SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: PRAISE THE CHAPBOOK
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Etsy interviews Godin
From the interview:
Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.
Small means that you can answer email from your customers….
A small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you’re sick.
Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.
Don’t wait. Get small. Think big.
I’ve been able to find mentors… each one of them willing to spend all sorts of time, reading my work, talking “shop.” … I know, there are plenty of books out there that tell writers what to do. Even books that inspire. But there’s something about working with someone who is right there. Someone who listens. Someone who has done it and survived.
Tara Yellen, author of After Hours at the Almost Home
Poet charts online reaction to chapbook release
Jilly Dybka released her self-pub book recently and has this to share about the books early impact (link):
Book release announced May 16, 2008
Stats provided May 25, 2008
400 daily readers of Poetry Hut
83 downloads of Trouble and Honey
5 individuals donated via PayPal
13 copies ordered via Lulu.com
Jilly provides her own interpretation of these numbers, but the numbers seem a bit off.
To make an accurate assesment of the data she would need to track daily page views, daily individual items sold (and/or downloaded), and daily revenue. Or at least track it weekly. From the collection of data she could discover and project sales trends, adjust marketing and promotional compaigns, and (in general) provide herself a statiscal analysis of the publishing effort of Trouble and Honey.
IMHO, I think it is too early to determine anything regarding this chapbook release.
We might not like to admit it, but most of us choose our books on the basis of a quick read of the back cover. So what makes a good blurb?
In the age of blogging, great critics appear to be on life support. Salon’s book reviewers discuss snobbery, how to make criticism fun and the need for cultural gatekeepers.
There’s too much sameness in publishing. It may be like looking for a needle in a pile of vomit, but there are real gems out there by unknown poets.
James Byrne Link
I don’t know many of those fierce Clinton supporters, because most of my friends and acquaintances are writers and editors and cultural impresarios of one kind or another—members of “the media”—and there are precious few Clintonites among them…. And the great majority of media people are members of the same (white) demographic cohort that has rejected Hillary and voted for Barack—educated, more-affluent-than-average residents of cities and suburbs.
Kurt Anderson in New York Magazine Link
Coffeehouse Junkie 