Internet or Internot? - Joop Bersee

The discussion whether to publish on the internet or not will continue for some time, say two generations, then the dust will settle. The pieces of the puzzle still have to find their right positions.

With computers being part of the world of publishing, it is not a surprising outcome. Online publishing is still very new compared to the centuries of using paper and ink to manufacture a book. We have to get used to this new medium. In South Africa internet publishing has only made its first steps. It rattles and shakes the established way of publishing. So the mud throwing began and it will continue till we know better.

The self-publishing of hard copies has been attacked in the same way. If internots (those who don’t like self-publishing on the internet) were interested in literature they would welcome the alternative options to publishing because publishers are often tied hand and foot to their bank accounts. A publisher must make a profit. This means that manuscripts, no matter how good the contents, are turned down because there is no market for them. The internots also claim that the flood of online publishing will corrupt our literary taste. This same argument was being used a few hundred years ago when machines were invented to print books in large quantities. This was not seen as an advantage as a lot of bad writing would be in mass circulation (have heard that before).

Printing in England in the seventeenth century was distrusted, restricted and considered to breed seditious libel. Printing was only allowed in London, Oxford and Cambridge. It was printing and learning that brought disobedience, heresy and sects. Printing had divulged them. Even in this century writing poetry using a computer is seen as an evil deed. You do not write poetry using a computer! Believe it or not, but that is the opinion of a well known South African poet.

The fact that good manuscripts are turned down because there is not enough of a market for them should make these gatekeepers/internots/editors/publishers concerned. Strangely enough this is not the case. We thought that the problem was solved by using self-publications, blogs and websites. But their gate-keeping attitude tells us what is good for us and what isn’t.

If the gatekeepers do their work so well, why has the literary connoisseur been relentlessly bombarded with 375-million Harry Potter books? Thanks a lot. You have done us a great favour. Are you feeding this to your kids? I don’t have to mention other crap books which no one buys and will eventually rot away on shelves or disappear into recycling.

We’ll publish our work the way we want to. Mainline publishers try to silence countless voices which will go into history no matter what. This freedom allows authors to produce books that are more expressive, for wonderful books to be written that would never have been considered by the mainstream publishing houses. In the end, it comes down to what authors want.

I publish all my work on my website and have done so for a number of years. I must have done something right as I was approached, a few years ago by the National English Literary Museum (NELM) in Grahamstown for a copy of one of my A4 self-publications in a nice plastic folder, a so-called hardcopy. I must have been really lucky because someone wrote a positive review. In total I have been approached three times by NELM asking for hardcopies of my self-published, online (only) work. So was that a mistake on their side, or do online publishers have something worthwhile to offer?

Other Voices (USA) approached me for a few of my drawings from my website complete with the captions underneath. First they would publish it online and then it would be published in a book. I was also approached by the editor of Sibila, a Brazilian e-zine/journal for a drawing and two poems from my site. This would have been impossible if my work was in print only.

A few of my poems were published online by Poets against War founded by poet Sam Hamill after refusing Laura Bush’s invite to read poetry at the White House. Another site called War Post which began as a research weblog for the Ford Scholar Program at Vassar College USA used a few of my poems on Poets against War for their site. Amateurish rubbish perhaps, according to the internots, but I find myself surrounded by poets such as Dunya Mikhail, Harold Pinter, Robert Pinsky and Adrienne Rich, among others.

Finally, after visiting my site, someone in India asked for my permission to translate a few poems into Malayalam, and ended up translating sixty poems which were published in a book. Quite a number of poems were also published in magazines.

We all know that a writer needs exposure. Magazines and journals have their limits when it comes to exposure. Only the subscribers will read the poet’s work and the issues disappear on shelves. Literary magazines have a limited lifespan, and then they are gone, but online, you can potentially keep reaching readers. A website can advertise itself using search engines and its archives are only a few clicks of the mouse away. The readers are not trapped on an address list. Online sites get readers from all over the world, readers and publishers perhaps looking for new poets, writers of short stories etc. And you can lead others to your work once it is online.

I take my hat off to the smaller literary paper-based publishers who despite the wrestling to find funds continue to publish what they think they have to. Often they have a blog or site to advertise their publications. It is great when the reader can sample a few poems online. They too publish what does not bring them a great fortune. Their treasure is the words they found. And I thank them for that.

Joop Bersee

Check out Joop’s poetry on http://www.joopbersee.com/

Kiss

Coming up short

In 1998, a curious incident took place in South African publishing. Writer and editor Chris van Wyk had met with a Danish organisation called South African Contact, which suggested compiling an anthology of short fiction by local writers reflecting their responses to the relatively new democracy.

Van Wyk contacted a number of writers, the stories were compiled, the writers were paid . . . and then the anthology couldn't find a publisher in South Africa...Read more here.

An argument for self-publishing - Joop Bersee

Should one self-publish or not? Some believe self-published works range from being second class at best to plain rubbish at worst. It has been said that self-published works are all crap and that those who self-publish are basically publishing books not good enough to be published through established publishers. In fact one could turn this around and point out that there have been many books published by the "recognised" publishers that should never have been allowed to see the light of day! The same thing can of course be said about self-publishing - at times it is great, at times it is not. But self-publishing is not a form of literary masturbation.

Self-published does not have to mean unedited. People that self-publish can get others, perhaps friends who write as well, to read their work beforehand. Or the poems in the publication have perhaps already been published by poetry journals. So it does not always mean no third party has seen the publication before it is released on the unsuspecting public! The author can follow the same road as those who use a publisher to get their work out there.

The idea that self-published books can not count in the greater scheme of things or that it is unimportant is simply wrong. Especially in the South African context. There are many "undiscovered" authors in South Africa who can't find publishers to put their work out simply because they ARE unknown. Some authors might be hot from the start, others need time to build up steam. Whether we are speaking of poetry, prose, folklore, the short story, plays or novels, to deny the reader of potential books/authors in this way is wrong. Let the reader make up their own mind. But let it be published, one way or the other.

Not all South African publishers are looking for the possible gem among the dross, they are interested in making money. It is as simple at that - they have a business to run. Profit margins make the decisions! If they come across a new author and recognise that they are good but the genre is wrong for them (i.e. they don't think it will sell in big numbers) then they simply do not publish the book. These authors are then after a while forced to go the self-publishing route. It comes down to paying a publisher money to have your book printed. He doesn't care what it is, as long as you pay. Or printing on the home/library/a friend's printer and getting it out to the public. If you, as the reader, pick up one of these self-published works and don't like it then you simply don't buy it. When I go to a bookstore and see a book I might be interested in I first read chunks here and there.

Often with self-published authors the driving force is that they believe they have something to say and so it is not financial gain that is driving them but the desire to share their writing with the general public. It lies in the satisfaction of being heard and not in making a profit out of the book. In fact the opposite is true - many self-published publications end up costing the author more than they can re-coup from the sales they get.

The arguments for and against self-publication can be pretty heated. Who is right? Is there any hope of a compromise? I believe so! If we accept there are many authors out there that want to be heard and have a right to be heard, we also need to accept that there is good and bad, excellent and crap. Is there a need to have a middle road? No. Just publish and let it fly. The reader will decide what to read. Stuff that sucks has a long shelf life: it will stay on the shelf. We are in an advisory capacity. Please, no censorship like in the apartheid days. The writer could go to a writing workshop or a writing course to improve skills. Personally, I never was taught how to write poetry. I just started writing and hey, guess what, the first few poems I ever wrote were published by a poetry magazine and I was asked to read the poems they accepted. Within six weeks or so I was published and had read my work in public.

Without help it leaves the "unknown" authors floundering around, trying hard, only to be told they are not "proper" authors. It is might be the reason for someone to quit all together and this may be the greater wrong!

Joop Bersee

Check out Joop's poetry at www.joopbersee.com

Drawing 9

Profit before knowledge

As a teenager one of my favourite fictional characters was Gordon Comstock, the rather threadbare poet from George Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying. I loved reading about the bookstore he worked in, and since then I held a belief that people who worked in bookstores were literary-minded, if not actually writers themselves.

In the past few years that illusion has been shattered - at least as far as South Africa's national bookstore chain Exclusive Books is concerned. Firstly, it was the experience of overhearing a customer asking a sales assistant at one branch if (oddly enough) 1984 was in stock, to which the assistant replied by asking:"Do you know the name of the author?" Then, at another branch, spotting Waiting for Godot stocked in the fiction section and finding a book of poetry located under western philosophy. A friend had enquired at yet another branch whether it had any travel books about Andalusia, and the assistant had replied:"What is that?" And just recently at a fourth branch I found a play that my own press had published displayed in the fiction section.

Granted, these could be dismissed as isolated incidents, and I admit that in the past year I did enjoy a chat with a sales assistant about Hunter S Thompson. But deteriorating product knowledge is becoming part and parcel of the retail sector in South Africa. For example, I recently encountered a sales assistant at a CD chain store who had never heard of Eric Clapton.

So, as far as bookstores are concerned, are we soon going to have sales assistants who do not know the authors of Sons and Lovers, To The Lighthouse, or Oliver Twist? This might be the case already - and I am too afraid put it to the test.

After all, South African bookstores, both large and small, are, with a handful of exceptions, not lovers of literature. Between a clothing store and a bookstore, the sole difference is the product. They are retailers in business to make a profit. It's not about the quality of the content, it's about the packaging and its potential to generate revenue.

But it is precisely product knowledge that enhances sales revenue, not ignorance. I've been amused by the reports that Waterstone's in the UK is looking into making their staff wear uniforms. I don't care about whether staff wear uniforms - all I want are staff who have a comprehensive knowledge of what they are selling and putting on the shelves.

After all, in a country such as South Africa, which is still facing a tremendous challenge in reducing illiteracy and is trying to develop a reading culture, bookstores, at the very least, should be setting an example.

(First published in The Bookseller, March issue)

Drawing 8

Anti-consumerist poet with a Luddite bent

A review of 876 by Fox, Third Word Publishing, Johannesburg

This first collection by Johannesburg poet Fox shows his work is as powerful on the page as it is in performance. Fox’s concerns and themes become apparent from the first poem, as he addresses issues of status-driven consumerism, our demands for instant gratification, oppression, the abuse of power, damage to the environment and threats not only to the survival of humanity, but to the planet itself.

Fox’s work is also characterised by an intense energy of language, and experimentation with language, often joining words or engaging in free association, word play and irregular, disruptive punctuation.

The first poem, fast, begins: “fastfood-god, i. have nomore language with me/dead people live/fast-asleep in the fastlane beside me”.

Fox’s poetry is inhabited by images of fast food, TV, cellphones, taxis, megabytes, rain forests and obsessions with money and power.

It is not poetry created in a study, but rather in the bustling streets, as in the poem 154 Market Str, Johannesburg: “Everybody knows — a train in or out of Joburg/is Guerilla warfare, though the glass is harder/than any you would see through, the only/rabbits are those in your headlights”.

Fox mocks, and perhaps laments, our obsession with technology. The poem, If I had a hammer, opens with the lines: “If I had a hammer/&cellphone/I would ring the changes, I would walk in on the president/demanding a precedent”.

In The Gimp Wars, Fox makes it clear how his world view differs from those wishing to climb the corporate ladder: “Ive got my own directive, but management dont care for that/management want a scatter-brained scaredy/cat, someone to fuck and smile & walk the extra mile for assholes”.

He criticises a civilisation brainwashed by TV, as in his poem Remote generation, commenting on people passively “still sitting still/thumbing through/channels,/breast fed on Americanism all morning and oprah winfreedom/fighting phantoms/in Afghanistan”.

He believes people are willing themselves into slavery, as in USER interface: “Our little machines cook in our brains/Little alarm bells give little warning/ Our demise/their control/what can be done has been done”.

In 6 Billion Copies Sold, we are confronted by a world driven by consumerism, where the corporate powers focus on making goods “cheaper, breakable, instantly replaceable/useless, nonredeemable, cash sale no refundable”.

There is concern for the environment, as in his poem BraZillion Rain Forest, and the awareness that greed and power are often the culprits.

There is also, despite the poems’ strong focus on contemporary issues, a frequent look at prehistory, as in the poem, in the footsteps of the satellites, which begins: “funny how we found all those dinosaurs by following muddy/footprints through glacial marshes to their bed in the lime,/ sleeping sweetly as if they never once had teeth as long as my arm/ and a gut full of my ancestors”.

One section of poems in the collection is dated September 10 2001, the day before the World Trade Centre attacks. They carry a sense of impending disaster for a corrupt and power-crazed civilisation intent on “mass producing these weapons of self destruction”.

This seems to be what the title 876 implies — the final stages of a countdown.

The collection also contains a long poem, PRESS DRUK, about a train journey from Johannesburg to Grahamstown, much of it reading like notes, or a montage of fleeting impressions, again undertaking an irreverent critique of technology.

On a local note, Fox criticises the newly emerging black elite in the poem No work: “New money for No work —/black exec in a white merc” while “a distant housing development/looms largely in the future/people walk to work in dirt/ride home in the rain”.

Another poem is a furious tirade against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe: “monarch of faceless dogs and/ patron of filth, you wretched waste of black skin”.

The collection also contains quieter and more gentle poems, such as Lettered Curves or love you like, though it is in such poems that Fox occasionally produces weak, almost trite, lines, as in the poem, empty the sea, which opens: “empty the sea of the blue sky/wash the waters sterile white,/ at night the moon will swim/alone while we cast our eyes/along her naked form”.

But Fox is a strong, vibrant and original voice in contemporary South African poetry and 876 is an invaluable collection.

First published in The Weekender, April 12 2008

Drawing 7

So now that you've published a book, how do you promote it?

The nuts and bolts of publishing a book may prove difficult first time around, or even after several titles. Even well-established commercial publishers are not excluded from the trials of a messed-up publication that takes time to correct. But once a book has been published, the next challenge is to ensure that it can be sold in order for you, as a publisher, to not only recover your costs, but also hopefully to make a profit as well.

Irrespective of your means of distribution, whether you wish to do it yourself or employ a distribution agent, you have to generate awareness that the book has been published and is available for sale. You therefore need to promote the book.

On immediate publication, a book can be promoted in several ways. If you have managed to create a mailing list, you can send out a mass mailer drawing attention to the publication. In addition to obvious details such as the title of the book and the author, you should include a small description of the book, supply the ISBN, indicate the number of pages, as well as quote any short blurbs that you may have included on the back cover. If it is a book of poetry, you might want to include a short poem from the collection, or an extract from a longer poem. Most importantly, you need to indicate where the book will be available from (and from what date, roughly) and an estimated retail price. If you have a website, you can also advertise it online.

A common and often effective way to promote a book is to organise a launch. There are several possible venues you can select as a launch, such as a bookstore, a community centre, an art gallery, a university or even a restaurant. You might be able to organise the venue free of charge, though some may charge a rental fee. It is best to organise snacks and drinks for your guests, and you may want to invite a guest speaker. For a small venue, it may not be necessary to organise a microphone, but for a bigger venue, this is preferable.

If you are going to read from the book, keep it short. If you have published a book of poems, maybe read about 4 or 5 short poems – don’t, as I have witnessed on one occasion, read the entire book!

Organise the event at a time that will be suitable for most people. Organising a launch at 5pm rush-hour is not the wisest, nor should you leave it till later in the evening. A time at about 6.30pm – 7pm is best. If you want to organise a launch for the weekend, select a Saturday. Sundays should be avoided.

You can invite guests to the launch by sending out a mass mailer electronically, by normal post, or both, depending on how much money you have budgeted. In addition to friends, family and interested parties, also make a point of sending invites to the media, particularly those publications or radio stations that have book pages or programmes.

A word of caution, though. While you obviously want to draw attention to your book in order to generate sales, you are once again investing money. Book sales at launches are usually good, but this is not guaranteed. You also may be disappointed at the number of people who attend, so avoid over-catering. Remember it is a book launch you are organising, not a party with free food and drink!

Also be sure that you have an adequate number of copies of the book to sell at the launch – in fact, ensure that you have copies to sell at all. Even commercial publishers have found themselves in panic-stricken situations where the launch date has arrived and due to delays at the printers books have not arrived. There have been occasions when the books have arrived at launch venues only about half-an-hour before the starting time.

Another common means of promoting a book is to send review copies to newspapers, magazines, literary journals, radio or even TV stations. Send a review copy with a press release to the respective books editor, containing similar information to that suggested for the mass mailer.

Remember however that, in South Africa particularly, books editors on newspapers and magazines usually have very limited space, and they are not obligated to review your book. Also don’t nag editors to review your publications. Commercial publishers may employ the services of a book publicist to undertake such tasks but for an independent publisher you would probably just irritate the editor. The same applies to radio and TV programmes.

Should your book be reviewed in print, create a clippings file, not only for your own records, but also to assist your distributor – or yourself – when approaching bookstores for orders. Evidence that a book has received publicity in the media assists a purchasing manager in deciding whether to purchase a book, and if so, in what quantities.

(Originally published as Dye Hard Press newsletter 8)

A new elitism?

A few weeks back, the South African newspaper The Weekender carried a story by William Skidelsky called 'Bloggers throw down the gauntlet'. According to the story, there has been a bit of a war between newspaper book reviewers and bloggers in the UK, with figures such as academic and book reviewer John Sutherland criticising literary blogs as leading to a "degradation of literary taste". When novelist Susan Hill hit back at such remarks on her blog, a newspaper books editor told her that "no book either published or written by you will in future be reviewed on our literary pages"....Read more here

Where we go

Fuck War - Claude Pelieu

A provocative work by French poet and collagist Claude Pelieu, who died in 2002.

On the edge

Drawing 6

Sinclair and the Great Dane

I am searching for André Gide and have been told he is staying with Sinclair Beiles, so I go to Sinclair’s house in Raleigh Street, Yeoville. It’s been years since I have been out this way, but even so, after I knock on the door, Sinclair answers quite friendly and says, “Gide doesn’t live here anymore. I think he’s staying at a flophouse – he went loony, you know.”

Then we talk about TS Eliot. Sinclair says: “Bob Kaufman was the only beat poet to really admire the work of Eliot. He was particularly enthusiastic about Murder in the Cathedral. The others hated Eliot because of his conservatism. It was a terrible, misguided narrow-mindedness.”

Sinclair is giving a series of presentations about the Beat Hotel in large lecture hall next to a synagogue, so I agree to meet him there later.

On the way to the hall, a neighbour stops me to complain that Sinclair’s dog has damaged his garden and demands that we drag the dog into the lecture hall, present it to Sinclair, and get the dog to confess its wrongdoing. The dog is a huge, intimidating Great Dane but is nevertheless nervous ands trembling, knowing it is in trouble.

So we drag the terrified, whimpering dog through the hall up to the lecture stand, where it knocks a glass of water all over Sinclair’s papers.

Published in New Coin, Volume 43, No 1 – June 2007. The issue also contains an interview with Beiles that I conducted in 1994.
To order copies of New Coin or to subscribe, Please write to Carol Leff (C.Leff@ru.ac.za) at the Institute for the Study of English in Africa for details.