On The Inside

Down in the bookfair, we are with hundreds of our own kind, and none of us is exactly alike: easy to recognize long-established magazines, others with major/minor redesigns, brand new and emerging presses and journals, letterpresses, and handmade books. We are part of an audience of thousands at the AWP Bookfair, with a repeated thread between tables: we lost a position, our budget was significantly reduced, we may be shutdown, we may have to shut down, we’re waiting to hear if we’ll get another issue out . . .

It’s not that we go into this venture imagining we are about to move in with the Legendary Cash and Fame Creature over there on Easy Street. We know better, and we know it’s crazy-brave and full of life to say Yes to that which we know will have its heartbreaking moments, precarious edges, and immeasurable workloads. We know what we’re signing up for, and  we are not fools, after all. We know that what we’re doing matters outside of ourselves, and even outside of our time, thus it simply must be done.

So when there are thousands of people buying (reading, and sending work to) magazines and books from literary presses–independent, university-affiliated, and the majority of them “small”–it is difficult to ignore the predominant sense that support is dwindling.

This begs a million questions, not the least of which revolve around the “future of print” publishing, or about the reputations small presses and journals can bring to the institutions that support them, or about the economic feasibility of launching/sustaining such a venture, or about the required manpower,  and we are not going to take any of this on just now, but we want to open it up, say what we see, point at what we’re thinking.