"The Small Publisher in the COVID-Era" by Michael Barron
In March 1918, as the outbreak of influenza reached pandemic levels, an American literary journal called the Little Review began serializing a long work of fiction by James Joyce. Despite facing obscenity charges, postal boycotts, and many unwilling printers, four additional parts were serialized until April 1920.
Six months later, the publisher of the Little Review, Margaret Anderson, would be arrested and later taken to a trial they’d eventually lose. Meanwhile, Joyce’s work, would go on to be published in its entirety in 1922 as the novel Ulysses.
These days we celebrate the book, but it’s worth remembering that the serialized Ulysses—perhaps the greatest literary work ever to be published during a pandemic—owes its existence to the kind of publication that you’re more likely to come across at a book fair than at a magazine stand. It was a writer’s journal that boasted an all-star list of modernists, a niche genre at the time, and depended on a devoted readership, even if the magazine occasionally antagonized it. One famous example was an issue published with a dozen pages left blank; Anderson’s response to a spate of underwhelming submissions. Ezra Pound once served as its editor-at-large.
The obscenity charges against the Little Review were not its only problem. A reputation among literary circles did not spare it from constant financial precarity and the occasional office eviction. Fundraising wouldn’t become a legally viable option until 1969, when the Internal Tax Revenue section allowed for 501(c)3s, or nonprofits, to exist. Though public eleemosynary foundations did operate in Anderson’s time, a magazine with a notoriety for publishing lewd material was unlikely to receive any charitable funding. Instead the Little Review owed its continuation to a subscriber base that kept it alive during both a World War and a pandemic.
Small and independent publishers have since—to co-opt Richard Eder’s NYT praise of the independent publisher New Directions—“long struggled and long astonished.” Like Joyce, the careers of many luminous writers and poets were first nurtured at grassroot presses and lit mags, venues that act as petri dishes for literary experimentation. Since they value artistic merit over commercial viability, many small organizations have traditionally depended on hand sales accrued from events and subscriptions, alongside constant fundraising, to stay afloat. But there were signs that even this model was endangered.
This past February, a four-part essay on this topic appeared on Harriet, the blog for the Poetry Foundation. Written by Matvei Yankelevich, co-founder of the celebrated micro publisher Ugly Duckling Presse, it laid out what he saw as the importance of small press political ideologies, historical legacies, and aesthetic considerations. The essay wasn’t a neutral overview, but rather a jeremiad against what he saw as institutional bullying to conform to mainstream literary values. According to Yankelevich, small press culture was being attacked by “a gentrifying professionalization.”
Comprehensive in scope and impassioned in its appeal for the importance of small presses, Yankelevich’s essay sparked an online conversation that has come to feel more prescient since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. With the closure of bookstores and in-person readings impossible, sales opportunities for small presses have largely been stymied to the point of near fatality, and the fallout is widespread. In a recent article for the Guardian, Sam Jordison, editor of the British-based Gallery Begger Press, highlighted a recent survey of UK small publishers, distilling its findings into devastating figures.: sixty percent feared shuttering their operations by the fall and seventy-five percent worried they would not last beyond March.
Small presses have two battles to fight: to clot financial hemorrhaging and to convince institutions with the means to help out. But there has been surprising resistance by some obvious organizations to do so. In April, Yankelevich was among the signatories of an open letter to the Poetry Foundation, a literary institution with a multi-million-dollar endowment, that challenged their inability to financially agree to any “new commitments.”
Penned by the editors of speCt Books, the open letter gave evidence to the fact that the Poetry Foundation was worth hundreds of millions in assets, that its president was on a half million-dollar salary alone, and therefore the Foundation should be able to commit to helping smaller organizations weather this time. “Your community is in crisis and it needs you to step up to the moment,” it pleaded.
The authors went even further, demanding more accountability and transparency on the Foundation’s financial situation and management. They wanted to know:
“What percentage of your asset base is being spent on charitable activities? And how is the poetry community to have faith in your mission when your financial history demonstrates a propensity to accrue large sums of capital without reinvesting those gains?”
The letter concluded with a link to a change.org petition. As of this writing, it is a few hundred signatures short of its 2,500 goal.
The immediate future of many small literary outfits remains up in the air. Emily Pettit, poet and editor of Factory Hollow Press, told me that the press has ceased publicizing its spring titles, and plans to withhold sending out their summer publications, something they feel they can afford to do as a publisher of self-printed chapbooks. “We are thinking a lot about other small presses and literary organizations that are direly affected by the pandemic,” she told me over Facebook messenger, “and are looking for ways to be supportive to them.”
Small press solidarity is not only possible but happening. UDP is giving a portion of its online sales to Poets in Need, an organization that provides emergency assistance for poets in crisis. “It’s important for small non-profit arts organizations to come together in solidarity and do some group fundraising efforts,” Yankelevich told me over a phone call. “And it’ll be important in the long run for larger organizations to consider us, because they can’t function without the smaller organizations.”
Lisa Lucas, the director of the National Book Foundation, agreed that larger organizations needed to help smaller ones:
“Helping out is in our DNA. There are a lot of backchannel discussions on how to go about aiding, in the short-term, the literary community—from small presses, to bookstores, to libraries—as we figure out longer term plans. Right now, that means using our network to amplify the many fundraising opportunities that are now popping up.”
Reconceptualizing how to remain financially stable though the COVID-era is the problem many nonprofit institutions are now scrambling to solve as traditional methods to raise money, like the annual fundraising dinners, have become unviable. “Our November Gala brings in a third of budget,” Lucas noted. “If we can’t host a gala, we have a challenge ahead of us for how to recoup that loss.”
“We are really going to have to rethink our approach to fundraising short-term,” said Mark Krotov, publisher of n+1. “Our annual fundraiser is crucial, but there is no scenario in which that can now happen. At the moment, we’re not even sure whether future grant applications will get approved or will even be possible.”
As long as the postal service remains active, subscriptions can continue to provide a vital source of income—a model many independent periodicals depend on. But with everyone working from home, shipping becomes challenging. And for presses such as UDP, who depend on volunteers to send mail straight from the office, manpower also becomes an issue.
However, Krotov noted that subscriptions and online readership for n+1 were not only up, but supportive of the magazine’s ongoing aesthetic and intellectual concerns. This month, the magazine teamed up with the leftist press Verso Books to co-publish There Is No Outside, an ebook that collects the best of its Covid-19 dispatches. “It’s important to be in communication with readers and remind them of what we can provide that a bigger venue cannot.”
It’s this sentiment that small, alternative, and independent presses have long used to distinguish themselves from conventional publishers. This is how they long struggle, long astonish: by bringing forth work that might otherwise be marginalized or ignored. Without them, the fertile culture of the printed would grow arid.
Michael Barron is a writer and editor who lives in New York.
