Jan

Electronic and Online Poetry Publishing: From Sneers to Cheers

Poetry, Publishing

From a publishing viewpoint, it is interesting to see the state of literature in the Information Age. At the risk of dating myself, I started submitting my poetry in the early 1970s while in college. Poetry publishing in those days was limited to the small presses or to the bigger-but-fewer academic presses. With the former, a poet suffered long-term obscurity due to lack of readers. With the latter—if the poet was not an academic—he was an outsider and therefore rejected into obscurity. Outside of academia, only Charles Bukowski types and a few others managed to get read widely (often as a result of bad behavior).

Granted, I'm guilty of stating generalizations without acknowledging enough exceptions, but the overall pattern was that you lived in one of two dimensions: You published mostly in the small presses and occasionally in the academic ones; or you published mostly in the academic journals and usually shunned the small presses. There was an attitude of elitism by many academic publishers. While that attitude has not disappeared, it has at least been counterbalanced—one might say overwhelmed by numbers—by all of the new opportunities to get your work published online.

One also might say that the internet created a third dimension that has made a deep impact for good and bad. Although there are still many print-based small presses and academic journals around, there are far more strictly online publications today. Anyone with a one-page website can be a publisher. Quality-wise, it means that critics and scholars have much to praise and perhaps more to condescend . Opportunity-wise, it means less-skilled poets can get published, gain an audience, and perhaps enhance their writing skills until they too can claim to be scholars. It’s starting to resemble a democracy.

The small press movement of the 1960s and 1970s never really died, but it has morphed into something more powerful and pervasive. It is now a more important force in literature. While like-minded people or clique members will always stick together and exclude nonmembers, it is difficult to ignore the thousands of magazines that publish, or claim to publish, excellent poetry. From my own observations, I always found the small presses of years ago to publish both the best and the worst literature. At the same time I found the academic journals to publish both the very good and also the most boring work. That hasn’t really changed, but accessibility to poetry of all kinds certainly has changed dramatically. While much of the poetry published today may be hard to like, it’s all easy to find.

What I like about the high-tech state of publishing is that it is possible to gain at least a small audience without much expense or herculean effort. The drawback is that the internet has already become saturated with a bewildering array of choices, and one can waste a lot of time mining the dirt before finding the gem. Still, I celebrate this new movement in publishing for the arts. It has forced a number of long-established presses to rethink how they publish and how they interact with poets and writers.

At the same time, poets have been forced to rethink how they submit work. In the internet’s infancy, most writers were quite reluctant to publish online, fearing plagiarism and also having (wrongly, I think) a prestige issue with electronic media. Thankfully, many of those minds are pretty much changed now.

Please forgive my "I told you so,” but I feel vindicated. I made an attempt at electronic publishing back in the 1980s (publishing ebooks and emagazines with primitive software) before the internet existed. I found it impossible to convince writers that electronic publishing would gain acceptance one day. Most turned up their noses. Many thought I was crazy, and for the time I probably was. But I and some other survivors of those days are proof that persistence may eventually pay off.

Nowadays, ebooks are the rage. As of this writing, Amazon sells more ebooks than printed books, and demand is rising. The same pattern is emerging for my own FutureCycle Press. Although poetry is far more difficult than prose to format for ebooks, it too is selling well, at least according to poetry standards. As technology improves and a standardization in ebook format occurs, then all forms of writing will be available and widely sold as digital publications. Right now, Amazon’s Kindle is the most popular ebook reader, but more competitors are emerging.

Not only are there new ebook readers manufactured by several companies, but ebooks also are showing up in mobile phones and other hand-held devices. Despite the reluctance of a few Luddites, I think it is safe to say that ebook technology will mature and spread in popularity until one day it becomes the standard way of reading. Like the internet, ebooks can no longer be considered a fad.

The one sad thing is that electronic publishing will likely drive all the small bookstores out of business. That’s a shame. We can only hope that technological advances are so good as to make us forget what we’ve lost. Printed books may become so rare that bookstores may have to remodel themselves after Blockbuster or Netflix, selling or renting electronic books to customers. Even libraries are not exempt from the changes coming.

I always welcome technology that makes it easier to write, publish and distribute. Coupled with the World Wide Web, ebooks can be distributed globally, just like simple web pages. I give this a thumbs up. FutureCycle Press and many other publishers would not exist without the internet and its related applications. Viva la web!

—Robert S. King

Martin

You can self publish your book intnatsly! To find companies that specialize in this, just Google search the words print on demand publishers or print on demand publishing services . To name a few, you can self publish your book at Blurb website, Lulu website, or CreateSpace website. Also, do your research and make sure the company is reputable before giving out your personal information! You will more than likely have to market your book in order to get buyers! How Print On Demand Works: Generally speaking, there is no setup fee. You simply upload your content and format it. The company will create and ship the book to your customers. When someone buys your book, the company will pay you and of course the company gets some of the profit as well. There is no risk involved for these companies because they do not make numerous copies of your book and store it in a warehouse waiting for someone to buy it. They only store your book as a computer file and when someone wants to buy it, thats when they will print and make it, which is why it is called print on demand (POD). You should ALWAYS register your artwork and literary works with the copyright office. Registered works provide substantial proof of ownership and more protection in the court of law, especially if someone steals or uses your work without permission. It is not required to register your work with the Copyright Office because the creator of the work is the official copyright owner, BUT if I'm not mistaken, if you want to sue for damages when someone violates the copyright laws, your work must be registered. Check out the U.S. Copyright Office official website for more information!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

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