Here’s more from my working paper ”Thinking Thru the Future of Publishing” from 50 years ago. Your may want to substitute “email” or the like for “photocopy.”

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As I wrote at the time:

Good Soviet writers, boxed out of publication at home by the official writers’ union, produce Samizdat or “self-published” editions that are hand-copied or mimeographed and passed under the table, sometimes as novels & volumes of poetry that sell for $50 or so a copy & are surreptitiously sold on street corners, often at personal risk from hand to hand.

Cheap photocopying opens an easier means of doing the same thing.

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A turning point: How do we turn these obstacles to our advantage? How do we plan our strategies around the status quo?

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As hinted earlier, the adventurous writer is often boxed out of circulation, as commercial and even university presses contend there is no money for poetry or fiction when they make no deep effort to nurture what they have. There is also a problem that there are generally few bookstores, & that more than 25 percent of all trade books sold in the nation are sold in the NYC area, where about 5 percent of the national population lives. It should also be noted that throughout much of the rest of the country, the bookstores that do exist are generally of a general sort, with very few stores devoted to special interests. Thus, it should be no surprise that San Francisco should be a major center of poetry, since there are a number of bookstores specializing in poetry there & PUBLISHING THEIR OWN SMALL editions.

In political science we face the same problem: It is very difficult to circulate to potential audiences. The high cost of most publication excludes small-circulation working papers, in most situations, altho Workshop is an exception. (And even here, the case is limited.)

To get into the professional journals requires time (delays of six months to a year being not uncommon), often followed by rejection. In addition, there are often the high costs (again) of typing & mailing, & the common need to revise to fit the particular styles & needs of specific journals.

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Unlike many of the little magazines publishing poetry & fiction, which are often a personal thing carried out by an individual editor at his own expense for several issues, until the venture collapses under continued losses, the social science field appears to be frequently supported by professional associations or the prestige of particular schools. (Altho PG informs me this is not always the case; cf, Policy Studies Journal.)

Given the increasing appearance of photocopy “rip-offs,” will subsidy of artists/researchers become increasingly necessary?

In recent years federal money has helped to underwrite a number of little mags. Given the increasing use of photocopy subsidy of artists become increasingly necessary?

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NN has mentioned that in chemistry, at least, a number of highly specialized journals are now being circulated & stored on microfiche. The approximate cost is 25 cents, altho the user must have access to a $200 reader. However, as NN points out, this should not be a problem for scientists willing to pay $600 for a calculator.

While scientists may possibilities of progress such as this, microfiche does have the disadvantage that it must be read at the reader: one cannot curl up in a cozy chair to read it by the fireside.

Also, because of its small size, the ability to steal such units becomes increasingly easy, unless libraries install elaborate request & check-out procedures for its use. (Use of the Lilly Library, with its padded doors, electronic locks, page users cards left in the stacks wherever books are removed, may be a good indication of the type of system necessary to sharply prevent theft.)

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In poetry at least, for those few interested “in the feel of typescript,” one alternative is to issue single poems in broadside form, on large sheets carefully printed, using fine art paper & limited editions. Such versions, suitable for framing signed by the poet, often cost between one and 10 dollars.

Special editions of books can be arranged the same way, as collect items. be enthusiastic over the systems & group can be arranged the same way, as rich collector’s items.

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On another hand, limited experiments have been performed in which groups of poets or novelists have banded together to get works into print. By forming a cooperative, in which a number of participant/patrons each contributes $200 or so to a common kitty, which is used to ensure the publication costs, the underwrite the costs of production until sales have replenished the kitty. A set of common pool rules is established, in which any one member can recoup his share of the fund at the time he decides to withdraw from the effort. A common committee is established to determine which works should be published.

In one case, a group of fiction writers in NYC have operated this way to produce a series of novels that have been distributed by one of the publishing houses (Dial?). So far, all of their volumes have sold out in the first edition, somewhere in the range of 8,000 to 10,000 copies.

In the other case, a group of poets in Minnesota, headed by Robert Bly, a widely respected & published poet, have banded together to issue a series of low-cost Minnesota-area poets, many of whom generally unknown. Because many of these writers do not yet have enough solid material to fill an entire volume on their own, the volumes have often been split between two or more poets. are young & generally unknown.

The circle has found enough of a market, including cultivation of high school libraries in the state, to make ends meet in their project.

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The potential exists for such a method among the Public Choice circles. I do not know what the legal situation concerning such an arrangement would be, but we can discuss that. I would assume that we would have to set up some sorts of arrangements outside of the university structure if we were to operate in this manner. I don’t know.

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Stay tuned for next week to see where this thinking leads.

You can find my works in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain them.

Returning to my working paper, ”Thinking Thru the Future of Publishing” from 50 years ago, I’ll admit much of the material will be ancient history for many readers, but it does reflect some trends that have been amplifying in the aftermath. And don’t laugh at the prices mentioned. Hey, I was still typing away on my IBM Selectric at work and my Olivetti Editor 2 at home – typewriters of the advanced electric sort, kiddos!

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As I wrote then:

There has been a growing situation in recent years concerning the DISTRIBUTION end of circulating ideas. I have seen this in three major areas, as a kind of illustration:

• Film
• Publishing
• Music

We have read of the problem of film directors who have objected to the mutilations imposed by film distributors. Furthermore, many of the directors have voiced opposition to the distributors’ claim that most films are not profitable (there is, for example, a wide discrepancy between the figures given to the producers & directors of a film & the figures given to Variety and other trade publications concerning the actual box office receipts of a given film). So the producers/directors of a film are faced with two problems: getting their film into theaters outside of NYC & a few other large cities, & getting an honest accounting of the return on their investment (artistic & financial).

In music — especially popular music — the situation is much the same. Fewer & fewer broadcasters are playing recordings that are not on the Top 40 — or, increasingly, the top 20 or 30. This means that new groups have little chance of being heard. If they aren’t heard, it is difficult for their records to sell. If their records don’t sell, it is even harder for them to be heard.

In publishing, what is happening is this: more & more publishing houses are becoming parts of large conglomerates, many of which own two or more of the biggest houses. CBS & ITT, for example, have both bought heavily into the established publishing concerns. Their corporate outlook is rarely literary.

As a case in point, when no one else would buy the rights to LBJ’s memoires, one of CBS’ publishing subsidiaries offered a million and a half though the books produced less than $10,000 net return for the company — it seems that LBJ was a good friend of Wm Paley or Frank Stanton, the CBS chiefs, & they didn’t want their friend to be embarrassed by the low offers on his book. But who really paid for this business mistake? Not CBS. The loss undoubtedly came from those underpaid writers who are constantly told that their books don’t make very much from their publishers & who somehow keep working on, despite modest royalties of $500 or so for their novels or investigations.

What happens, then, is that the publishing field is becoming increasingly congested; the turnover of editors at the large houses is reported to be terrible, because the new owners do not & cannot know what their long-term goals are.

The other thing that happens is that, to “maximize profits.” the willingness of houses to experiment, to publish unknown authors, to publish a wide range of work — or to edit sharply — is diminished. Traditionally, publishing houses reflected the tastes or skills of one or two editors. A few volumes would be published each year, for a range of literate readers.

I’m not sure this is the case anymore, esp. with publishing costs the way they are & THE CORPORATE DEMAND FOR PROFIT.

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Returning to the threesome of music, film, & publishing, the big bottleneck appeared to be in the distribution end. Either the artist makes it big, or he doesn’t make it at all. Regional markets in all three have evaporated, altho I have reason to believe that they latently remain.

VO’s books were rejected by big houses because the publishers didn’t think the books would pass the 5,000-circulation point.

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The biggest mark-up in a work of art comes at the circulation level. For books, one-quarter to one-third often goes to the retailer. I’m not sure of what the wholesaler gets, but I do know that the author’s royalty is one of the smallest cuts in the entire cost pie.

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In finally publishing the Intellectual Crisis, VO found that the actual cost of publication was less than one dollar a copy, paperback. However, it should be noted that the volume was put out by a university publisher & may have been done at a cost much lower than by going commercial rate. (IU Publications, by the way, charges about half what any commercial printer would demand.)

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Having thought thru this far, I came upon the editor’s comments recent copy of New Letters in the IU periodicals room. He was discussing J.D. Salinger’s recent protest of the republication of a number of his early short stories, which he did not want to see in general circulation & for which he was receiving no compensation: it was purely the publisher’s profit.

The editor noted that University Microfilms, a Xerox subsidiary, has been illicitly selling microfilms of his own magazine. In fact, he was unable to sell mint sets of early editions of his magazine, because many libraries preferred the microfilm version.

The editor was also republishing some of the writings from the early editions of his magazine, when he received a notice from one large publishing house that he had violated their copyright, even though his magazine had on the work & had published it first. On the other hand, the editor noted that attempts on his part to protect copyrights held by his journal went unheeded by the large corporations.

He noted the frequent plagiarism of small magazines & publishers by the large corporations without any compensation to the little workers who feed them.

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The editor also commented on receiving photocopies of MS from submitters. He lamented the passing of the “personal relationship” between editors & writers, as they used to read the precious typed copies.

But he neglected to mention the high rate of rejection slips sent to writers, who usually submitted at their own cost, with their own self-addressed stamped envelopes, and their own precious time repaid in two or three “free” copies of the journal if successful. All in the name of “building a name.”

At 60 cents a page for typists — or the difficulty of constantly retyping pages for resubmission — the “cost” to the author becomes prohibitive. (The U.S. Postal Service has a magnificent way of mangling MSS in the mail, so that they are returned thoroughly mangled.) Because the odds are so heavily against the writer in terms of acceptance & cost, it pays him to invest five or ten cents for a photocopy, mail that, & keep the master form in case he needs to make additional copies for later submission.

The tradeoff? Technology that hurts royalties can also save labor.

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But the editor complained about the smell of photocopies vs. the good feel of typescript & paper. Ah! The literary life!

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Some editors refuse to read the Xerox copies (or, worse yet, the rubbery, ammoniated imitations), altho more & more writers are submitting Xeroxes. But some writers, knowing the long time lags & heavy rejection rate inherent in the academic/artsy publishing world, use the photocopies as a means of submitting simultaneously to many journals. Hence, the editors are leery of photocopies since they may get stuck setting a piece only to have the author pull the entry in favor of a better offer from another journal. (One way to overcome this is in the proper wording in a decent cover letter, perhaps. Or maybe actual compensation of a competitive nature.)

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New technologies cut two ways: they can increase means to circulate material (a people’s access), but they can also reduce ways to govern compensation to the creators. Especially when we get to the ease of pirate tape recordings, videotape films, or Xerox copies of published work.

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Wow, this does take me back in time. See how it develops in next week’s installment.

You can find my works in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain them.