tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post6002244093774309784..comments2024-03-28T20:43:00.579-05:00Comments on Uncanny Valley: The BlazeVOX Mess & What it Opens for DiscussionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-266410698243707452013-02-13T15:11:06.271-06:002013-02-13T15:11:06.271-06:00I want this as a wall poster.I want this as a wall poster.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10952447052972788931noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-43183083139954461792013-02-13T14:43:11.920-06:002013-02-13T14:43:11.920-06:00Agreed. I've been trying to research this matt...Agreed. I've been trying to research this matter for an essay on the poetry publishing market, and this is possibly the only non-sentimental, clear response I've seen yet. Many thanks for writing this- for the first time, I think I actually understand the issue.<br /><br />For anyone else interested in someone who is neither whiny nor bitter, Chris at <a href="http://vouchedbooks.com/2011/09/07/poets-going-gentle-into-the-good-night-thoughts-on-blazevox/" rel="nofollow">Vouched Books</a> (who cited this post) also made some good points. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10952447052972788931noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-6130987753718011302011-09-26T17:08:02.797-05:002011-09-26T17:08:02.797-05:00Coming to this discussion late I know. Ha. I too h...Coming to this discussion late I know. Ha. I too had my manuscript accepted. I told BV I was interested and I was sent their "Author Information Kit" which details the process. A couple of things people may not know is that, aside from the $250, the author must pay for author copies, review copies (all plus postage), set-up fee for being distributed by SPD, and for 25 copies to be sent to SPD (although this is not mandatory, but who else distributes small press poetry publishers?). Out of pocket cost would be $370 ($250+$20 SPD fee and $100 for 25 copies@$4 each). The skies the limit beyond that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-49889481239086481842011-09-11T21:55:34.912-05:002011-09-11T21:55:34.912-05:00Collin, when you say "Poets who are 'bad&...Collin, when you say "Poets who are 'bad' at promoting their own work need to learn how to get 'good' at it", you should consider that some can't very much afford to. I am a BlazeVOX author who had a lot of this sprung on him, and with a 2-year-old, several part-time jobs, and not a lot of time on his hands, or money, how am I supposed to "promote" myself? I can't drive to readings, sink hundreds of dollars on a gamble to send out books for reviews (which the press does not do) or set up an SPD account (which my first press did themselves), let alone finding time off and cash to drive across state lines to do readings in the hope that people will actually buy enough books to at least pay off the trip itself. I have dealt with all these things and have found it to be a disappointment. I feel, flatly, my job is to write. A press's job is to edit and sell books, which includes promoting it. Look at Sarabande Books, for one. They set up, from my understanding, their poets to do book tours, and they promote with review copies, AND they pay to have other readers come here to Kentucky to read, putting them up and buying them dinner. Not every poet can afford the $800--as Noah Eli Gordon said he pays over at HTML Giant--to buy and sell their own books.Sean Patrick Hillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04510311270832526762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-6005618974870124972011-09-08T08:14:34.322-05:002011-09-08T08:14:34.322-05:00A fascinating discussion on an important issue. No...A fascinating discussion on an important issue. Now, excuse me, I have to get back to work on the self-publishing project I'm involved in.Karen Douglasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13789680393598240201noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-59975962860633086092011-09-08T07:26:31.689-05:002011-09-08T07:26:31.689-05:00“I have read your manuscript and I am really taken...“I have read your manuscript and I am really taken with this text. I would like to offer you a situation with our upcoming Fall/Winter 2011 schedule. However we are still recovering from our recent crisis and working towards being better than ever. Due to the recent economic upheaval, most of our funding sources collapsed. But this does not mean we plan to stop publishing.”<br /><br />It’s also amusing to me how this canned “acceptance” letter never mentions the content of the work itself – nothing about individual poems or the manuscript – not a word about the author’s language or style. Not only that, I’ve seen multiple authors get this exact same letter. <br /><br />I’m really, really restraining myself from posting bits of emails from Gatza that I’ve saved about logging over 300 hours on publishing my book and how editing costs ruined his family’s Christmas. It’s all hilarious in hindsight, but I fear for the first time author working under those conditions.Justin Siroishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16691670673258509953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-45097898612213588132011-09-08T06:53:08.329-05:002011-09-08T06:53:08.329-05:00Evan, I feel for ya, and I’m glad we’ve had simila...Evan, I feel for ya, and I’m glad we’ve had similar experiences. Well, not glad, but glad we can come together and vent. Do you want to trade printable PDF versions of our BlazeVOX books? Heh. <br /><br />I second Mike’s last comment. <br /><br />It would be one thing if BlazeVOX published 2-3 closely read, carefully edited and designed books a year and sold them at a reasonable price, but that’s not the case. Gatza pumps out poorly designed, upload-and-enter books by great authors – by authors I know personally and love. But the authors do nearly all the work. Then the books are marked up with unreasonable shipping costs tacked on. Again, my book on the BlazeVOX site is $20 after shipping at it costs $3 to print. <br /><br />I’m not going to play the martyr card, but I’ve owned an indie press for 8 years and poured a lot of money into it. We’ve never asked authors for money, but we have accepted financial help in the form of grants, gifts, and fundraisers. When times are tough and we have no cash, we don’t publish books. Simple as that. <br /><br />A healthy and vibrant relationship between authors and their publisher is to collaborate on pre-sales, contests, and even fundraisers to generate funding for projects. Publishers work with authors on book tours and readings. They stay up all night working on your book trailer because they love you and your book and they just can’t go to sleep until that last scene or sentence is polished. <br /><br />That’s what makes a great publisher – someone who creates a community within the small circle of commerce we command. <br /><br />I think I’m profoundly lucky to be with Publishing Genius / Adam Robinson because he embodies everything a prolific publisher should be.Justin Siroishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16691670673258509953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-70854897026377298132011-09-07T17:46:48.140-05:002011-09-07T17:46:48.140-05:00Just discovered that a couple comments have been i...Just discovered that a couple comments have been in the spam folder. Not sure why, but I've restored them, and now I'll respond to one. Anonymous writes: "This wasn't free time--this was his job. Now one can argue that the service Gatza was providing wasn't worth what he was paying himself--some will agree and other won't--but that's a far cry from suggesting that 'the numbers don't work.' The numbers don't work if you assume the editor/publisher/designer is doing this on the side."<br /><br />If you really want a publisher who takes your money and takes zero risk on your manuscript such that he profits every time it sells even one book, then you are free to work with such a publisher. And I am free to call that publisher's behavior shitty. A lot of people seem to assume that editors and publishers are entitled to compensation for their labor. But what about writers? As I discussed in the post, an editor's authors have almost certainly put in much, much more time than has the editor. And by all accounts, that goes quadruple for this particular publisher. The idea that it's defensible for him to take my money in exchange for the privilege of giving him the risk-free opportunity to profit on my labor is ridiculous.<br /><br />Again, you can participate in that model if you like, but I don't know why you would choose to do so, and it doesn't meet my definition of what a publisher is or does.Mike Meginnishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10445063490812318140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-44892310384327579862011-09-07T14:52:53.676-05:002011-09-07T14:52:53.676-05:00Justin, I'm incredibly relieved to finally dis...Justin, I'm incredibly relieved to finally discover another BlazeVOX author who finds this situation deeply troubling and is willing to state so in a public forum. The uniform outpouring of support for Gatza among BV authors in response to the revelation of this mess has been shocking to me. I understand and appreciate these authors' feelings of loyalty, and I deeply admire so many of them as writers and as human beings, but to be honest - and, obviously, naive - I was thinking that many of BV's 100s of authors would stand up and call foul.<br /><br />Re the SPD thing, Gatza never asked me to pay a fee to have my book listed. I hadn't heard of this practice at BV until you mentioned it here. (Apparently, I was one of his authors who received "special treatment.") It makes sense, though, and is in keeping with what appears to be an effort to reduce production/marketing/distribution costs to $0 (minus Gatza's editorial "labor," of course, your description of which would be similar to my own). <br /><br />I think it's really important for the small-press community to realize that despite the appeal of a no- or low-risk business model offered by new technologies such as POD digital printing, ebook publication, social-media marketing, etc., financial risk in publishing can also serve to encourage and pressurize editorial discernment and responsibility in very positive ways. As more and more publishers discover methods to push costs to or near $0, I worry that the absence of risk will result in more situations like the one we've found ourselves in with BlazeVOX. What incentive does an editor have to read, let alone edit, the manuscripts he's publishing if he perceives no risk associated with its publication? I can imagine someone arguing in response that love conquers risk: i.e. it's enough to love poetry, no risk is necessary. But of course it is the combination of personal devotion to what one is publishing combined with the pressure of risk that makes for a great publisher.Evan Lavender-Smithhttp://www.el-s.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-29874412361090138712011-09-07T13:32:25.404-05:002011-09-07T13:32:25.404-05:00This is a great article, and I agree with most of ...This is a great article, and I agree with most of it. I’ve discouraged authors to associate themselves with BlazeVOX for year now. <br /><br />Gatza published my first book of poems in 2007, before he had his POD money scheme. I never wanted to make money off that book so it didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to have it out. When I found out that he was charging people to publish with BlazeVOX, I did feel devalued in a way. People started to ask me if I had paid to be published. I would have confronted Gatza if he weren’t such a combative, and often paranoid, person. <br /><br />I know, for a fact, that Gatza never read my manuscript. The proofs came back with major flaws. He didn’t make an effort to edit it, he didn’t promote the book, and from what I was seeing, he was more obsessed with “signing” authors than publishing interesting work. Gatza also charges authors SPD fees to include their books in the SPD catalog – I remember it being about $100. I passed on the offer. <br /><br />I quickly realized that BlazeVOX had no community of creative people behind it, which is what makes a great indie press. <br /><br />I haven’t visited the BlazeVOX site in a while, but I see now that the price of my book is $16 – a bit more than it was when it was published, and way more than it should be for a 75 page book of poems and stories. $4 for shipping puts it at $20. That’s ridiculous for a POD book that costs him less than $3 to print. <br /><br />Colleagues of mine have similar stories about BlazeVOX. I don’t want to trash talk Gatza personally, I’ve heard too many nightmare stories about his emotional email breakdowns. I’ve always thought of this as a sad case of a publisher more interested in collecting authors under his umbrella than fostering innovative literature or even beautiful books. Sad indeed. <br /><br />Justin Sirois<br />Narrow HouseJustin Siroishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16691670673258509953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-13487145278321057412011-09-07T12:18:07.914-05:002011-09-07T12:18:07.914-05:00Enjoyed reading this clear-headed analysis. Brent...Enjoyed reading this clear-headed analysis. Brent Cunningham makes some good counter-points too. Important to underline the positive, active role that a publisher SHOULD play : editorial, financial, promotional.<br /><br />But I do have a few reservations about the somewhat Darwinian-commercial implications of the tone of some of this. Yes, the author should be a wise and intelligent promoter of his/her own work, choosing venues & publishers with care, etc. But this is not always the case. The poet's main job is to write poetry ; poets are not always wise about or focused on the more practical issues. They can be dreamers, they can be bohemians, they can be space cadets, they can be impractical eccentrics, their work may lie disregarded for decades. And this should not be held against them. None of these factors have any bearing on the literary value of the writing itself. Nor should the literary quality of a work be judged IN ANY WAY by its reception : the critic's job is to evaluate its INHERENT value as poetry, as literature - the rest is irrelevant.Henry Gouldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06763188178644726622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-65505515947623500912011-09-07T11:01:05.447-05:002011-09-07T11:01:05.447-05:00"Of course Foetry has an enormous hard-on . ...."Of course Foetry has an enormous hard-on . . . "<br /><br />Ahem. Anyway, if anyone has received one of these pay to play offers in any year from BlazeVOX, please forward it to foetry@foetry.com<br /><br />So far, according to the letters I've received, Gatza says he's lost a major donor each year for three years. Or a cynic might think he uses that line to gain sympathy and authors/donors.Alan Cordlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00683196759001581768noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-52672668893390459652011-09-06T23:48:26.379-05:002011-09-06T23:48:26.379-05:00This is outstanding, not just as a postmortem of t...This is outstanding, not just as a postmortem of the BlazeVOX thing but as an analysis of the small press scene. Thanks.<br /><br />Jen—your comment is the first heartening thing I've heard about "literary" publishing since this mess. It makes me wish I wrote poetry.Dan Moorehttp://www.danfiction.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-3065166323917842512011-09-06T21:51:21.538-05:002011-09-06T21:51:21.538-05:00"and Mike.. your argument about time spent is..."and Mike.. your argument about time spent is irrelevant. It is not a contest over time spent. The author gets credit for the book, jobs, sometimes pay... the small press publisher often gets absolutely nothing.. in fact.. they often lose a lot."<br /><br />Often the publisher gives itself a far higher share of the royalties than the writer. In some cases, this probably means they will make more money off the book than its author. In other cases, not so much. I suppose it depends on what the difference in profits is spent on. Whether it is used for expenses, the marketing of the book, for review copies or if it goes into the publisher's pocket.Bradley Sandshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06556181380912931853noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-30245030135041385762011-09-06T18:57:40.054-05:002011-09-06T18:57:40.054-05:00Jen: Thanks for your comments. I agree.Jen: Thanks for your comments. I agree.Mike Meginnishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10445063490812318140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-87248777471873818072011-09-06T18:53:00.352-05:002011-09-06T18:53:00.352-05:00For those raising SPD as a potential expense: I...For those raising SPD as a potential expense: I'm told that BlazeVOX didn't pay for this, authors did. Not sure if that was always true or how recent of a policy it was, but it does seem consistent with the general structure of the place.<br /><br />Not that BlazeVOX is really the point. I don't mind if there is a publisher out there I wouldn't want to work with. There are a lot of those.Mike Meginnishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10445063490812318140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-51619945742254428742011-09-06T18:37:43.192-05:002011-09-06T18:37:43.192-05:00This editorial is pretty much spot on, and I'm...This editorial is pretty much spot on, and I'm glad someone put this take on the situation out there. I run a for profit literary press (no underwriters, no grant money, just good old-fashioned capitalism here) that started after the recession hit, and we primarily publish poetry (and yes, sometimes even in hardback). We come to our profits through hard ass work, because that's our job, because we love poetry, because we don't wait for the world to love us but instead go out and try to show the world what we love (btw, it almost ALWAYS works). I know the numbers back and forth, up and down. i studied business models and how the internet affected other similar industries for a long long time before I put out one title. Lots of folks I really like and admire also like and admire BlazeVOX. All I know is that a nice guy got into business when he probably shouldn't have, and he's misled writers about the work of publishing and the outlook for poetry in the market. It's exploded in such an ugly way, proving further that it was a false solution to financial problems from the get go. People argue BlazeVOX was saving poetry through the work, but because of a lack of a viable business plan, the "saving" was short-lived, at best. If you really want to save poetry, you've got to go outside of this tiny tiny bubble where this current conversation has now, officially, gotten tired in its futile back and forth about who is the bad guy. If you're serious about poetry, and the preservation of it, I'd take this instance as an excuse to learn more about how publishing poetry can be viable. All these creative people are surely bound to come up with some revolutionary ideas, no? Anything else and you're just bitching at another's expense, which doesn't make the world a very pleasant place.Jen Woodsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-77324501865390583422011-09-06T18:11:53.477-05:002011-09-06T18:11:53.477-05:00Anonymous: I don't understand what you're ...Anonymous: I don't understand what you're arguing. Because publishers love the books they publish, they should be excused for a) asking for money from authors to publish these books and b) failing to make any reasonable effort toward actually selling the books?<br /><br />As to your second post, it seems dead wrong. Authors occasionally get teaching jobs, sure, and sometimes they get a little bit of notoriety. But publishers get notoriety too (quick quiz: Which is more famous, Publishing Genius or David Daniel? FC2 or Brian Conn?) and they often advance their own writing careers, which leads to the benefits of authorship. (Certainly this has happened for me as a result of my publishing activities.)<br /><br />Why would a small press lose a lot? I guess if they made bad financial decisions, that would happen. And I have sympathy for people who make bad financial decisions. But I wouldn't call them heroes. I would say they made a mistake.Mike Meginnishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10445063490812318140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-75996260216794846122011-09-06T18:07:26.487-05:002011-09-06T18:07:26.487-05:00Justin Evans wrote,
"I see your points, but ...Justin Evans wrote,<br /><br />"I see your points, but I am still convinced the biggest mistake BlazeVOX made is not making a disclosure of the cooperative nature for a large portion of their publications."<br /><br />I agree with you there. I also suspect that the BlazeVOX model is at best fundamentally irresponsible (a press selling so few units should not be accepting so many books, as it clearly cannot serve them) but we can agree to disagree there.<br /><br />Brent Cunningham, you make some good points, and I'll have to think about them further. I hadn't considered that BlazeVOX might use SPD, honestly because their sales numbers are so ludicrously low (according to Gatza, only 20-30 books in some cases) that the idea he was distributing them by any means other than direct sales seemed almost inconceivable. I do see that he has a good amount of his stock on the SPD site, in decent numbers (though, it should be noted, nowhere near enough to spend $2000 at CreateSpace; I continue to strongly suspect the number is inflated, which, given that Gatza includes his own labor, a practice authors are routinely forbidden, seems very likely).<br /><br />But I disagree with you, in any case, that the heart of the problem is the question of whether Gatza was making a small profit on these "donations." (It should be noted that by his own argument, he must be: apparently he is "barely" feeding his cats and himself and helping to make rent with his proceeds from the press, which is clearly far more than any of his authors can say.) I take issue with the entire structure of the publisher, which refuses to do the actual work of publishing, and then complains that it's not making enough money, as if it were entitled to a certain return on each book. And while this particular incarnation of these tendencies has been sleazy (not telling people in advance how things would work was a really low move, and you can tell Gatza knew on some level by his desire to maintain secrecy about it) the main reason I care is that I think this particularly troubling case illustrates what is wrong with many of the publishing relationships we've formed as a community.<br /><br />As I say, though, you raise some decent points, and if you'd like to expand on your argument I would hear you out.Mike Meginnishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10445063490812318140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-82945172079994008962011-09-06T17:41:18.249-05:002011-09-06T17:41:18.249-05:00and Mike.. your argument about time spent is irrel...and Mike.. your argument about time spent is irrelevant. It is not a contest over time spent. The author gets credit for the book, jobs, sometimes pay... the small press publisher often gets absolutely nothing.. in fact.. they often lose a lot.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-68910446328938484982011-09-06T17:38:42.863-05:002011-09-06T17:38:42.863-05:00I am a small press publisher who puts a lot of wor...I am a small press publisher who puts a lot of work and attention into my books. The truth is that I could spend 20 hours a day promoting the books and literally prostitute myself for small donations and the books would still not sell enough to make a profit. So why do I do it? Love. Love that is consistently ridiculed by writers angry at the world for not recognizing their genius. It seems they would do better to see who is actually trying to help them....<br /><br />On another note, not a single person has mentioned one of the more serious root causes of the problem: MFA programs. They are the primary exploiters of writers and the reason for such a glut of writers who think they "deserve" a large publishing contract.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-89377572001154666452011-09-06T16:49:37.825-05:002011-09-06T16:49:37.825-05:00Mike writes,
"We might further speculate that...Mike writes,<br />"We might further speculate that the number of people who have come forward as having received the provisional acceptance and request for donation from Gatza since the news broke is not consistent with his having "only" offered the deal to 30 people..."<br /><br />I'd argue for changing "speculate" to "start an ugly rumor".<br /><br />Of course Foetry has an enormous hard-on for this situation, so if more than 30 people were to come forward saying they'd been offered the deal on Sep. 1st, then we would likely know about that soon enough.<br /><br />Unless that happens, speculation based on cynicism won't do much but perpetuate ugly rumors. What's the value of that?Scott Abelsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-53845659498820577422011-09-06T16:02:07.849-05:002011-09-06T16:02:07.849-05:00Great post, Mike! Thanks!Great post, Mike! Thanks!Lily Hoanghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03124819703061163277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-43923286270905462952011-09-06T15:42:06.277-05:002011-09-06T15:42:06.277-05:00roxanne: lemme put it this way: all of my previous...roxanne: lemme put it this way: all of my previous, small press books, carefully handcrafted by editors (@skanky possum, interbirth, sardines) are completely sold out and out of print. therefore if i want to do a reading, or simply have a book to send to someone who's interested in my work, it's very difficult to do that. i said i wanted to be somewhat low-key, not utterly invisible. and as it happens i have made my own tiny editions of individual poems, bound and passed them out to friends. but that gets to be labor-intensive and expensive as well. there is a distinction in there, but you're choosing not to see it.D Hadbawnikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15888169593780246502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67881661576743990.post-85908612954579469602011-09-06T15:32:51.424-05:002011-09-06T15:32:51.424-05:00Anonymous, then D is contradicting him or herself....Anonymous, then D is contradicting him or herself. They seem to want both while pretending they don't, based on the comment.R. Gayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00005379821276342931noreply@blogger.com