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WAYS AND MEANS: NOTES ON ALTERNATIVE PUBLISHING ONE YEAR INTO THE 90'S
by Karl Young
Alternative presses in America seem to have diminished considerably
during the last decade. I haven't counted them, and don't know if
their number has decreased. Perhaps what has diminished is a quality
of diversity and inventiveness characteristic of presses of the past.
If this is so, my opening remarks are highly personal and may warp
their subject in reflection. But as I'd like to do in most of my
essays, I'd like to preface this with a quote from Montaigne: "I would
not make so bold as to say such things if it were my due to be
believed."
Many surviving presses have become more cliquish and less willing to
consider new ideas and the work of unconsecrated writers. Many presses
are now little more than pale imitations of main stream publishers:
staid, cautious, and, in their own way, ultraconservative. Some
reasons for this are self-evident, others difficult to trace. Money
works its way through most of them, taking on many disguises. Most
apparent at present is the problem of funding through organizations
like the N.E.A., along with its attendant spies, allegiancy oaths,
legal entanglements like the tentacles of a Portuguese man-of-war, and
the insecurity and distrust all this pulls along with it. Other
monetary problems range from the quantum leaps in postage rates begun
in the early 70's to the simple fact that American alternative presses
have been a product of the middle class (often in radical or bohemian
garb), and the middle class has been severely eroded during the 80's.
Increased costs of printing and the move away from cottage industry
production have exacted their toll. Creative writing programs that
perpetuate their funding by convincing students that they have a shot
at immortality don't seem to encourage students to start presses. To
me, the most alarming tendency in alternative publishing during the
80's was the lack of a new generation of alternative literary
publishers.
Some of the chief functions of money in any context include the
conferring of status and credibility. You can catch glimpses of these
functions in several trends in American alternative publishing during
the last decade. I say glimpses because it's difficult or impossible
to know what's going on in any single editor's mind, and many symptoms
of demoralization can also characterize strength. For instance: there
has been a trend toward gigantism in both book and magazine publishing
in the last decade. The prolificity of some writers is the result of
new possibilities that need to be worked out in detail and
extravagance. But, at the same time, producing large books and
magazines can be a means of seeking validation through quantity.
When you see tables of contents with rearrangements of the same names
as half a dozen other magazine, you may be looking at the work of an
editor who is truly enthusiastic about these people, or an editor who
is seeking validation through the publication of what he or she thinks
are proven winners. In such instances the editors are using these
"winners" to validate, and hence extend, their funding. In some ways
this can lead to a form of censorship more oppressive than anything
moral majority goon squads have yet conjured up.
Bids for validation often include an attempt for approval from at
least one of the wings of academia, accompanied by vehement denials of
academic contamination.
The small presses of 1965-1975 also seem to be a discouraging factor:
Now they are perceived as amateurish, unbecoming to the stature of
serious writers. A lot of the mimicking of mainstream presses during
the last decade has been a bid for greater credibility through
standardized format, something that the previous milieu didn't confer
on writers, particularly those who longed for it most.
This year I curated a mail art show that served as a memorial to those
who died as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima and as a protest
against the further use of nuclear weapons. I was particularly
impressed by the work of contributors from the fascist dictatorships
of Latin America and the totalitarian countries of Eastern Europe.
They included work by people who had been tortured and imprisoned for
related activities, and many were taking similar risks now. (Don't
fool yourself about Eastern Europe: though many were feeling a rush of
liberation, they still knew their bubble could burst at any minute.)
Their work was no better than that of people from other places, but it
tended to be more resourceful, the artists put more effort into
getting into shows like this, and the shows seemed to matter more to
them. This suggests that market censorship is more effective than
police censorship. Police censorship generates anger and the need for
rebellion; it defines itself as a tangible enemy; and it confers value
and prestige on the work (it must be important or it wouldn't need
stifling; those who produce it must be heroic -- by virtue of their
courage and commitment, if nothing else). Police censorship will
probably increase in this country riding the coattails of market
censorship.
Changes in the economic structure of alternative publishing need more
discussion than I've provided in this sketch, particularly in the
areas where money has psychological, social, or symbolic significance.
I hope to be able to expand on these remarks as time and circumstances
permit, and I hope others will extend the discussion beyond the
limited framework in which it has been confined. For the moment, I'll
suggests a few small scale remedies.
Perhaps the most important remedy is self-publication. This is now the
most unpopular alternative to economic censorship. Many writers don't
have the money for it, but many _DO_. The thing they find onerous is
not the cost but the lack of prestige associated with what has been
stigmatized as vanity publishing. The ground for aversion is a deeply
ingrained form of self censorship. In this case, publication -- the
spending of money by a second party -- validates the work. Someone
other than the author has put money into the work, and that saves it
from being -- what? : hopelessly eccentric? self-proclaimed? something
in which only the author believes? something that can't stand on its
own merits? This undercuts a lot of the rhetoric of independence and
individualism of the last half century, and is something to be
carefully and clearly thought out. It is particularly interesting to
note that this attitude toward self publication has not always been
the case. In Shakespeare's day, only a hack had his book underwritten
by a commercial publisher. If the author weren't wealthy, he could be
supported by a patron, and hence avoid the stigma of commercial
financing, but it was most prestigious to publish your work yourself,
having complete control over it, and taking all the praise for it.
When Thoreau self-published _A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERIMAC RIVERS_
and Whitman _LEAVES OF GRASS_ they were still, in part, heirs to this
tradition of self publication. The ideal of the 17th Century, however,
would be best represented by someone like John Donne who avoided
publication altogether and simply circulated his work in manuscript to
fellow cognoscenti, eschewing the marketplace completely. We certainly
don't need the aristocratic underpinnings of such a publishing scene,
but we would be much better off if we could see self publication in
terms of commitment, courage, and individualism, and stop seeing it as
the last resource of the terminally incompetent. The Latin American
guerrilla poets and the samizdat artists of eastern Europe and the
U.S.S.R. don't let lack of an official publisher get in their way.
Perhaps the Helms gestapo will play a left-handed role in returning
self-publication to a less onerous status: I've already heard people
joking about keeping themselves "untainted by N.E.A. money," and a
recent article in _ROLLING STONE_ goes so far as to say that current
fashions in censorship have saved rock music.
Scaling down on production may also be important. A number of low-
tech, small distribution magazines reminiscent of the late 60's -
early 70's, and the less literary-genre-specific zines of the 70's and
80's, have appeared in the last few years. John Martone's _TEL LET_,
Mark Andrew Nowak's _FURNITURES_, and John Perlman's _ROOM_ are good
examples. The small formats of these magazines have necessitated a
high degree of selectivity on the part of their editors. This implies
a status that the giant magazines can't confer, while assuring maximum
readership for each poem in each copy distributed. These magazines are
excellent examples of what can be done on a minimal budget.
With the advent of small computers, the possibilities for low cost
publishing have increased enormously. Unfortunately, beyond laser
typesetting, most of these possibilities are not being used. Options
available include printing complete publications on laser printers,
printing multiples on dot matrix machines (and using the screenfolds
in binding), distributing work on disk or via modem. An advantage to
most of these possibilities is that publishers can produce precisely
the number of copies needed, as demand makes itself clear. That means
small initial cash outlay, and it eliminates problems of storage, with
such attendant miseries as taxes and mildew. It's too bad that writers
haven't tapped the romance of computers -- it could do wonders for the
psychological underpinnings of such ventures. *
Cooperative efforts should also be explored. This year I'll publish
the first book from my press with a four color process cover. Such a
cover would ordinarily be prohibitively expensive. The author,
however, arranged financing with the cover artist's gallery. Since
books aren't confined to galleries or private collections, this is a
definite advantage for the artist since it gets a reproduction of his
painting around to many people who wouldn't see it in a gallery. It
benefits the gallery, too, as a form of promotion. The author and I
benefit by getting a good cover for the book. And I get to see if four
color covers increase sales. I don't know how far cooperation of this
sort among artists can go, or how many different types of cooperation
can be successful, but this does seem to be a good time to find out.
Multiple publications under single covers should also be pursued
further. If you bind two or more books in the same covers, you can
reduce the cost of text printing a bit, and cut the costs of binding
and cover printing drastically. In addition, it can increase
distribution considerably: many people who get the book to read the
work of one writer will at least check out the other. There's no
reason why magazine publishers couldn't do the same thing. Even
magazine publishers who wanted to keep their own wraps could offer
multiple subscriptions at reduced rates, thus decreasing postage costs
and increasing circulation.
Distribution constitutes the largest problem in alternative
publication now, as it has for decades. In Latin America and Eastern
Europe, a large underground political network facilitates distribution
of alternative publications. Such networks are frail in the U.S. at
present, and many writers would probably not want to go through them
for political or aesthetic reasons even if they were strong. However,
the international mail art network, a network that interfaces with
underground cabals throughout the world, is open and accessible to
anyone who wishes to participate. The economy of this network is based
largely on barter instead of cash. Alternative publishers do a lot of
book swapping, and this could certainly be increased and extended.
Some would view this with suspicion and distaste, but the mail art
network offers the potential of reaching a larger and more varied
audience than publication through most alternative presses. It would
also yield interesting exchanges, including exchanges that might help
break up the cliquishness of the current scene a bit.
Another possibility is cooperative distribution systems, with
catalogs, mailing lists, and the benefit of association with other
writers. For many years, Segue Distribution didn't keep books in
warehouses but simply forwarded orders to participating presses after
taking a small fee for the service. I don't know why Segue has
discontinued this in favor of the warehouse system -- I liked the
earlier version, and Segue hasn't sold any more of my press's books
since the transition. It remains, however, a method that should be
pursued further. A number of organizations set up to distribute work
through a single address or imprint have been tried in the last
fifteen years. Those that have failed have usually done so because
participants have been unclear as to the purposes and responsibilities
of the organization. Such problems can be overcome with a bit of
patience and commitment.
The distribution schemes mentioned above are all tentative. There's a
good chance none of them would be viable. But this seems to be a good
time to test them further. Perhaps the most important note to make now
is that this is not the time to try to figure out how to finance
what's been happening for the last ten years -- the 80's are over and
were a dead end: now it's time to move on.
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