Corrupting the Youth: Recap

Ten minutes before my presentation started at the College Media Advisers convention on Saturday, there were zero people in the room. So I thought, this is going to suck. The hotel is about four blocks from Adams Morgan, which for those of you who’ve never been to D.C., is basically a street lined with bars. So I figured everyone went out late the night before and couldn’t drag themselves out of bed for a morning session. I couldn’t blame them, actually.

Still, nearly 20 people did show up by the time it started. The gist of the session was how to stay involved in the literary community after you get out of school. I used starting RMP as an example of the extreme. You don’t have to start a press to stay active, but it was cool to see that more than a few students in the session wanted to start their own. If you’re interested, here’s some of the content I gave them—a rough description of how much it cost. If you want more detailed information, email me, and I'll send you the specific breakdown of expenses. (Bear in mind, the losses are split three ways, and it’s over three years, so it comes out to about $5,000 each per year. I’ve spent that much money on much less worthwhile things.)

	Revenue	Expenses	Net Loss
2005	$1,191	$8,762	-$7,571
2006	$1,404	$6,442	-$5,038.00
2007	$1,281	$5,000	-$3,791.00
	$3,876	$20,204	-$16,328

As you can see, it is not a money-making venture for us, but as I said in the session, that’s not to say it couldn’t be. If we had a contest, I guarantee we’d be profitable. If we didn’t travel to AWP, we’d be profitable. If we printed the books on demand, we’d be profitable. We just don’t want to do it that way, and we don’t have to, because we have day jobs. It's a liberating feeling--something I hope I communicated during the session.

--AB