dumbfoundry

"Some of the concerns which had led us to initiate the Alt-Gen promotion were echoed in our postbag, with a number of editors referring to the financial commitment required by the Next Gen promotion. Tony Frazer, at Shearsman Books, wrote: “one of the reasons why no small presses were involved in NextGen, despite their being invited, was that they would have had to contribute £600 per poet promoted, with a slight discount for 3 authors at £1,500. In my case I would have had to generate 150-170 extra book sales just to pay for this, something which I suspect would not have happened”. Andrea Brady, at barque press, referred to the: “outrageous reading fees charged by the PBS committee” and Mary Michaels, from the single-author imprint, Sea Cow, wrote: “one reality of poetry publishing is that only the commercial houses who do it as a sideline or independent presses in receipt of good grants from public funds can commit themselves to expenditure of this kind, (risible though such sums of money may be for Cape and Picador).” Even Janet Fisher, at Smith/Doorstop (who nominated one of the selected collections, Catherine Smith’s The Butcher’s Hands) referred to the financial commitment required: “Maybe few small presses submitted in the first place because we had to commit to paying £600 for the promotion! I sort of assumed we wouldn’t be chosen, so submitted quite happily. What a shock. We won’t recover £600 in sales.” There was concern, too, about the demand for 7 copies of each title, and for the paperwork involved in nominating collections: Peter Lewis, at Flambard, commented: “the amount of information required by the PBS represented no problem to large publishers with big publicity departments but for small publishers it was a daunting obstacle”."

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