U.S. literary journals thrive with low overhead and dedicated audiences

A couple of weeks ago poet Michael Lista got the attention of the publishing Twitterverse with his National Post essay “Why literary magazines should fold.”

Now, we don’t need another American TV sitcom to point out the differences between our two cultures, but here’s an interesting article about the financial health of U.S. West Coast literary journals. Turns out, boutique publishers like The Threepenny Review, Zoetrope, and McSweeney’s Quarterly are doing just fine these days, but not for the reasons you might think. According to The New York Times:

If literary journals “are poised to do well,” as Laura Cogan, editor of San Francisco-based ZYZZYVA, said, it may be because they share qualities with many successful online ventures: skeletal staffs, low overhead and specialized audiences.

The article suggests journals associated with academic institutions have financially suffered the most over the last couple of years. Not that the successful print publishers are sitting around counting their money bags — they’ve been investing in the online side of their businesses by overhauling websites and promoting online subscriptions. McSweeney’s even hired a digital media director.

But, as the article concludes — and here’s where Canadians can nod in agreement — if these publishers are doing well, it is relative to their notions of success:

“No one has ever been able to make a good living writing or publishing literary fiction,” Stephen Elliott, a writer and founder of The Rumpus, said. “It doesn’t matter that there are exceptions. The rule stands.”

In the April 2011 issue of Q&Q: Susan Musgrave talks to Lorna Crozier

It’s been more than a decade since the iconic – and iconoclastic – Susan Musgrave published a new collection of poetry. In the April 2011 issue of Q&Q, Musgrave discusses her new collection, Origami Dove (McClelland & Stewart), with fellow B.C. poet Lorna Crozier, whose collection Small Mechanics also appears this spring with M&S. Also in April, a profile of overlooked short story author Clark Blaise, a special report on B.C. publishing, and a feature on the financial struggles facing Canadian literary journals. Plus reviews of new books by Julie Booker, John Furlong, Joe Ollmann, Chester Brown, Nicola Winstanley, Elisa Amado, Mélanie Watt, and more.

FEATURES

On poetry and prose
Two of B.C.’s leading poets – Susan Musgrave and Lorna Crozier – discuss writing, self-doubt, and Al Purdy’s birthday cake

Special report on B.C. publishing
Industry newcomer Randal Macnair brings new life to Oolichan Books; B.C. BookWorld’s Alan Twigg on surviving lean times; New Society carves out a distinctive niche in D&M’s growing eco-book empire; B.C. booksellers find solidarity at this year’s provincial book fair

Rough cuts
A year after the Department of Canadian Heritage slashed funding for small-run periodicals, many venerable literary magazines are struggling to adapt

FRONTMATTER
Clark Blaise’s return to form
An insider’s take on the collapse of H.B. Fenn and Company
Snapshot: Books for Business CEO Sean Neville
Best short stories: Alexander MacLeod on Alice Munro
Cover to cover: Gil Adamson’s Ashland
Guest opinion: Carmine Starnino on rebooting the CanLit canon
Kirstie McLellan Day’s hockey-book hat trick

REVIEWS
Up Up Up by Julie Booker
Patriot Hearts: Inside the Olympics That Changed a Country by John Furlong with Gary Mason
Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann
Paying for It by Chester Brown
Touch by Alexi Zentner
Esther: The Remarkable True Story of Esther Wheelwright, Puritan Child, Native Daughter, Mother Superior by Julie Wheelwright
Underground by Anatanas Sileika
PLUS more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Cinnamon Boy by Nicola Winstanley; Janice Nadeau, illus.
What Are You Doing? by Elisa Amado; Manuel Monroy, illus.
You’re Finally Here! by Mélanie Watt
Banjo of Destiny by Cary Fagan
PLUS more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE Q&Q/BOOKNET CANADA BESTSELLERS

THE LAST WORD
Cynthia Holz on a writer’s search for inspiration between novels

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Publishing: not always a downer

There’s some funny book stuff floating around the internets today. Lest the trolls be confused or angered by humour, this is indeed an attempt to offer some Friday afternoon levity:

Eye Weekly columnist Sarah Nicole Prickett defends Chapters as her favourite bland non-space to rest without people judging her:

They don’t complain about how many magazines I’ve read for free and possibly ripped things from. They don’t look askance at my taste. Their eyebrows don’t say, “Oh, you’re just getting into Murakami now?” They make no suggestions, having nothing to prove; they work at Chapters. “Are you sure you want The Paris Review?” says absolutely nobody to me. “What about The Believer?” I never feel like I have to buy anything, the way I do everywhere else books are sold, as though upon walking in I’ve been handed a bucket, and now I must scoop out my share of the water to prevent us all from drowning. Not here. This ship will float on.

Those crazy kids at CBC Radio’s Day Six provide us with an audio track of Giller winners reading from Snooki’s debut novel, A Shore Thing:

Linden “Giller Gorilla” MacIntyre is a journalist with CBC’s The Fifth Estate, the winner of eight Gemini Awards, an International Emmy, and the 2009 Giller Prize for his novel, The Bishop’s Man.

Johanna “Skib-WOWW” Skibsrud is the 2010 Giller winner for The Sentimentalists, and the author of several collections of poetry.

The New York Times points to a project by a group of history teachers with an inventive and bizarre way to engage students. They produce music videos for altered versions of their favourite songs that replace the original lyrics with lyrics based on classic books and historical figures. Witness – for serious -  “Jenny From the Block” as Mary, Queen of Scots.

Daily book biz round-up: Amazon’s bombshell, Kafka exposed, and more

• The news that e-books have topped hardcover sales at Amazon is rocking the publishing world…
• … But MobyLives questions some of the figures
• Andrew Nikiforuk becomes The Tyee‘s first writer-in-residence (via Canadian Magazines)
• Frank Kafka archive opened to prying eyes
• Disgraced historian Orlando Figes settles over fake Amazon reviews
• The BookLiberator allows every citizen to launch a Google-style mass digitization scheme

The publishing industry: this week in quotes

“Many people in the beleaguered industry are hoping that [The Apple Tablet] will do for reading what the iPod and iTunes did for music. A survey among booksellers claimed that an Apple e-reader would one of the main factors that will help push digital publishing forward.” – Thomas Rogers via Salon.com

“The fact is: My septuagenarian mother is delighted with her first-generation Kindle and my sixty-something-year-old mother-in-law is delighted with her Kindle 2 and my 14-year-old nephew is delighted with his iPod touch…If I were to guess, out of all the aforementioned people who already own devices, the only one likely to spend money on an upgraded device anytime soon will be my teenage nephew. That’s not a very large percentage of current owners willing to re-invest in this newest generation of devices, the ones we’ll be hearing about over the next week.” – Edward Nawotka, in an editorial on publishingperspectives.com

“Writing about writing is the best way I know to discover what I think about a book and what I think about what other people think about it. Sometimes reviews bring new readers and sometimes they don’t. Tony Hoaglund’s book Donkey Gospel published by Graywolf didn’t receive one review yet became widely read. A positive or opinionated review in the NYTBR can bring many readers, but reviews in smaller magazines do not have much effect.” – poet Emily Warn, on Lemon Hound

“I spend an inordinate amount of time doing nothing. I don’t even think it can be called daydreaming.” - Joyce Carol Oates, via Paris Review.

“I’m beginning to see just how irrelevant our prejudices about new technology really are. Books are wonderful partly because they have been an unchanging corner of our lives in a world that thrusts change on us every day. But anything that reassures us by being constant should also make us anxious, because there are no exceptions anymore — everything is being transformed in the digital age.” – Peter Scowen on the Globe‘s book blog

Bookmarks: Apple Tablet rumours, books banned on airplanes, and more

A few bookish links from across the Web:

• The rumoured Apple Tablet comes closer to reality: the new product, potentially called “iSlate,” is expected to be unveiled on Jan. 26 in San Francisco
• Danger! Apparently, books and magazines pose a security threat to airplanes. They have been banned as carry-ons by Transport Canada until further notice
• Hobbit-lovers, mount your high horses: The Guardian’s Andrew Brown turns his blog into “a place to discuss the literary demerits of Lord of the Rings”
• The Onion on adults who get slightly overexcited by children’s picture books, including the gem Green Man, Blue Cat
• Katherine Paterson, author of The Bridge to Terabithia, has been named the national ambassador for young people’s literature in the U.S.

New Yorker cans short fiction issue

On December 4, Douglas Hunter published an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail suggesting that the annual CBC literary smackdown known as Canada Reads is biased against non-fiction:

I think it’s super that Canadian novelists and short-story writers are getting another annual boost from the Mother Corp. I just find it discouraging that we seem to think serious, memorable reading only involves fiction. Canada Reads has not once in nine years included a non-fiction title. Were a celebrity participant to defend Ken McGoogan’s Lady Franklin’s Revenge or Ken Dryden’s The Game, I’d keel over in a dead faint.

The CBC is not alone in its bias. Non-fiction remains a second-class literary citizen in the Great White North.

Whether this ingrained national bias actually exists is open to debate (Quillblog would like to point out that non-fiction consistently outsells fiction in this country); the same is apparently not true south of the 49th parallel. WWDMedia today reports that The New Yorker has decided to pull the plug on its second fiction issue of the year (the first one appeared in the early summer) and instead publish a “world changers” issue, which hits stands this week.

“I think one is enough for the time being,” said editor David Remnick of dropping a fiction issue. “We’ll still continue to publish fiction every week. I think we’re one of the last magazines that does.”

And apparently the decision to replace the fiction issue sits well with advertisers:

Ad pages rose more than 50 percent for the issue, making it the biggest of the year. Chanel, Prada, and Louis Vuitton are among the fashion advertisers and the automotive category has seven more pages than last year, thanks to BMW, Acura, Ford, Cadillac, and Toyota. Total ad pages for “world changers” is almost 69, compared with 45 for last year’s winter fiction issue.

Bookmarks: Four magazines die, a classic threatened (again), and the two-timing ways of Archie Andrews

Bookish links from around the Web:

• The foodie bride’s lament: Condé Nast-owned magazines Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride, and Modern Bride all cease publication
• More book banning madness: Toronto parent wants Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird off the Toronto District School Board’s curriculum
• Speaking of writers from the American South, Reuters assures us that Maya Angelou is not dead
• Big Love, Riverdale style: Archie Andrews is set to propose to Betty after wedding her snooty rival, Veronica
• Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero could be adapted for the stage
• Your daily laugh, courtesy of McSweeney’s: introducing the Kindle Gutenberg Bookreader

Barnes & Noble launches world’s biggest e-book store

U.S. mega-chain Barnes & Noble announced in a press release yesterday the creation of the world’s biggest e-book store comprising “more than 700,000 titles, including hundreds of new releases and bestsellers at only $9.99.” Unlike Amazon’s Kindle-only e-books, e-books purchased through B&N’s store will be compatible with a number of platforms (aside from the Kindle, of course): iPhone, BlackBerry, and most Windows and Mac computers. Through a partnership with Google Books, the B&N e-book store will also offer more than 500,000 free and downloadable public domain e-books.

B&N als announced an exclusive agreement to provide e-books for the forthcoming Plastic Logic e-reader, a device that is geared toward business professionals. From Fortune:

Plastic Logic vice president of business development Daren Benzi says his device is geared for business travelers, and as such will support the display of PDF files, Microsoft’s MS Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, as well as newspapers and magazines. But e-books are a big part of the game plan. “Will we carry every single one of those 700,000-plus titles? I don’t know. We’ll announce that as we get further along,” said Benzi. “But we will have access to them all.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, The Book Oven analyzes how B&N’s move will affect the e-book market.

BC Book and Magazine Week

It’s almost time again for BC Book and Magazine Week (BCBMW), the province’s week-long celebration of all things literary. Founded in 1999, the festival takes place at multiple locations across B.C., from Victoria to Vancouver to Kelowna. BC Book & Magazine Week runs from April 18 to 25. Most events are free. A sampling:

BOOK LAUNCH: FIST OF THE SPIDER WOMAN: TALES OF FEAR AND QUEER DESIRE
Arsenal Pulp Press and Xtra! West present the launch of the highly anticipated queer woman’s horror erotica anthology, Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Queer Fear and Desire, edited by Amber Dawn. Readings and books signings by Vancouver contributors Mette Bach, Kestrel Barns, Larissa Lai, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Amanda Lamarche and Amber Dawn.

MAGAZINE CABARETS IN VICTORIA, VANCOUVER, KELOWNA, AND PRINCE GEORGE
In Victoria, BCAMP [BC Association of Magazine Publishers] and The Malahat Review present a literary cabaret featuring M.A.C. Farrant, Michael Kenyon, Arleen Paré, Madeline Sonik, and Yasuko Thanh, who will read from their work recently published in B.C. magazines. In Vancouver, BCAMP and subTerrain magazine present a literary cabaret featuring Timothy Taylor, Paul Carlucci, Emily Kendy, penny k-kilthau, Alex Leslie, and Diane Tucker. In Kelowna, BCAMP and off-centre magazine present a literary cabaret featuring Adam Lewis Schroeder, Heidi Garnett, Ryan May, and Shelley Wood. And, in Prince George, BCAMP presents a literary cabaret featuring Rob Budde, Dee Horne, Sarah de Leeuw, Betsy Trumpeter, and Gillian Wigmore.

BOOK LAUNCH: THE VERSE MAP OF VANCOUVER, EDITED BY VANCOUVER’S INAUGURAL POET LAUREATE GEORGE McWHIRTER, PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEREK VON ESSEN
Join Anvil Press for the launch of The Verse Map of Vancouver, a full-colour publication – Vancouver’s neighbourhoods in verse by a myriad of local poets accompanied by Derek von Essen’s stunning photography.

More information can be found at the festival’s website.