If you use Lulu...

I posted this in the Lulu forums. These charges have gone up since the last book I put out, but cannot be entirely explained by the increase in USPS rates.

Shorter: Poetry books are skinny and light + Lulu's packaging is heavy and mostly empty = Customer pays 37-60% over price of order for cardboard.

I was just testing a newly released book by logging in with a different nonseller ID to see what a customer would be charged.

The shipping + handling on a very lightweight (5 oz.) 80-page poetry book is $5.52 for Media Mail and $7.06-$9.16 for Priority, depending on where I told it to send the book. (Priority is priced by zones.) The price of the book is $15, which means Lulu's shipping + handling adds an additional 37-60% to the total! That's a whopping amount! I couldn't believe it.

There are 2 reasons for this (in my example):

1) In my opinion, Lulu's packaging is excessive. I recently received a single copy of this 80 page book--which weighs 5 oz. on its own--in a large box weighing 14 oz. That means the packaging weighs nearly twice as much as the book! This packaging is the same used for customer orders of 1-2 books. (I know this because I also shop Lulu as a customer).

2) Lulu adds additional handling costs over and above the cost of shipping. Lulu charges $7.06 for Priority shipping + handling of this package. But the postage is only $4.80 as calculated by USPS (using the same addresses/zones).The other $2.26 is for Lulu's handling. For Media Mail, USPS is $2.41, so Lulu is charging $3.11 for handling. Presumably, some of this charge goes to cover shipping materials like boxes and plastic wrap, which brings us back to point #1.

RECOMMENDATION: Lulu should consider reduced packaging for very small/lightweight orders like these! I can't imagine they'd send a single CD in a box this big. The box measures 11.5 x 14 x 1.5 and the book is only 6 x 9 x .185.

The same book could be sent with minimal packaging--a flat cardboard envelope with cardboard sheet and shrink wrap to protect the book, for instance--for even less than that. I mail 5 oz books ordered direct from our website for $1.68 using a sturdy envelope, a DO NOT BEND stamp, and USPS First-Class postage. For Priority orders, I use the FREE flat-rate envelopes provided by the post office and the cost is $4.80 (using the zones in my example).

I understand the need for protective packaging, especially when shipping Media Mail--the carriers don't treat it very nicely. But making Media Mail so expensive defeats the point of it. It's supposed to be discount postage!

Because I buy distribution packages for each of my titles, they are also available via Amazon, B&N, and other online retailers. I checked--and none of these other retailers charge as much as Lulu for shipping and handling. (They *all* use excessive packaging, alas.) For example, Amazon charges customers $3.99 for standard shipping/handling on this book.

A customer's total at Amazon would be $18.99 for standard shipping. At Lulu Marketplace it would be $22.06 for the same item. Where do you think they are going to shop?

I don't know the average size of books published via Lulu, but for thinner/lighter items like this, there badly needs to be an alternative. Most of the books in the Poetry section, and by definition all of the saddle-stapled books and chapbooks, must result in the same inflated charges. Why would a customer want to pay to ship a huge, mostly empty box--particularly in these times of high gas prices and tight wallets? They will go elsewhere, and Lulu sellers (and Lulu itself) will earn less in commissions as a result, even if total sales remain unaffected.

Make some noise if you agree. Lulu been pretty responsive to requests in the past, and maybe they'll consider it. In the meantime, I can't blame my customers for shopping with another retailer and I actually feel *guilty* directing them here just so I can make more.

Playing ketchup: New release roundup

Oh, what happened to January? February? Yeah, well, things have been in flux 'round here. I can't possibly catch up with everything I missed, & many ephemeral chaps have already come & gone in that time, but here are buncha things with noting. After this, I'll try to keep up better! (Keep sending me yr announcements, links, etc., please.)

In no particular order:

Zachary Schomburg's The Man Suit is available for preorder from Black Ocean Press. (& they've been added to the resource links.) I haven't seen the book yet, but I like Zach's work a lot & have been looking forward to this. It'll be shipping April 2. 112pp. $12.95. They take PayPal. Get it here.

Jen Tynes has a new chapbook, from Dancing Girl Press, called See Also Electric Light, for a mere $5. I think this might be the one with Jen's poems riffing on a vintage book about boys and electricity, yes? She told me about it in Cambridge, but didn't read from it, so I'm curious about this one too. Get it here.

Speaking of both Zach Schomburg & Jen Tynes, lookie what they've done now: Horseless Press just published Zach's chapbook Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene. (I have read an earlier version of this, when it appeared in LIT a while back. Good stuff.) 22 pp. $5 via PayPal. Sorry, no cover image up yet. Get that here

Octopus #8 has also been released. (Gee, Zach has been really busy.) This boxed chapbook issue includes The Knife Grasses by Julie Doxsee, The Ohio System by Jen Tynes & Erika Howsare, Perfect Villagers by Sueyeun Juliette Lee, DJ Spinoza's Dozen by Eugene Ostashevsky, The Tides by Genya Turovskaya, The Continuing Misadventures of Andrew, the Headless Talking Bear by Jonah Winter, & Goodnight Lung by Samuel Amadon. You can also get the chaps individually ($6 each), but it's a much better deal (& idea) to collect all eight ($28) here.

Apostrophe Books has just released their first title, Catherine Meng's Tonight's the Night. At 80 pp at $13.50, it can be had via SPD (though maybe not quite yet), Amazon, or directly from Apostrophe (checks only, no online store yet). Details here. (Looks like they've got some other interesting things coming up too, including books from Elizabeth Robinson & Johannes Göransson.)

Mairéad Byrne has a new e-book, SOS, in PDF format from UBU Web's Ubu Editions here. [Link goes direct to PDF. For a complete index of UBU Editions titles, click here.] It's FREE to browse, print or save to your computer these 88 terrific pages. So you've no excuse. (& incidentally, Mairéad published all of the poems first on her blog Heaven, which you should really be reading, if you're not already. It's all poems, prose poems & poem-essays, all the time.)

Brian Kim Stefans has a new book, It's Not Time: Early Poems & Translations, which he's published through Lulu.com. It's available as a 151pp. paperback for $12 or a PDF download for $4. He talks about using Lulu a bit on his blog. Get it here.

Dusie entices us all to preorder Logan Ryan Smith's forthcoming book, The Singers. Here's more info.

Joe Massey has been busy too. A recent sequence of his (twelve short form works) called November Graph has been published by Bob Arnold's Longhouse Press in Guilford, Vermont, as an accordion-style fold-out booklet with wrap-around band. Only 50 copies were printed, & honestly, I may be too late. (Curses & apologies, if so.) But the website doesn't say sold out.) The chap is 7.95 and can be obtained directly from the press by check only. Checks should be made out to "Longhouse" & sent to LONGHOUSE, 1604 River Road, Guilford, Vermont 05301. (Sorry, no cover art to show ya.)

Also from Mr. Massey (as guest editor) comes the latest issue of Effing Magazine, with work by Zach Barocas, Christopher Rizzo, Mairéad Byrne, Andrew Mister, Rae Armantrout, Shannon Tharp, Aaron Tieger, Thomas Devaney, Julie Doxsee, Sandra Simonds, Jess Mynes & John Phillips. It's got a very beautiful letterpress cover featuring linocut lilies by Jared Faulkner. $6 for 64pp. Get it here.

Finally, if you're near Buffalo or in the lucky position to make the trip, the Buffalo Small Press Fair is coming up in a few weeks. Scheduled for March 31, the event schedule includes readings by DIYers Aaron Tieger, Jess Mynes, & others, plus music by I Feel Tractor & more. It's FREE to attend. (Wish I could.) Rocking.

OK, that's it for this update. I know, I know. I missed stuff. Pretend your fave missed project is that much cooler for being underappreciated. (It probably is.)

Review of Bruce Covey's Elapsing Speedway Organism

Yes, radio silence. Yr editor is in the process of moving house. She has entirely too many books to pack.

Be back in February, OK? Keep sending news, etc. I am collecting. (The window doesn't shut.)

But procrastination in packing has its upside. I managed a mini review of Bruce Covey's Elapsing Speedway Organism (recently out from No Tell Books via Lulu) here.

Whatcha been up to? Oh, right, I have a list!

Editor Ivy Alvarez sends a few review snippets re: A Slice of Cherry Pie:

"...an intriguing and accomplished collection, not merely a put-together collage or even a mosaic in words, but a compilation complete and riveting." --Patricia Prime, New Hope International Review

"A kick-ass pieceof work. I loved every poem, I devoured the whole thing at once, I want everyone to read this, whether or not they are Twin Peaks Fans." --Jeannine Hall Gailey

"Thepoems range from very tiny to quite extensive, but all evoke the eerie quality of Lynch's series." --Erik Donald France, Erik's Choice

The US version of the chap is still available from my own Half Empty/Half Full, but going fast. We'll do a second print run if interest warrants, but they'll be stapled, not hand sewn. In the UK or Australia? Ivy can help ya get your slice here.

Who knew David Lynch's Twin Peaks series was so ripe for poetical exploration? Blood Pudding Press has released The Laura Poems by Juliet Cook, available now from the press's Etsy shop. (They've also been added to the sidebar links.)

Josh Hanson releases another PDF of poems called Nightwork, with a cool negative-style image on the cover. He's also using a new-to-me free file-sharing service to host the PDF download, so if you're looking for server space gratis, you might wanna check that out too: Box.net.

Alan King's chapbook Transfer is available via his MySpace page. Says Tim Seibles, "Talk about global warming, people should be worrying about Alan King's new chapbook, Transfer. Desire moves through these pages like a heat wave. Reading these poems took me back to those old "house parties" we had back in Philly: brothas and sistas down in the basement dancin', sweatin', sizzlin' for that sweet connection, but steady tryin' to look cool. Seriously, you feel this book like the first really hot day after a long, long winter. There's a lot of poetry in the world, but not
much of it crunks like Transfer."

Fred Schmalz (no T!) of Swerve writes to say #15 has landed, with art & poetry by Addie Juell, Karin Wraley Barbee, James Grinwis, Brenda Coultas & Brian Engel. Mmmmmmm, slipcovers.

The new issue of Otoliths is out, featuring dozens of poems (both visual and text-based), paintings, & more, plus a cover collage by Michael Rothenberg. (Geeky note: I really like the way editor/publisher Mark Young organizes this online journal modifying the Blogger templates & functionality in a very magazine-y way.)

And speaking of Otoliths, the press's book-publishing arm offers up two new books via Lulu.com (and which will soon also be available via SPD & Amazon):

Dredging for Atlantis by Eileen Tabios This book is Eileen's eleventh print poetry collection (swoon!), and "extends a body of work unique for melding ekphrasis with a transcolonial perspective. Here, she introduces her translation of the painterly technique of scumbling to create poems from other poets' words. From other writers' texts, she also extracts sequences of the hay(na)ku, a poetic form she inaugurated on June 12, 2003 to mark the 105th Anniversary of Philippines' Independence Day from Spain."

the allegrezza ficcione by Mark Young is "a speculative novella about journeys--the contemporary journey of Umberto Allegrezza as he seeks to discover the truth about a legendary journey East from Europe made by an ancestor decades before before Marco Polo. Other journeys are intertwined; the journey made before Tripitaka to bring back the Buddhist sutras to China, the relocation of the Library of Alexandria, the continued existence of the followers of Hassan-i-Sabah. First serialized on the author's blog and now available for the first time in its entirety, the allegrezza ficcione blurs the line between fiction and fact.

Both have been added to the DIY Poetry Lulu shared storefront too.

& last but certainly not least, Eileen Tabios has just published the latest edition of her amazing online review journal Galatea Resurrects. As usual, it is overflowing (60+ reviews!) with words on small press, micropress, and DIY books and chapbooks, including Allen Bramhall on Michael Magee and Rodney Koeneke, Andrea Baker on Aaron McCollough, Susana Gardner on Jessica Smith & muuuuuuuuch more. Of particular interest to DIYers who advocate POD printing is Susana Gardner's reivew of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, wherein she proposes an AWP bookfair challenge: "POD or NOT?" Click and be merry.

WHOOPS! One more I'd made a note of in the last couple of weeks but forgot to add. I just ordered it, which reminds me: get yerself a copy of Tony Robinson's Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision. now available from Pilot Books. Rock.

Tags: Half Empty/Half Full, Lulu, Otoliths, Private Press, shared storefront

aStore/Lulu Store updates

Hey, good news from Amazon.

They've been listening to the comments from the beta test of the aStores function, and they've added a couple of new features that will allow me to better organize the DIY aStore (linked in sidebar).

Obviously, this is an experiment-in-progress, but it looks like I'll be able to do a bit more for October than I could in September. So stay tuned.

And over at the Lulu store (also in sidebar), I've added a few more books and begun alphabetizing them by means of a three-digit ordering system. It's not perfect, but for the number of titles the store will feature, I think it will work. No word yet on whether Lulu is working on some way to display author names along with titles and cover art, but I did ask. And hey, add those book descriptions, people, so folks have *some* clue as to what's inside. You can use that spot for a blurb, review, or author bio too, if you can't nail down a book description. (The Flickrbugs and vispoets among you might check out Lulu's brand new Photobook option too.)

& yes, more announcements/reviews soon. I've just been really busy. (But so have you!)

Tags: Amazon, aStore, shared storefront

Toward a shared storefront . . . or two! & a DIY Flickr group!

I'm a little behind. If you've sent me an announcement to post in the last week or so, I promise to get it up soon. I got slammed after my vacation and haven't quite caught up.

However . . . I've been working on the shared storefront at Lulu a bit, and Amazon has just introduced a feature that will work as a shared storefront there too.



There are still problems/limitations in each environment. In the Amazon aStore, right now I can only display 9 Featured Books and 1 Featured Press (because of the way their category page works--messy, inaccuate keyword searches, this is the best I can do at the moment). I'll rotate those, I guess. At Lulu, I can add whatever I like by content ID number, but the byline (author name) doesn't show up, and I can't categorize the contents of the store except in a strictly heirarchical fashion (by page-rank numbers I assign; I'll go alpha by author name or press. There is a search function, and I can use the group blog to highlight new releases, etc. . . . once I have time to hack the templates.) Both stores are still beta-test versions, so I'm supplying feedback to both Amazon & Lulu, asking for the improvements we'd like to see.

Anyway, these are now officially coming along. So if you've got micropress or self-published poetry books available through either Amazon or Lulu,* let me know. (Content IDs for Lulu and ISBNS for Amazon would be most helpful. Ideally Amazon books should have cover art uploaded. See their help pages for how to do that--"customer-uploaded images" won't display. And in Lulu, consider filling out your book descriptions. Otherwise not much beyond the cover art shows up on the main page.)

Once they're cleaned up and built a little better, I can work out a way to make them display here in popup windows or inline frames or something equally fancy. For right now, I've added a DIY Storefront section to the right sidebar. Click & be merry.

Yr suggestions, product lists, etc. more than welcome.

Update: Jessica set up a group Flickr pool. Cool.



Another update: There's a forum devoted to discussing the beta version of the Amazon aStores (if yer interested). Lots of people asking for about the ability to choose specific items by ISBN or product ID (instead of clumsy too-inclusive keyword searches). I tried a couple of workarounds that didn't really workaround. Anyway, lots of folks asking means that they'll probably implement it . . . eventually. For now I will just have to rotate 9 featured items and one featured press (each month, I guess?). I can still make a list of things tho, to put in when they get this sorted out, so hit me.

* I know: these stores leave out everybody who isn't already on Lulu or Amazon, but they're better than nothing, & so far they're free to build. Does Etsy have a similar Group or Community function? That could be a way to include more DIYers. I haven't used Etsy yet. Keep thinking!

Tags: shared storefront, Amazon, Lulu

Otoliths 2

From editor/publisher Mark Young:

The second issue of Otoliths has just gone live.

It contains work by Karl Young, Juhana Vähänen (translated by Karri Kokko), Martin Edmond, Rochelle Ratner, Louise Landes Levi, Cath Vidler, Michael Farrell, Christian Jensen, Ira Joel Haber, Bruce Covey, Jill Jones, Allen Bramhall, Derek Motion, Caleb Puckett, Sandra Simonds (a mini-chap, The Tar Pit Diatoms), Vernon Frazer, Pat Nolan, Donald Illich, J.D. Nelson, harry k stammer, Steve Tills, David Meltzer, Tom Beckett, Thomas Fink, Crag Hill, Ira Cohen, Carol Jenkins, Miia Toivio, John M. Bennett, Michael Rothenberg, Geof Huth, David-Baptiste Chirot, Aki Salmela, Sandy McIntosh, Michelle Greenblatt, Janne Nummela, Tom Hibbard, Marko J. Niemi, Phil Primeau, Kevin Opstedal, Olli Sinivaara, Nico Vassilakis & John M. Bennett, Michael McClure, Pam Brown, Leevi Lehto & Eileen Tabios.

& a reminder that the print-on-demand editions of Otoliths issue one and its associated chapbooks from Jean Vengua and from Ray Craig are also available from Lulu.com.

Pseudophakia by Julie Carter

Julie Carter (of Weirdness Evaluation Engine & MiPoesias's Goodnight Show) has just released her DIY book Pseudophakia.

"Julie Carter's work would be too dark if not for all those flashes of brilliance. Death and decay are recurring themes. You could call her a formalist, as most of her poems are written in iambic pentameter, and many are sonnets, but her poems aren't about that, and often use rhyme and meter so subtly that you hardly notice them. Her aim, it seems to me, is to change the way you see things." --Rose Kelleher

Pseudophakia by Julie Carter
6 x 9
perfect-bound paperback
81 pages
$7.00 or less than a buck as a PDF

Available via Lulu.com here.

Facing pages: Henry Gould's In RI . . . in a bilingual edition

Henry Gould's In RI is a book-length poem on early New England history and the founding of Rhode Island. Written in 1994 but published here for the first time, this bilingual edition also includes the Italian translation by Anny Ballardini.

6 x 9, 200 pp.
Perfect-bound paperback
$10.75

Also available for download as a PDF
$2. 19

New England October. The earth grows ancient.
Leaves fall, and we fall with them,
      slowly, almost floating.
Under pewter skies, the small yellow leaves
of the plane trees blaze more golden.
      Classical. The crowded
streets are quiet, introspective. Leaves
cluster, flattened in low relief across
      dark, rain-soaked
pavement.

Something European. An imaginary
Paris. Intellectual schoolgirls, hugging books,
      walking under the high,
somber stone spires, singing
out of eternity. Tremor of old
      young love.

And then I saw her again,
moving ahead of me up the street, pigeon-
      toed, a little
slowly, tenative, wearing some autumnal
shawl. Walking alone, toward
      Italian class.

Order via Lulu.com here, where you can also preview Anny's Italian. (& while you're there, why not take a look at Henry's other books?)

Now available: 180 Degrees of Separation by Tom Smith

Tom Smith announces the publication of his bitterly humorous poetry collection 180 Degrees of Separation.

Tom Smith woke up one day thinking entirely in rhyme. This strange affliction lasted for a year, a year in which he discovered that his wife had been having an affair, in which he went looking for meaning on the other side of the world only to break his back in a mountain-biking accident and in which he nearly died from a broken heart--literally.

If you’ve ever gone through a relationship break-up, this dry, wise, witty and sometimes just plain silly take on life--together with illustrations from the author’s notebooks--will have you rolling around on the floor.

Tom Smith is Milligan on a ukelele. Try him.

80 pages
6.14" x 9.21"
perfect binding
black-and-white interior
$16.13 via Lulu.com

Or stop by Tom's site for more info.

New! Shiny new newness!

Wow, it's easy to fall behind with these announcements. But I'd hate to miss the opportunity to tell you about these recent goodies, just in case you've missed them:

Gary Sullivan's Elsewhere #2 is now available, as are back issues of Elsewhere #1.

Where Elsewhere #1 juxtaposed images and text from a sojourn in Japan, #2 combines the sights and signage of Coney Island with a poem by Nada Gordon: "All images seen on a walk up Coney Island Avenue from Brighton Beach to Kensington. 'Coney Island Avenue' by Nada Gordon, modeled on Frank O'Hara's 'Second Avenue,' [was] written from notes take on a busride going down Coney Island Avenue in the opposite direction."

The resulting jumble and tumble of images and words in Elsewhere #2--most of the images also contain words--creates a visual/verbal riot that really does capture the feeling of Coney Island, where the subway meets the sea and multiple languages and cultures and styles camp and cavort at a beachfront carnival, and the tide rolls in and out, lapping at thousands of ankles. SOAK IT UP. Frank O'Hara can certainly be heard here, but Nada's leaps are (as always) fabulous in the extreme. Across a triptych of images cropped into panels from a single view of a hat shop's roofline and facade run the lines

Welcome to the age of independence in a leopard dress
and orchid nails. Big! White! Jackie O glasses!
Kish Koosh playgroup, the bamboo veils of intemperence
flapping down with tigerish yaps over the one & only
Sahara Restaurant by the World of Doors.
1-800-Cultural Collision. [...]

You know you want one.

Here's a review by Allen Bramhall.

Here's another by Maureen Thorson.

Brian Kim Stefans has a new book out, What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers, from Factory School.

I don't have this one yet, so I can't review it, but Brian says the book was 6 years in the making and credits Tim Davis with the portrait (what better word) of this little urban flower on the cover.

What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers
Factory School. 2006. 148 pages, perfect bound, 6.5x9.
ISBN: 1-60001-048-2
$14 / $12 direct order
or via SPD

From Factory School: "Collecting poems from the past six years, What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers is Stefans' most ambitious book to date. Includes the successful chapbooks The Window Ordered to be Made, Jai lai for Autocrats and Cull. What Does It Matter?, a chapbook published in England in 2005, is a long sequence that updates Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by 100 years, several wars and with a change of neighborhood (London for Williamsburg, Brooklyn)."

BKS adds: "There are no blurbs but, uh, John Crowe Ransom says it’s good, and good for you."

Pirooz Kalayeh has a new DIY comic book too, Why Do Men Do Stupid Things for Ass (an age-old question, no?).

He promises "A Book. An Ass. A Vision. Come join the author as he deciphers the pyramids, discovers how to be an open door, and finds true love. A comic without parallel. It just might answer the question. It might even be multiorgasmic."

I guess there's only one way to test these claims for truth-in-advertising: click here.


Didi Menedez offers a calendar of her colorful poets' portraits to help keep you on schedule for 2007.

Bettie & the Poets includes the poetical visages of Amy King, April Carter-Grant, David Lehman, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Diego Quiros, Tony Tost, Robert Creeley, Charles Jensen, Dave Ruslander, Eduardo Corral, John Korn, and Charles Bukowski, and those're Bettie Page's sweetcheeks on the cover.

Available via Lulu.

AND Didi also announces Ocho #1, a new print companion to MiPOesias. Contributors include John Korn, Jenni Russell, Jack Anders, Helm Filipowitsch, Ron Androla, Pris Campbell, Laurel K. Dodge, Amy King & Tom Blessing. It's also available from Lulu.


The Cultural Society has been updated, says Joe Massey:

Check out the "texts" section for two new poems by me (riffing on paintings by Wendy Heldmann); and poems and prose from Joel Bettridge, Norman Finkelstein, Michael Heller, Philip Jenks, Burt Kimmelman, Robert Murphy, Michael Prasil, James Robinson, and Tyrone Williams. I also provided the "picks" for this update.

No, that's not everything. But--whew!--it's all I have time for this morning. Please check back later this week for more.

Hey, good news!

Those of you who participated in the shared storefront conversation (here) will be happy to hear that a shared Lulu.com store is currently being built!

I haven't had time yet to do much more than create the DIY Poetry Web Ring store and smack a few titles up, but I should be able to come up with something pretty slick in the next couple of months (customizing the html template, trying out a few things) and at that point will link it up here. The store will highlight a rotating selection of titles, and hopefully I will also be able to include reviews, etc. There will be a built-in function for submitting titles for consideration, & readers will be able to purchase items from various Lulu.com publishers in a single checkout.

Nifty, eh? Stay tuned.

Not Even Dogs now available from Meritage Press!

Not Even Dogs is a first in three ways: it's Ernesto Priego debut poetry collection, it's the first single-author hay(na)ku collection, & it's Meritage Press's first book to be published after making the switch to POD production via Lulu. Counting to three is a potent little charm.

Not Even Dogs by Ernesto Priego
6 x 9, perfect bound, 116 pp.
ISBN 13: 978-1-4116-8992-3
$12.99

An sample poem from the book's third section, "Cities,":

Tenth City

You
were here
before I could

understand
what cities
do to people.

I
used to
play baseball in

cornfields
now condos
with tennis courts,

and
soon you
became the monster

under
everyone's beds
waiting, breathing, grey,

enormous,
fierce, beautiful
yet horribly impossible,

full
of possibility
and still sad

and
so frustrated,
infiltrated by fears

you
yourself cannot
properly define. City

of
lost corners
and savory folklore,

full
of tastes
and noises and

overt
chaos controlled
by god knows

what
call it
quantum physics or

divine
intervention but
you are everywhere

like
a weary
fury deciding futures

of
those who
lived within you.

Here
every inch
is replete with

stories
of unrequitted
love & hate

of
aspiration &
reconstruction & the

abduction
of dreams
& everything else

for
treinta pesos
al día sobrevives

if
things go
well, remember that,

city
of lost
origins & horizons,

of
ambitions &
claxons, of ghosts

under
the fallen
buildings and tents

under
the wealthy
fantastic urban landscapes

of
non-existent cities
that are not

&
could not
but still are.

Unnamable
city, breathing
still, in spite

of
everything you
are because you,

city
where skies
have forgotten all

skies
were meant
to be remains,

loved
and hated,
populated by spectres,

seeking
justice, or
just some peace,

without
hiding behind
self-imposed jail bars.

In
my dreams
I see you

always
from above,
from the sky

or
from an
illuminated cloudy hill,

seeing
you shine
as an artificial,

sick
heart, counting
pulses before finally,

tragically,
silently, turn
out your lights.

Read the other nine cities in the sequence here. (The poems appear in the book in reverse numerical order, 10-1).

Simultaneous e-book releases?

Fictioneers have been DIYing for years too (as have our comic book friends). Novelists, short-story writers & their publishers are often simultaneously releasing free e-books to complement/promote the printed versions.* As usual, the genre writers seem ahead of the curve here, but even mainstream publishers are picking up on this idea.

Here's a note from a novelist offering such a split edition:

I've just stumbled across your website, and am heartened to find some other people who are doing exactly what I am. I wanted to write and ask if you might mention the release of my novel, which I'm offering as a free e-book download and as a handmade perfect-bound book from my website.

The book is called Idea in Stone, and it's an alternative, magical realist tale about Edinburgh, Scotland. [More info here.]

Now I'm going to add DIY Publishing to my daily RSS feeds!

--Hamish MacDonald

I wrote Hamish back to thank him for his announcement & to recommend Jim Monroe's great site (which I've recommended here before) No Media Kings, since Jim is the go-to guy for DIY fiction ideas. Turns out, Hamish knows Jim too & just wrote an article for No Media Kings about DIY book publishing. (Hamish, check out Lulu.com if you're still interested in POD--far & away better than Cafe Press qualitywise, & without the censorship.) Cool.

* Resident Fiction Consultant (a.k.a. my husband) & I have been discussing the difference of impact on sales for fiction & poetry a free e-book release might have: Since poetry books are shorter & generally collect several pieces they're more convenient to read electronically. Would simultaneously releasing a free e-book cut into the sales of the same book in print, assuming one's goal is to turn profit or at least break even? I think it might, a bit, but that many people will still enjoy/prefer having the physical object. Also, considering POD's classic advantage of a lower breakeven threshhold, it might make more sense for POD publisher to do this than those using offset/inventory warehousing systems. For authors/publishers not concerned with profit, there seems no reason not to release an e-book for free at the same time. Moria does simultaneous releases like this, though Bill actually seems to be looking at the print editions as a supplement to the free content of the magazine & e-chap series, not the other way around.

New poems by Christine Hamm!

The Animal Husband
by Christine Hamm
Dancing Girl Press
$5.00, including S&H

Hamm's delicious sense of humor, balanced as it is by her tenderness and disdain for sentimentality, makes this collection truly absorbing and intellectually as well as emotionally far reaching...brilliant, severe little dramas." --Small Spiral Notebook

Hamm's familial explorations are daring, often tragic, and the poems are the "dark star" we willingly sail towards. --Amanda Auchter, Pebble Lake Review

Get your copy now.

Update: Might as well take this chance to remind you too that Christine has several other chapbooks available too. Check out her Lulu.com store here & her book The Salt Daughter from Little Poem Press.

A DIY Pub Web Ring storefront?

[your book here]

Since so many of you lovely people use Lulu.com to print & distribute your books & chaps, I am trying to figure out if it's possible to highlight your books in a DIY Pub Web Ring-sponsored store on the Lulu.com site, and eventually here. I've poked around in their help topics & the member forum, & I've also written to ask if any kind of recommended list or affiliate program is in the works (like Amazon's Listmania feature or those "What I'm Reading" affiliate lists with buy buttons + thumbnails).

I do have a Lulu.com storefront, but I can only add product that I have produced myself (which is nothing, at this point, so it's empty). What I would like to do is showcase YOUR books there, & mirror or link to that storefront from here.

Not sure if that kind of function is high on Lulu's priority list, but don't you think it's something they should consider? (There are two Wish List topics on the Lulu.com boards. You might chime in there if you are a member.) Something like this would allow me to link to a bunch of authors & books in one place, and give shoppers the convenience of having a single shop to browse, instead of a million individual links (like I've got now). I've got a feeling more & more people will be turning to Lulu. It's easy, the books look great, & if you go with the Global distro package you've honestly got better distribution through the wholesalers than most small presses!

So this might be what's next. A Lulu.com mall. Why not?

In the meantime, I think it might work if you Lulu'ers put "DIYPubWebRing" (or something else consistent) in as one of your storefront keywords. I could do a search for that, and link to the results page from here. It wouldn't be quite as sophisticated as I'd like, but it'd be a start. Does this make sense? Wanna give it a try?

Some kind of workaround with the "Friends" feature might work too, assuming I could display a list of "DIY Pub's Friends" on that storefront page or here. I haven't looked into that yet.

I guess I will try to sift through and make an Amazon Listmania list for DIY/micro stuff available through Amazon too, but that's gonna take some serious sifting & building. (Something like this might be possible at Powell's too--but their small press poetry section is already pretty well curated, so that might just be redundant!)

Just thinking out loud here, y'all. Any other ideas?

Virtual Artists Collective

Poet/blogger Steven Schroeder writes to introduce us all to the Virtual Artists Collective:

We publish five titles a year--started with Lulu and now use Lightning Source. Individual collective members also do handmade chapbooks and other projects that might be of interest.

Steve also suggests that the University of Alabama's MFA in Book Arts program might be of interest, and indeed it is.

Thanks, Steve! Both have also been added to the resource links in the sidebar.

(And speaking of Lightning Source, I just read yesterday in Publishers Weekly that a new court decision has gone in their favor, reversing an earlier verdict that their print-on-demand process was an infringement of On Demand Machine Corporation's patented technology. Their press release is here (as a PDF). It's all a little technical, but it means you've got another option for printing your DIY books, so they've been added to the resource links as well.)

Lars Palm's Mindfulness reviewed by Chris Rizzo

"Carefully assembled, mindfulness consists of twenty poems of twenty lines each, with exactly one hundred words per poem—one hundred even, that is, if you count three ampersands per poem as a kind of shorthand for the vocalization of “and.” The ideational kicker is that this sequence of poems explores the twin ideas of difference and repetition through a series of loops or revolutions. Upon a cursory glance, each poem, despite different titles, looks precisely the same.

But that’s cursorily speaking. Once you stop flipping around and actually sit down to read and listen closely, the sequence begins to pull you in after the first few poems."

Read the rest here.

And download the e-book for FREE from Moira Poetry here. Or purchase it as a saddle-stapled chapbook via Lulu.com here.

New from No Tell Motel!

Supersexy online magazine No Tell Motel has just released their first print anthology, created via the wonderful semi-DIY services of Lulu.com.

The anthology includes selections from the magazine's archives & new poems by:

Aaron Anstett * Molly Arden * Robert W. Barnett * Aaron Belz * Jasper Bernes * Remica L. Bingham * Anne Boyer * Elizabeth Bradfield * Gayle Brandeis * Suzanne Burns * Britton Carducci * Laura Carter * Shanna Compton * Bruce Covey * Matt Cox * Laura Cronk * Catherine Daly * Denise Duhamel * Peg Duthie * Jilly Dybka * Jill Alexander Essbaum * Marta Ferguson * Alice B. Fogel * Jeannine Hall Gailey * Amy Gerstler * Jim Goar * Noah Eli Gordon * Anne Gorrick * Carolyn Guinzio * Jennifer Michael Hecht * Shafer Hall * Michael Hoerman * Cynthia Huntington * Charles Jensen * Paul Jones * Kirsten Kaschock * Amy King * Craig Kirchner * David Laskowski * Dorothee Lang * Ann Neuser Lederer * Reb Livingston * Emily Lloyd * Rebecca Loudon * Oliver Luker * Tatjana Lukic * Clay Matthews * Corey Mesler * Charlton Metcalf * Michael Meyerhofer * Andrew Mister * Steve Mueske * Anita Naegeli * William Orem * Eden Osucha * Shin Yu Pai * Cami Park * Karl Parker * Dan Pinkerton * Lance Phillips * P.F. Potvin * Nate Pritts * Francis Raven * Kim Roberts * Anthony Robinson * Ken Rumble * Jenni Russell * Carly Sachs * Christopher Salerno * Standard Schaefer * Zachary Schomburg * Penelope Scambly Schott * Ravi Shankar * Brandon Shimoda * Matthew Shindell * Laurel Snyder * Heidi Lynn Staples * Hugh Steinberg * Matthew Thorburn * Aaron Tieger * Maureen Thorson * Betsy Wheeler * Allyssa Wolf * Christy Zink

And it's cheap...just the way you like it. Get it here.

(And big cheers & hearty thanks to Reb & Molly!)

The Independent on Lulu.com's publishing model

"...the final price is determined by what the author sets as his royalty, of which Lulu takes 20 per cent. If the author forgoes a royalty, Lulu does too. Copyright is with the author. So who needs publishers, when you can easily do it all yourself, take 80 per cent of the profit and retain copyright?

"It's not yet eBay, but it's getting there. Now in its third year, Lulu offers more than 40,000 titles on its website and new ones are being added at over a thousand a month. In October it sold 45,000 copies and growth continues at 10 per cent or more each month. In three years they have sold 444,000 books. Two thousand new authors sign up each month.

[...]

"Bob Young says that he intends to revolutionise publishing the way that Steve Jobs revolutionised the music industry with Apple's iTunes. And the fact that Lulu's founder and principal investor is Bob Young means that this is an ambition which must be taken seriously. He has had a spectacular career as an digital entrepreneur."

Read the rest here.