby, JV Brummels, Donald Williams, Thea Gavin, David Romtvelt, and Joshua Dolezal. Cowboy poetry is a fantastic and complex genre. Poems of work, poems of oral history, poems of landscape. I must admit, as someone who comes from Philadelphia and Vermont; I am totally not a cowboy. There is still so much in the genre I find to identify with. I felt like I’d done enough ‘work’ panels at this conference, and thus I’d treat myself, and this panel was indeed a treat.

I will let the words of the authors speak for themselves. The panel consisted of six readers and a Q&A session. Also, I must mention here, that both cowboypoetry.com and cowboysongs.com were recommended by the panel.

 

 Question and Answer [13:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Participants in the panel were, Jeff Streeby, JV Brummels, Donald Williams, Thea Gavin, David Romtvelt, and Joshua Dolezal. Cowboy poetry is a fantastic and complex genre. Poems of work, poems of oral history, poems of landscape. I must admit, as someone who comes from Philadelphia and Vermont; I am totally not a cowboy. There is still so much in the genre I find to identify with. I felt like I’d done enough ‘work’ panels at this conference, and thus I’d treat myself, and this panel was indeed a treat.

I will let the words of the authors speak for themselves. The panel consisted of six readers and a Q&A session. Also, I must mention here, that both cowboypoetry.com and cowboysongs.com were recommended by the panel.

 

 JV Brummels [12:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Participants in the panel were, Jeff Streeby, JV Brummels, Donald Williams, Thea Gavin, David Romtvelt, and Joshua Dolezal. Cowboy poetry is a fantastic and complex genre. Poems of work, poems of oral history, poems of landscape. I must admit, as someone who comes from Philadelphia and Vermont; I am totally not a cowboy. There is still so much in the genre I find to identify with. I felt like I’d done enough ‘work’ panels at this conference, and thus I’d treat myself, and this panel was indeed a treat.

I will let the words of the authors speak for themselves. The panel consisted of six readers and a Q&A session. Also, I must mention here, that both cowboypoetry.com and cowboysongs.com were recommended by the panel.

 

 David Romtvedt [9:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Participants in the panel were, Jeff Streeby, JV Brummels, Donald Williams, Thea Gavin, David Romtvelt, and Joshua Dolezal. Cowboy poetry is a fantastic and complex genre. Poems of work, poems of oral history, poems of landscape. I must admit, as someone who comes from Philadelphia and Vermont; I am totally not a cowboy. There is still so much in the genre I find to identify with. I felt like I’d done enough ‘work’ panels at this conference, and thus I’d treat myself, and this panel was indeed a treat.

I will let the words of the authors speak for themselves. The panel consisted of six readers and a Q&A session. Also, I must mention here, that both cowboypoetry.com and cowboysongs.com were recommended by the panel.

 

 Thea Gavin [10:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Participants in the panel were, Jeff Streeby, JV Brummels, Donald Williams, Thea Gavin, David Romtvelt, and Joshua Dolezal. Cowboy poetry is a fantastic and complex genre. Poems of work, poems of oral history, poems of landscape. I must admit, as someone who comes from Philadelphia and Vermont; I am totally not a cowboy. There is still so much in the genre I find to identify with. I felt like I’d done enough ‘work’ panels at this conference, and thus I’d treat myself, and this panel was indeed a treat.

I will let the words of the authors speak for themselves. The panel consisted of six readers and a Q&A session. Also, I must mention here, that both cowboypoetry.com and cowboysongs.com were recommended by the panel.

 

 Joshua Dolezal: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download