New Press, Same Model

Austin Peay State University has started publishing poetry books by hosting a first-book contest. I'm glad there's another press in the mix, but I wish they'd tried experimenting with a different model. Read about the winners here.

I'm not trying to make fun of Leigh Ann Couch, who was one of the winners (and managing editor of the Sewanee Review) but I thought her quote was a bit funny: “I publish about four poems a year in magazines that maybe a half-percent of Americans even know about,” she says.

Based on the the Census Dept. Population clock, that means roughly 1.5 million Americans know about her poetry. If your audience is that large, Leigh, Red Morning Press would like to talk with you.

--AB

Independent Publishing as Strategy

I’m reading this book called Blue Ocean Strategy. Like most books I read nowadays, it fell in my hands randomly, but ended up speaking to me personally. The premise is that most companies tend to operate like every other company in their industry. They compete for the same customers along narrowly defined lines. Some find a way to break away from the conventional wisdom of their industry and create a “blue ocean” of “uncontested market space.”

The authors offer Cirque de Soleil as an example. In this case, it breaks from the traditional ideas of what circus and/or theater should be like. The result: There’s nothing else quite like it, which makes competing for customers’ attention much easier and more lucrative.

What does this have to do with poetry? A lot, actually. People don’t like to admit this, but book publishing is an industry, and poetry is a part of that. When we started RMP, we looked at the traditional models for starting a poetry press: Hold a contest, apply for grant money, or both.

Within those basic models, the differences between poetry presses are minimal. If you visit most press websites, their mission statements are the same (“We strive to publish the best poetry.”) What does that mean? As a consultant I heard once says, “It doesn’t mean anything. ‘Best’ is a definition only you and god know.”

Some presses try to differentiate themselves by the type of poetry they publish (“We strive to publish the best [experimental, witness, political, women’s, regional] poetry”). The differences are minute, and what’s worse—the strategy is the same. If every press competes using the same strategy, there will only ever be a small handful of presses that succeed.

Blue Ocean Strategy suggests creating new business models that buck conventional wisdom. I personally can’t stand flying Southwest Airlines, but I have to concede their success. Who thought way back when that an airline could get away with not serving a meal or assigning reserved seats? Those amenities were part of a narrow formula that airlines considered necessary to succeed.

When I look at RMP in this context, I’m encouraged. We’ve abandoned most of the conventional thinking that goes into starting a poetry press. I see a lot of advantages in not competing with other presses for contest fees and grant money. It makes us a lot more flexible, and our future is much less dependent on the trends that affect other poetry presses. For instance, if grant money dries up or so many presses are applying for grant money that each press continues to get a smaller piece of the pie—that won’t affect our ability to keep publishing books.

What we haven’t done is turn those advantages into profitability…yet. Living in D.C., we’re surrounded by the history and mythos of the punk rock scene. Independent music labels that exist as standalone companies today started out in basements. I think when you have something like RMP, where there’s nothing to lose by experimenting, you’re more likely to succeed in the long run.

What we haven't done is figure out how to maximize all the advantages of being a truly independent press. The other message in the book is that companies like Cirque de Soleil and Southwest Airlines create models that brought new value to their customers. I’m not sure what that is for a poetry audience. When we figure that out, I think we’ll be set.

--AB

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