Comments on: Losing the thread for the weave

By: Brent

Brent — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:39:54 +0000

Hey Alan,
Reviews do mean sales in most cases, but not always for the reasons you might think, i.e many imagine a review’s only purpose is to get a reader excited about a book so they buy it. But there’s lots of more invisible routes in bookselling. Libraries, for instance, especially public libraries, tend to view poetry a lot like bookstores, as kind of an afterthought since it doesn’t circulate as well as some other genres and types of material. Thus they tend to buy poetry based on reviews almost entirely, and from the distributor’s viewpoint this can seem really quite mechanical at times, and in some cases it might be rather mechanical. To keep the budget under control, a library might, for instance, purchase all the poems that won the top 10 poetry prizes (however they define that) in a given year, and every book reviewed by a major review journal (however they define that). Frequently, even if the poetry buyer has a lot of knowledge and passion, they’re not allowed to buy a book that hasn’t gotten at least one review in a widely-circulated review journal (there’s some interesting reasons for this I could bore you with, but some other time). Bookstores are similar that way: right or wrong, reviews give them confidence that there’s an audience out there, or at least gives them the impression that some kind of vetting has taken place, and perhaps more importantly saves them the time it would take to make buying decisions on some other factor.
How many copies a review helps sell depends, of course, very much on the book and the review and many other factors. If you want a chart of totally unscientific wild guesses, I’d say that for poetry Rain Taxi and Bookforum are about equivalent, worth maybe 30-80 copies, Publishers Weekly is worth maybe 60-200 copies, and something on the level of the NY Times is worth maybe 100-300. Again, this is largely pure guesswork based on some experience and a lot of talking to other poetry publishers.
But prizes are where the real triggers start to be hit, especially for library orders. I’ve heard even a nomination for a National Book Award results in maybe 2000 to 4000 copies sold.
yrs,
Brent
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:08:44 +0000

Also: as more and more poetry publishers turn Print On Demand, bookstores and distributors become reluctant to take them on, because returns aren’t possible. This is something that needs to be discussed and considered: those bestseller lists only take into account what (in this website’s case, for instance) SPD can stock.
(If I’m mistaken about any of this, please correct me!)
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By: Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:43:07 +0000

Brent–
Thanks for your comment. It’s hard to say how nefarious an agenda mainstream review publications have against poetry per se when they’re cutting back on book reviews in general, which in turn is part of the maximization of profits at all costs grinding away at every level of U.S. society. But you’re right that it’s individual effort more than almost anything that keeps poetry getting reviewed (which is why I wanted to give Albert Mobilio a shout-out). People like Joshua Clover and Stephen Burt have obviously worked hard and used their personal connections to get small press poetry reviewed in the New York Times. As someone who’s written for both large and small publications, I’d be curious to know from you how much of a difference in sales at SPD a review in the New York Times versus Rain Taxi really makes. When I look at your “poetry bestsellers” list, it seems that most of those books are bought by and within particular poetry communities, regardless of where or even if the book gets reviewed.
–Alan
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By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:52:59 +0000

Hi Alan,
I too was recently browsing mid- to late-1990s issues of Bookforum, after seeing, in a 1994 TOC, that bell hooks had reviewed a book by Ice T. Glad to see you’re blogging here, happy for your optimism about the current BF, and looking forward to seeing you next week.
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By: Brent Cunningham

Brent Cunningham — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:21:49 +0000

Very glad you’re blogging here, Alan! A discussion of the available review journals out there for non-conventional poetry is a great topic, thanks for bringing it up. In my role at Small Press Distribution I look around for places where there’s a realistic chance to get an SPD book reviewed and naturally have a lot of affection for those that do so. There’s cases like the LA Times book review, the NY Review of Books, NY Times Book Review, etc., where once in a blue moon a small press book (usually fiction or nonfiction tho) breaks through, but those usually feel like flukes. The shortlist of well-circulated print review places truly aware of the breadth of poetry publishing would probably be a short list indeed: there’s the great trio of review journals that in some ways grew directly out of the small press world, i.e. Rain Taxi, Boston Review, and the Poetry Project Newsletter. On a larger scale, Publishers Weekly in my opinion still does a fairly respectable job periodically paying attention to small press poetry (especially given that they’re the trade journal for bookstores and mostly spend space on books that will sell thousands of copies for stores, and given they tried to abandon poetry reviews entirely a few years back), plus the Village Voice has had some good streaks here and there, plus Library Journal pays some attention to small press poetry every so often (tho almost none of the other library review publications seem to much care). After that, I really can only think of Bookforum and Bomb as places with wide circulation who still understand that “small press” and “experimental” poetry doesn’t mean it has less of a readership than any other kind of poetry, and who treat poetry in general as a form where culturally significant things could theoretically be said. I’d be interested if you know of any others that I’m not thinking of? Regardless, I think it’s vital to recognize that, behind the scenes at a Bookforum or any of these places, there’s almost assuredly a secret & heroic battle to keep poetry, and especially non-conventional poetry, in the publication at all, and we should all quietly thank whoever-it-is for their labors. Realistically, I think you have to view such people as struggling against a dominant ny-based literati class that tends to dismiss poetry out of hand for its relative lack of audience, perceived inaccessibility, and/or some other reasons which I’m really not entirely clear about but which I certainly sense.
yrs,
Brent
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