death egg

in early september, i published Death Egg by nathaniel duggan via back patio press. this was the first back patio book since sad sad boy, which i published in March 2022.

background and editing

i had maintained a loose email correspondence with nathaniel starting sometime in 2020, i think based on him sending me a poem for the quaranzine. we talked about our lives and poetry and indie lit drama for a while after this. i had given him editorial feedback on various poems during this time and encouraged him, i think, to make a collection.

looking at my email, on february 3rd, i gave him editorial feedback including "these are just great. great poems", a suggestion to change the name to death egg, and general praise such as "i really really find the thematic preoccupations and imagery compelling. the deployment of sci-fi intergalactic, video game, deep see, apocalypse imagery all mesh well, different hues of a perfect purplish blue. i think it's perfectly executed - the video games are not reddity wining or pop culture genuflection but are used as something to comment, i feel, on the larger cultural fuckedness, the integration of escapism into the despair pondering that feels subtle, effective, and non-clichely contemporary -- video games as the 'television of today,' etc. i can't say praise right, ever, i sound insane saying nice things, but i hope this makes sense[...]thank you for letting me read it. whoever publishes it won't do it justice." he did not pay me for these edits; i have also edited various versions of his short story collection manuscript, which i think a bigger publisher should put out, because it's very good.

after back patio fell apart in 2021/2022, and after i published some books unrelated to back patio, i felt more confidence in restarting the press mostly without cavin, and asked nathaniel to publish his book. before this i had suggested another limited-run book like orz, but then felt like trying something new/normal. cavin gave me his blessing to reopen the press in may. i reached out to duggan in june, i think, over twitter DM, to confirm my interest in publishing it as a back patio book.

once he agreed, i edited the book some more over maybe 3 rounds of edits, and then later 2+ minor edit rounds to clean up formatting and stuff. most of my edits were about sequencing, minor punctuation changes, a couple additional lines (partly through talking over DM and misremembering things from the poems, which he thought were good changes/ideas). some edits include "what about an exclamation point at the end of the first line?" and "recommend replacing last period with ‘, etc.’"

i only later learned that death egg is also the name of a spaceship or something from sonic the hedgehog. i do not know if this was intentional when he wrote the poem/lines about a death egg. i think it's a good, evocative, hard-to-say title that made the book feel unique. the sonic connection is mostly funny, and resulted in some good riffing online.

design

i did the inside layout and cover design. i used ms word and ms powerpoint. we iterated on the cover, manically, for like two weeks, before settling on the general cover we ended up with. stylistic themes to drive this work included bear parade/classic alt lit minimalism and anime. for a while there was a cracked egg on the cover, but this was eventually scrapped.

he wanted it to be yellow because he liked gg rolland's book on clash, which is mostly yellow. some versions accidentally used the same pink and yellow and font as my band's cassette three trucks, which was funny, but unacceptable to me, but, frustratingly for nathaniel, one of his favorite versions.

early on he had shared with me an image of an anime title card that he liked the look of. this is what influenced the final typography on the cover - the mix of japanese and the severe all caps serif font. another source of inspiration was the dvd cover for FLCL, with its bold yellow and black. i did not have the budget or interest to get a custom-drawn manga-style cover. i remember struggling with recreating manga-style 'beam attacks' using a free picture of a satellite with powerpoint for a while, then giving up.

the drawing on the final cover is from the public domain, i think from some lost in space comic, or something. i used similar pictures for interstitial art in the quaranzines. i get most of my free graphics from publicdomainvectors.org

the japanese on the cover is mostly from google translate, but some of it is the direct translation used from sonic the hedgehog for 'death egg.' i don't know much about japanese. an early ARC version we sent out had a 'pretend bad translation' synopsis that was embarassing, and which i thought i didn't include in the ARCs i had printed. the arcs were, additionally, very poor quality paper-wise and had a lot of formatting errors, and made me laugh a lot.

we decided on sans serif fonts on the inside to evoke classic alt lit aesthetics, because of the lineage of the poems/style and our shared appreciation for early alt lit. these aren't alt lit poems in any classic sense but have many shared reference points. i imagine someone more engaging than me could write up a better analysis.

i think the final product looks good and am proud of how it turned out.

promotion - ARCS/blurbs

i asked duggan for a list of potential blurbers and reached out to folks on his behalf. everyone had kind things to say, even if they didn't end up blurbing in time for the final printing. i enjoyed corresponding with people that i think/assume dislike me to this end. maggie nelson responded, unexpectedly, and gave me an address to send a book to, but clarified she didn't really do any blurbs anymore.

i also sent ARCs/final copies to people who do podcasts/reviews, but so far we never heard from anyone about these, although one person posted a picture of the book on twitter. i included a small press release, which i confided to josh sherman as "embarassing to write," not because of the book, but because of the vapid futility of writing press releases for small press books. i sent an ARC to the heavy feather review, but it was returned to me because the editors moved/changed. i also sent a free copy of the book to ~3 authors who i just thought would enjoy it, without expectation of promotion.

Promotion - local media

i reached out to several local maine venues for promotion, including duggan's alma mater university creative writing program to organize a reading. i was ignored by all of these leads except one daily maine-based blog, who requested a physical copy. one of the venues, a local tv channel, automatically blocked my email address.

Promotion - piss

the back patio twitter account reached out to several internet sex workers asking to send them books to pee on, as a promotional video effort, but this corresponded to the same week, or possibly day, that twitter made DMing people a bluecheck option only by default, so it's possible no one ever got the messages. this also includes dasha, a podcaster i don't know anything about. but we didn't ask her to pee on any books; we just asked if she'd like a copy, because she had posted about the same anime that inspired the cover design.

we also tweeted asking for folks to pee on the book if we sent an extra copy. i had forgotten who replied to this/was unsure how serious anyone was and only sent out one extra book, to coleman bomar, who peed on it and posted a video. later someone else from tennessee ordered a book and asked for some of coleman's pee, which i do not have access to. i am unsure why pee was a central theme for the book promotion, but it worked out well, i think, and made me laugh a lot.

Promotion - preorder bundles

we also offered a bundle of a shirt, magnet, and book. the shirt making has been a shitty, still unresolved saga, wherein i tried to have them made locally to support local businesses and save money on shipping. but i ended up working with perhaps the shittiest shirt printer in the state, who would ignore my emails, ghost me, forget to email me, argue with me, etc. currently the shirts are in a store location i cannot access until friday, and they will likely not be open on friday. i regret not going through the florida-based printer we used for the liver mush shirts, who were professional and easy to work with. i opted to send the books/magnets separately from the shirts, losing ~$70 on redundant shipping costs. i ordered only 40 shirts after announcing 50 bundles, based on the total sales (~14), and will keep one for myself and send one to nathaniel. the shirts will ultimately, i feel, be a net loss, and i will probably eventually offer them for sale at cost just to not have them in my closet anymore.

Promotion - misc.

i posted links to a few excerpts from other magazines from the book via the back patio account. none of these resulted in the original publisher promoting the book or, seemingly, liking the posts. we later made tweets tagging magazines that hadn't published the poems, saying they published them, in an attempt to trick the publication into promoting the book for free and/or make people laugh. only one publication liked their corresponding tweet, but didn't retweet it.

i made a new website for back patio to collate the press/reviews materials and book descriptions. i then reached out to kevin at powell's who asked for just such a list, so i secured a small order of back patio books, including five copies of death egg, resulting in a small section of shelf space dedicated to back patio books. the tweet about this got high engagement. i should reach out to more cool stores.

i placed a quarter-page ad for the press, including a highlight for death egg, in maggot brain magazine, a print magazine published by third man records and edited by the guy who wrote the 33 1/3 book about loveless, which should be out around now. this cost me $187. i would be surprised if it ends up paying off, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, and i like the magazine a lot (i also get a free copy of this issue, apparently). some of the other ads are for punk/diy record labels based on bandcamp, which is cool, in my opinion.

josh sherman invited me and nathaniel, and other people, to read at his chapbook release reading as part of misery loves company, which we hijacked, to comedic effect, i think, to promote death egg. nathaniel did a good job reading and i posted the order page a few times when people were talking about josh's book, which made me laugh. we got ~3 book sales during the reading. we've also scheduled a back patio mlc reading for 9/29, which will include, nathaniel, cav, dan, graham, kurt, tj, and troy.

i regret not reaching out to more internet and irl places early on for reviews/interviews. however, this time period corresponded to a family crisis which resulted in me taking time off of work and not doing anything much aside from acting in 'crisis mode' for my family for over a month. i spent ~1-2 hours/week during this time working on death egg. to this end i feel guilt about not being able to do more for the book/nathaniel.

finally, we opened the magazine for web subs just prior to announcing the book. this was a partly cynical/manipulative move to drive up engagement for the press and potentially sell more books. however, i am unsure this resulted in any sales we wouldn't have otherwise gotten. but overall it was good for everyone. we all enjoyed reading and editing the pieces we got and we have published, and will continue to publish, some really cool writing. i'm glad we reopened and we will probably do it again in january. i owe kurt a lot for taking on a lot of this effort when my life fell apart in august.

sales - preorders

we announced preorders sometime in august and i shipped the preorder books around september 7th. there were 62 preorders at the time, 12 of which were for tshirt + book bundles. we have since sold a few more of each.

the free promotional stickers for orders included random mixes of black and white stickers ("i love shitty poetry", "alternative literature", "death egg cover", and "back patio press logo"), glitter stickers ("back patio in barbie font on a gun"), holographic stickers (misc. "cyberwriter" series, featuring sebastian, derek, bram, and nathaniel), and a bold yellow (but small) "ask me about the death egg" sticker. i used sticker guy for the black and white stickers and sticker mule for the fancier ones. sticker guy is very cheap but slow, and their website is difficult to navigate. sticker mule can be expensive, but offers interesting products and has frequent sales.

only 3 of the death egg orders included other books/items: one person bought my book bundle, one person bought liver mush, and one person bought good at drugs.

i sent free back patio books to ~10 random orders, and gave free art or bonus stickers to people i know/like from online. as far as i can tell this resulted in ~3 promotional twitter pictures and one goodreads review for non-death egg books.

around september 7th i sent nathaniel $301 in royalties.

sales - amazon

around when i started shipping books, i sent nathaniel all the raw book files and manically worked with him to set up the book on amazon kdp as a print and ebook. amazon kdp/ebook setup is a pain in the ass and required several different types of files and arbitrary changes. for the ebook, i had to manually add page breaks (instead of using the keyboard shortcut, for some reason) to get them to register. we set up the amazon book using his own account such that he'd by default receive all the amazon royalty payments. this approach was modeled after sebastian castillo's book SALMON and inspired by the fact that it's a huge pain in the as to do amazon royalties (especially after taking over for cavin - setting up a new bank account, etc etc). in exchange nathaniel gets a smaller royalty split on the books that i sell. since being put on amazon, we've sold 2 copies of the book through flat dog distro but seemingly many on amazon. i hope nathaniel considers the money aspect equitable.

the book peaked at #53 in the contemporary fiction (books) category on amazon, spurred on by duggan's manic promotional tweeting and "post weird twitter" networking. he had also purchased twitter blue in anticipation of the promotion cycle, which he claims de creased his post engagement, ironically.

nathaniel says he's sold 45 copies on amazon since we uploaded it, which is impressive, i feel.

sales - conclusion

so far we've sold a little over 100 books during the first few weeks and gave away ~10, which is, in my opinion. very good numbers for indie poetry that doesn't take institutional promotion tactics very seriously. incidentally, unrelated, i saw that clash had sold over 12,000 copies of some stupid looking horror novel during this time. i hope that people who may or may not be seething about the death egg hype cycle, its participants, and its aura of success consider this disparity when subtweeting/shittalking those involved.

i anticipate the book selling more copies over time, especially if we see continued press interest from local or online avenues, and natural interest in the book as people talk or post about it. it currently has 3 amazon reviews and 8 goodreads reviews.

thank you to everyone who has purchased the book.

orz by troy james weaver

i published a single, limited-edition run of the book orz by troy james weaver. it is a new collection of short stories/prose poems/novels, some only a sentence or two, some ~two pages long. it is an excellent book.

 

this post is about the publication of this book, which was fun and flirty and made us both laugh a lot, which is one of my few personal metrics for publishing success.

the book

because the book is limited edition, we did not buy an ISBN or barcode, as these will never be stocked in stores. this saved us several hundred dollars (assuming one were to purchase a single isbn at a time).

troy writes in longhand and then later transcribes his writing on a computer. during the writing of orz, his laptop keyboard was broken, and randomly inserted 'z's in places, which he included, in a good/comical way, in one story in the book. i suggested minor-to-major edits on maybe 5 pieces total, all of which i think troy approved; i suggested he cut two very short pieces, which he quickly replaced with, imo, stronger and less predictable pieces.

i designed the cover and typeset the insides, using microsoft powerpoint and microsoft word, respectively (i also used Preview to stitch together the final pdf).

the back cover is based on my paperback copy of last exit to brooklyn by hubert selby jr., with the author photo, font choice, and author bio placement. i wrote a sort of cheeky synopsis on the back to recreate the 'major press' vibe. 

the front cover and insides are vaguely inspired by japanese books in translation; troy and i have talked about japanese literary fiction in translation often, and he has recommended me some very good books. i modeled the inky, small square blockiness of the insides after my new directions hardcover copy of the setting sun by osamu dazai. the title is also an emoticon that seems popular in japan, according to a former coworker of mine who is japanese (orz looks sort of like someone on hands and knees, head pressed against the floor in despair -- i told troy about this, and he liked it as a title for the book he was writing).

the original digitally-printed proof of the book includes the kanji for 'despair' as part of the design, but i replaced this with a dog emoticon logo. the inclusion of actual japanese seemed too weeby and embarrassing.

i had printed one digitally printed proof from snowfall press to get a sense of how the margins and cover colors looked. i decided to print the actual book with spencer printing, because the books are nicer and the covers don't get warped as easily. but they are pricier. i got one unbound proof of the book from them, corrected one typo, then submitted the full order. they invoiced me after the books had shipped, which i thought was interesting -- if you are working on a low or no budget book project, and you feel convinced you can sell enough copies in a short preorder timeframe, you can use the preorder proceeds to pay for the full printing.

the stunt/the sale 

we listed 50 copies for sale via flat dog distro. all 50 were listed for different prices, in increments of $0.50, from $0.50 to $25.00. the idea was that if we sold all 50, it would be as if we sold them for $12.50 each, which is relatively cheap as far as books of poetry go for, now, i feel. troy and i agreed this was funny and acceptable to do. some people would spend only fifty cents, while others would pay twenty-five dollars. i thought it would be a fun/funny way to encourage people to buy it quickly -- the longer you waited, ostensibly, the more expensive it would get. i was happy that troy agreed to doing a funny stunt with his book. i feel like, in my experience, you can have the most fun in indie publishing by being the least precious of your book, or something like that. not sure i worded that right.

we listed the book for sale at ~11am february 6. each differently-priced copy required some text description to distinguish it from every other copy, such as "orz - the middle one. perfection" for the $12.50 copy and "orz - south park reference ($3.50)" for the $3.50 one. i enjoyed manically filling out this form without having expected to have to do this prior to the book going on sale.

the first 45 copies sold between 11:29am and 10pm on february 6th. the last copy was sold at 11:32am on february 10th. here is the order in which the different prices sold:

$5, $11, $0.50, $8, $7, $25, $10, $19, $4, $7.50, $9, $3, $1, $2, $1.50, $8.50, $10.50, $3.50, $15, $2.50, $9.50, $6, $20, $5.50, $4.50, $6.50, $11.50, $12, $12.50, $13, $13.50, $15.50, $14, $14.50, $16, $16.50, $17, $17.50, $18, $18.50, $19.50, $21, $24.50, $24, $20.50, $21.50, $22, $22.50, $23.50, $23 (enjoying how hard this is to read. i should have made a scatterplot)

i had expected the sales to go from cheapest to most expensive, which did happen about halfway through -- there's a general upward trend once the bottom half sold out, and people started buying the cheapest option available, from $11.50 through $23, which was funny to see. the last 9 orders are in the $20+ range.

but i was surprised to see the first two orders start at $5 and $11 before someone bought the cheapest option, and to see the $25 one sell so early. also interesting that most of the $X.50 copies sold later than the $X.00 ones. seems vaguely related to the 'hack' of selling things for $X.99.

only one order included something other than orz, which was a copy of the goth goth boy edition of sad sad boy by michael o'brien. everyone else only ordered a copy of orz, which i thought was interesting and vaguely bleak from a 'marketing' standpoint. it is my general understanding that presses/record labels/stores in general try to expand their selection kind of broadly to entice new demographics and boost sales of back catalog items. i also don't care -- i'm happy making and selling troy's book only during this.

the money

i charged a flat rate of $4.00 per domestic order for shipping, as media mail packages ship for $3.65 and the mailers i use cost ~$0.40 each. factoring in packing tape, printer paper and ink (for shipping labels), and the cheaper of the free stickers i included, $4 seemed reasonable/slightly cheaper than actual cost for each order. i also included between $.75 and $5.00 worth of other things, such as more expensive stickers (holographic or die-cut), magnets, and/or original pieces of art i had made, with each order, to be nice/build a brand/hope people don't feel ripped off.

we made ~$625 total selling the pre-orders, excluding shipping. the cost to print and ship 55 copies to me and troy (50 for purchasers, 4 for troy, 1 for me) totaled ~$284, which comes to about $5.68 per book sold. this means that we made $6.32 per book, totaling $316. i paypal'd troy $200 and reserved $96 for taxes (self-employment rate is 15.3% on total earnings; 15.3% of $625 is ~$96). i kept the remaining $20.

 

 

 

everything is totally fine: 1 year anniversary

my collection of short stories ("smallies"), everything is totally fine, was published by muumuu house exactly one year ago. it consists of 69 stories and is divided into three sections. stories from it had previously appeared in wigleaf, new world writing, xray, hobart, forever mag (solicited), bending genres, young mag (solicited), instant lit, muumuu house, the neutral spaces blog, and philosophical idiot. it was my fourth book, but only second available via general distribution channels.

this blog post is about my cool book. i tried to include a lot of 'behind the scenes' information to sate the curiosity of my potential readership (writers who publish with or aspire to publish with small presses).

zac smith book timeline as of january 2023:

December 2019 - 50 Barn Poems (clash books)

September 2020 - Chainsaw Blurbs & Other Blurbs (self-released/ghost city press)

March(?) 2021 - Two Million Shirts (co-authored with Giacomo Pope, self-released)

January 2022 - Everything is Totally Fine (muumuu house) 

November 2022 - I Hope You Enjoy the Food (self-released)

that's five books in 3 years, which makes me better and cooler than you, according to various faux-sarcastic attempts at self-validation i've seen on twitter.

brief summary of my other books:

50 Barn Poems: this is 50 short barn poems. i signed a contract with clash within 5 days of submitting the manuscript, unsolicited; i make 50% royalties per copy sold through normal distribution channels and i get to buy author copies at the cost of printing. we sold ~50 preorders (motivated by the limited release of giacomo's 50 barn blurbs with the first 50 orders, which was self-funded; i probably broke even on this endeavor). clash books, at least when i published with them used ingramspark, a print-on-demand service that enables distribution via amazon and other websites and, technically, book stores, but because of the print-on-demand nature precludes returns and thus most book stores have no interest in stocking it. clash (at the time) and i also had no pr/marketing/publicity plan or funding.i have probably made less than $300 from this book in royalties; haven't received a royalty payment in ~12 months after getting paypal'd ~$4.98 every two months or so. the book was not edited by the editors and contains one typo, one unintentionally non-existent word, and each edition misspells Stephen Merritt's name in the blurbs. the cover was done by matthew revert and the typesetting was done by leza, using some kind of free design program's presets; we had argued about the margins for a while, which i think soured her on me.

Chainsaw Blurbs & Other Blurbs: this book consists of 50 blurbs, ranging from one sentence to ~5 pages in length. similar to giacomo's book for my book, this was a preorder bonus for Chansaw Poems & Other Poems (ghost city press). it looks very similar to the barn blurbs book. i think we made 55 copies technically and i sawed one in half on video after filling it with jam as a marketing stunt. was a net loss for us; giacomo seemingly has never or rarely been paid royalties by ghost city press. i designed the cover and did the layout, based on giacomo's layout for 50 barn blurbs. it was printed by spencer printing.

Two Million Shirts: this is a book-lengthed poem. giacomo and i wrote this together and had a limited pre-order window of ~2 weeks for physical copies. we had about 70 made and sold maybe 40 and put the full poem on the internet for free, although the physical version has ~25 blurbs we wrote and an essay about publishing. unsure how many copies giacomo has left. i sent one of my two copies to michael silverblatt and shawn sullivan via one-day shipping in anticipation of our bookworm interview. i don't think either of them read it. giacomo designed and typeset this. it was printed by spencer printing.

I Hope You Enjoy the Food: made this for fun not really intending to sell copies. was prompted to updated/edit/print it because i wanted to make one as a gift for my mother in law. this is half cookbook, half long essay about cooking and food. have sold ~32 copies total so far. i designed and typeset it. it was printed by snowfall press, which we use for back patio books.

everything is totally fine: publication background

this book started as an idea for a digital-only chapbook collaboration with giacomo. the idea of a website for digital collaborative chapbooks fizzled out and we took our writing to integrate them into new book ideas. once i had a draft of ~50-70 stories i started sending it places and trying, briefly, to get an agent. i emailed exactly two agents, specifically asking them to only pitch it to melville house; one ignored me and one responded that he doesn't represent fiction books anymore.

i submitted the manuscript to future tense as part of their open submission period in 2020 and got a personal and supportive rejection from kevin (which was classified as spam because it originated from his personal email and not the future tense email; i have speculated about this happening to other people and them not knowing their book was rejected when we talked about future tense). i submitted it to yuka when she was editing for soft skull (and unknowingly, to me, at the time, tao's girlfriend) and received a personal and supportive rejection. i DM'd giancarlo via the tyrant books twitter and asked if i could email him a manuscript and he said sure; he never responded to my email, and i remembered reading that he only published stuff that he responded to within 24 hours, so i assumed it was rejected relatively quickly. i sent it to clash, foolishly thinking they'd be interested due to having published 50 Barn Poems, and was rejected via one-line twitter message. at some point around this time i had sent it to tao, after talking to tao about other stuff, asking for his advice about publishing. he said he had read the manuscript when i had sent it to yuka and liked it, and offered to publish a story on the muumuu house website in july 2020, which was exciting and great. multiple people who hadn't talked to me before (or since, really) DM'd me when it was published, saying they liked it. i sent the manuscript to brian alan ellis at house of vlad on october 23 2020, who offered to publish it ~october 31, then typeset it and offered zero edits, and suggested a late fall 2021 publication. i had posted a satirical, poor photoshop of a publisher's marketplace message about this, describing it as a 'nearly nice' deal (as 'nice' deals are defined as an advance of between $1 and $50k); i later found out people thought it was a real announcement, that i had paid the membership fee to publisher's marketplace to announce this, which is embarrassing to hear.

also around november 2020 i deleted my twitter account and started talking to a few people, including tao, more consistently over email. tao had asked for information about the current state of small press print-on-demand publishing and the specifics about what a house of vlad book meant, and also to read the version of the book, and offered to write a blurb for it, in january 2021. he offered to publish it via muumuu house in an email on febuary 4, citing that he felt he had been wanting to restart the press, liked my book, and could offer better promotion/exposure for the book. i agreed and awkwardly withdrew it from house of vlad; brian later mentioned not liking tao very much in a sort of bitter tone of voice in a podcast interview, i assume (partially) because of this experience. house of vlad as since, i think, ceased making books, following his most recent anthology of his own books, but did very well selling body high before that.

tao and yuka offered a good deal of copyedits and minor editorial suggestions for the book. i wrote ~10 new stories to consider for replacing other stories in this draft version, and we settled on the final 69 stories. i rejected ~30% of tao's edits, specifically for just 1-2 stories. the book was announced in may 2021, wherein i returned to twitter.

giacomo did the cover, tao wrote the synopsis, and i typeset the book and had digitally-printed copies made to send to potential blurbers. i also had stickers made, which i sent to random people whose addresses i had from the two million shirts orders or otherwise, and was reimbursed by tao. the book was printed via off-set printing (not print on demand) in october-november 2021 and officially published in january 2022, although preorder copies through the muumuu house website had been sent out prior to this. 

excerpt from the google doc "Zac Smith book"

May 15—turn in new stories (done)

May 22—tell Zac recommendations for which stories to include (done)

May 20—finish edits

May 22—order digitally-printed ARCs

May 26—write and print personalized blurb requests

June 5—send all digitally-printed ARCs

-Tao

-Megan

-Lars

-Mark

-Nicolette

-Dave Eggers

-Elizabeth Ellen

-Barthelme?

August 5—finish getting blurbs

September 1—send to printer

TBD—finalize press release and other promotional materials

TBD—mail out ARCs to media outlets and reviewers

Dec 14—paid $332.44 expenses (65 ARCs + shipping)

Jan 18—release

everything is totally fine: sales, promotion, money

muumuu house uses small press distribution, which offers promotional support to get the book stocked in some book stores and amazon. book stores tend not to stock books from print on demand services as they cannot return the unsold books, but using spd enables returns and thus a higher likelihood for a book store to stock the book. the book seems to have been stocked by a few places in NYC and at powell's in portland; i did zero outreach to bookstores or libraries about stocking my book, but probably should have.

the initial run was 500 copies, ~130 of which were sent out as ARCs for promotion, and was out of stock due to demand shortly after the bookworm interview in march 2022. the second printing of 1,000 copies includes a corrected typo. we also made an ebook version available on amazon, which seemingly has sold ~50+ copies.

tao paid me an advance of $2.50/book for each print run, minus author copies, for a total of ~$3,000 (unsure specifics as the first payment was via paypal, the second via check - some amount was reserved for more author copies). we later agreed to decrease this to [edit] $1/book $1.5/book for future print runs based on the changes to the economics of small press publishing using spd and print runs between 2011 and 2022. i have sold 3 copies (as eitf x 50bp bundles) via flat dog distro and ~25 copies via twitter direct message. i have given away several copies, maybe 15, to friends and family and one of my high school english teachers.

tao sent ARCs to 31 bookstores and ~100 people/reviewers (individual addresses - scott mcclanahan and juliet escoria treated as one 'people', for example) -- the doc gets confusing, as some names are listed twice, some aren't. recipients include brett easton ellis, ottessa moshfegh, diane williams, the new york times, and josh sherman. i had discouraged tao from sending the book to at 1-2 people who had decided to disassociate from me between the time of the book announcement and the marketing effort, in an attempt to save him ~$6-$14. just noticed some funnier names included on the final list, enjoying speculating at what they thought upon receipt of the book.

as a result of all these advance copies, the book was reviewed by full stop, new pages, heavy feather review, maudlin house, the la review of books, and 3-4 blog posts. i was also interviewed 7 times. aurora huiza interviewed me and published it on neutral spaces sometime late 2021. i was interviewed by rebecca grandsen for x-ray lit in october 2021. i was interviewed by crow for bomb magazine, published january 18 2022, which i think resulted in the highest number of DMs asking to buy the book. i was interviewed by michael wheaton on the lives of writers podcast in january 2022 after he asked for pdfs of all my books, which he seemingly read very quickly and impressively asked interesting questions about. gabriel hart interviewed me for lit reactor in february 2022. the bookworm episodes came out in march 2022. i was on otherppl in april 2022, after some tao-mediated negotiations concerning the fact that brad thought i had shittalked him or the show at some point on twitter -- i think this was when he said he'd only interview me for 50 Barn Poems if i was physically in LA, and then the pandemic happened and everything was virtual, so i emailed him again and he ignored me, and i grumpily posted about this on twitter. i can't think of any other time i shittalk him or the show, but maybe i did, i wouldn't put it past myself. i was interviewed for writing the rapids but due to consideration for the podcast's audience we agreed to not post it. i turned down an interview for peach magazine for similar reasons. the book was also featured on dennis cooper's blog, which resulted in a spike in sales, according to tao, and showing up later also as part of his year-end recap. gabriel hart also included my book in a year-end recap about books that emphasize intrusive thoughts.

i did not personally 'cold call' any venues for reviews or interviews, although i did solicit addresses from a couple people i know from online who i thought would be interested in getting an ARC for review, and provided this information to tao. only a few of these resulted in anything concrete (josh sherman has bragged to me about acquiring multiple ARCs for books he had no intention of reviewing, for example).

neither of us hired a publicist or similar marketing strategy companies or whatever. i have a deep dislike for the idea of hiring a publicist. i do not have an agent. tao submitted the book to the believer book awards; the believer was almost immediately thereafter shut down. i don't think it was submitted to any other awards, which are, i think, almost all terrible scams.

my only social media presence is on twitter. i have not interacted with anything on facebook since ~2018 and did not post about my book on facebook, which would have presumably induced purchases by people in my extended family or friendship/higher education colleague diaspora, but didn't feel worth it, to me. i have made and abandoned instagram 2x, feeling a deep disinterest in understanding the interface and social expectations. i have approached promotional tweets/retweets with a disaffected, sarcastic persona.

we planned no promotional readings or events. tao had experienced limited interest/attendance for his online book reading 'in conversation' events in promoting leave society, and i felt a strong disinterest in doing any myself. since it was still pandemicky and we had our second baby in november 2022, i had no plans on doing any in-person events. i was invited to a virtual book club Q&A hosted by the oakland library in california, which has some kind of relationship with small press distro, for which i think ~10 copies of my book were purchased by the library or participants.

things i didn't do but could have done to conceivably gotten better press attention: 1. pitch interviews, reviews, articles, or misc. writing to bigger name/paying magazines prior to publication, 2. organize readings or events at stores or bars with/without other writers, 3. directly plead with bookstores to stock my book, 4. solicit more blurbs, 5. post constant and deranged tweets telling people to buy my book, 6. message the editors of places who had previously published me to ask them to post promotional tweets for my book, and/or 7. do something illegal that would garner national media attention.

on a more serious note, having listened to various episodes of indiecast and understanding more about media press/hype cycles, i would recommend not publishing a book in january. this is too early in the year to generally keep anyone's attention for year-end recaps, and complicates things like submitting to awards because of the change in the calendar year. it is also a hard time, i believe, for sales as people tend to focus on year-end purchases for the holidays and not preordering things for january. my book was also released roughly around the same time as fuccboi, which got a lot more (mostly negative) attention in the small press/indie lit world and potentially overshadowed my book's press cycle, but no one could have really planned/accounted for that.

i believe that something like 95% of press/attention for the book was simply due to tao/muumuu house. using a real printer and distributor also lent a significant amount of authority to the book which i believe encouraged stores to stock it and people to review it who otherwise would not have bothered. i also believe that several people, because of jealousy or a misdirected sense of entitlement regarding tao/muumuu house, chose to ignore, shittalk, or disassociate from me. it is obvious to me that the benefits outweigh these negatives.

conclusion / the future

because of the book, i was solicited for writing by tess pollack for animal blood magazine in NYC and by jonathan brott for l'amour, la mort in sweden. jonathan also proposed translating the book to swedish and secured a publisher for it. the swedish edition should be published sometime 'in the spring'; i was paid a $500 advance for it. i would enjoy seeing my book(s) translated to more languages. 

after one year in print, my book has 120 ratings and 35 reviews on goodreads. i haven't seen the recent full tally of sales, but i hypothesize this means it has sold ~750 copies.

i enjoyed the experience of publishing my book with tao and muumuu house immensely. he is a supportive, enthusiastic, and detail-oriented editor/publisher who invested deeply in my book. i feel lucky and excited about having written the book that encouraged tao to publish books via muumuu house again. i hope he continues to publish new books. i like his writing, his friendship, his enthusiasm for literature, and his commitment to publishing.

i am happy with the book and surprised by the good (for small press books) sales. i am thankful to everyone who read and/or purchased the book, and i am forever indebted to and grateful toward everyone who interviewed me and/or reviewed/blurbed the book.

[edit] also i want to express deep gratitude to crow, graham, and mo'b for reading early versions of the book and providing analysis and feedback, and asking thoughtful questions that helped me better understand my own book and intentions. and also to alan good for providing minor copy edits for 10 stories in exchange for some records, i think; i still often think about how subaru trunks are supposed to be called 'waybacks' or something equally deranged.

i'm trying to figure out how to make this section sound earnest. i'm being earnest: i'm really happy with the book and all the cool, funny, and unexpected things that happened because of it. i probably most enjoyed getting out o bed at ~11pm one night to talk to michael silverblatt as a sort of pre-interview, sitting in my cold office, nervous and shivering in the cold room in my underwear, talking about frederick barthelme and suicide ideation. he's an incredibly sweet and charismatic person and made me feel good about myself and my writing.

in general, large (artistic) accomplishments almost always result in a depressive episode, i think, for lack of some sense of expected fulfillment. this was true for me and this book, as i expected. however, making the book was fun. i feel proud of it, happy about it, and happily disconnected from thinking of having a 'career arc' or trying to leverage this book into 'the next thing.' it basically all went much better than i ever anticipated. i recommend getting involved in publishing on your own terms and prioritizing your vision over sales or fame, whoever you are, reading this.

thank you for reading my blog post.

why we don't have a name, maybe

i haven't blogged in a while and went looking through my old-ish notes for things i could reuse as a blog post. i found this loose sort of squib about genre naming and how it might/could/does apply to literature. when i was studying linguistics the topic of genre etymology was interesting to me, although i was unable to really work on it as part of my program, so it's generally unstudious and without citation. i've cleaned it up a little bit for the blog and expanded it greatly. i apologize for the linguistics jargon.

Abstract:

The current movement or set of movements within online, independent literature, following in the footsteps of alt lit (~2006-2015), does not, and possibly cannot, in its current form, be given a 'successful' genre name, due to two reasons: 1) the dearth of productive genre identifying morphemes in literature and 2) the lack of cohesive aesthetic sensibilities in the current scene. i discuss basic etymological observations as regards (music) genre to set the stage for how genre name formation (generally) works in english. i then discuss "alt lit" and the current trends in "post alt lit" writing from an aesthetic/publishing perspective to set the stage for how standard genre name formation may/may not be applicable to the current writing scene, and why.

 

1. Music Genre Onomastics in English

i need to make a quick clarifying note that this is about english. i do not know much about onomastic genre etymology in other languages, but i wish i did. onomastics is simply the study of names.

here is a brief rundown on genre name morphology (morphology just means 'how words are formed'). question: how do new genre names form, especially from old ones? here are my favorite canonical examples to illustrate from popular music:

 

HEAVY METAL

Coined by journalists describing either a) production quality of a record by [the birds i think? the yardbirds?] due to 'aluminum sounding highs', b) being present at a jimi hendrix concert, 'sensation of heavy sheets of metal falling on the audience', c) folk etymology of 'metal is harder than rock', unverified. Consists of two parts: HEAVY and METAL. METAL became the 'productive root' for this genre, modified by prefixes: thrash metal, death metal, hair metal, etc. and, later on, by postfixes: metalcore, metalgaze, etc. so we see examples of genre morphemes (metal, -gaze, -core, death-, etc) 'competing' in position, which one bears more semantic value, etc. - if both 'metal' and 'gaze' are 2nd position by default, which one goes 2nd when they merge?

 

SHOEGAZE

Coined by journalists (note, this always happens), originally as 'shoegazing/shoegazer' due to early reports of Moose performing while singer looked at lyrics taped to floor, plus folk etymology of dependence on guitar effect pedals (positioned on the floor). Affixes quickly dropped to two-morpheme term 'shoegaze', with 'gaze' becoming the productive root in second position: shitgaze, nu-gaze, metalgaze. 'Metalgaze' is a good example of morpheme jockeying, as both 'metal' and 'gaze' are 2nd position roots, one has to go first. Most likely due to English preference for trochees (stress on first of three syllables: ME-tal-gaze vs. me-tal-GAZE)

 

NEW WAVE

Coined by journalists (natch) to describe the 'new wave of punk rock'. Quickly shortened to two morpheme 'new wave' with 'wave' the productive root, as in vaporwave, synthwave, darkwave. Interesting to note that 'wave' in modern contexts has lost almost all 'new wave' meaning, aside from maybe reliance on synthesizers, and seems to mostly act as a 'filler' morpheme to denote genre in an abstract sense, eg. 'synthwave' = 'synth music'.

 

Here are a couple other quick examples:

punk rock -> punk -> pop-punk, folk punk (punk in 2nd position)

hardcore punk -> hardcore -> core -> metalcore, breakcore

doom metal -> doom -> doomjazz

bebop (jazz) -> bop -> neo-bop, post-bop

popular music -> pop -> synthpop, dream pop

These are more or less the 'clean' examples where we get more or less productive morphemes that map to a genre: pop, metal, gaze, doom, core, bop, etc. But not all popular genres evolve this way.

 

Here is an example where a popular term does not neatly generate a productive morpheme: 'alternative rock' -> alt-rock -> ~alt-metal, alternarock, others(?). 'Alternative' seems like an unstable morpheme, not entirely clear what its semantic contribution is re: genre nor how it surfaces, eg. 'alt' vs 'alterna' vs 'alternative', which will be important later. Further stymied by its semantic import, simply meaning it is an alternative to something else that is backgrounded - an term used for its existing meaning, not created fresh for the genre, cf. shoegaze. also note that 'alt' isn't super productive in new music genres as finer-grained genre morphemes are, e.g. we don't see 'alt gaze' or 'alt punk'.

 

Finally, of interest, is when we get a genre with no morpheme strong enough to continue to merge. For example, 'post punk' is a very solidified, well-defined genre, but neither morpheme 'post' nor 'punk' is sufficient to denote the genre in new formations, eg. 'postgaze' is not 'shoegaze with post punk elements' but rather 'after shoegaze.' This happens i think with any temporal affix, eg 'post', 'new/nu', and some others. This is why we don't see clear etymological paths in the innovation on these genres, e.g., what is post punk in 1980 vs 2020? Post rock from 1990 to 2020? Feels like genres with these 'terminal names' end up lacking a clear historical development possibly for lack of name, contrast with black metal, where see end up with blackgaze, post-black, etc., even though post punk is older than black metal, so we'd expect more complex evolution of the genre - lack of easily coined identifiers for movements within the genre may end up just erasing movements altogether; there is only the amorphous post punk.

 

2. Literary Genre and Onomastics in English

 

OK now that we've talked about how genre names generally form and evolve, we can move on to literature. Here are some genres:

modern

post modern

literary fiction

realism

magic realism

new sincerity

alt lit

 

Many genres of literature are generically termed, eg. sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and are indistinguishable form name alone from non-literature art in these genres, as in movies or television. While music has music-only genre terms like shoegaze, and cinema does to some extent e.g. mumblecore, literature seems to leverage distinctive genre terms the least. 

 

we do see 'fiction' as a predominant root for new genres. surveying wikipedia, there's "nonsense verse". "mathematical fiction", "literary fiction", etc. We see some level of productivity in fiction -> fic, literary -> lit. so we get "lit fic" and "alt lit." interesting in that 'lit' can be in both positions, similar to 'metal' and 'punk'.

 

With "lit" and "fic" as potential roots for 'literature' and 'fiction' and have evidence of genres coined by describing fiction with a pre-existing term, eg. "mathematical", much like 'pop music with synthesizers' is termed 'synthpop'.

 

so we can predict then that practitioners/consumers of "mathematical fiction" might refer to it as "math fic" or  "math lit" cf "math rock". Some googling seems to confirm this (controlling for some search terms, we find some blog posts and academic papers referring to "math lit" as a genre of children's literature:

The genre of math lit for children is not huge, but it is growing. My kid loves the early reader books by my friend and colleague Julie Glass (A Dollar for Penny (1998), The Fly On the Ceiling (2000)). I found Izolda Fotiyeva’s Math with Mom (2003) too late for my daughter but will definitely read it with my son.

 

If I could put just one resource in the hands of a teacher wanting to mine the many treasures of “math-lit” as a teaching tool for both mathematics and language arts, this would be the book.

 

but of interest to us is alt lit, in that the current indie lit scene follows in the footsteps of alt lit both in terms of style/influences as well as publication process, at least in the sphere i'm interested in.

 

3. Alt Lit

 

what is 'alt lit'? alt lit was a semi-popular literary movement that burgeoned on the internet, bucking traditional publishing in favor of blogs and curated online magazines/ebook repositories, social media, memes, etc. Stylistically it was often plain, disaffected, introspective, confessional, influenced by k-mart realism with emphasis on consumer culture, technology, and existentialism. it was often infused with bouts of fancy, dread, daydreams, 'extreme' imagery, and, of course, relationship drama. there was an emphasis on repetition of form, literary anaphora, and poetic play with syntax - either with very short sentences, punctuation/capitalization, or even overly complex, dense clauses.

 

i assume the name alt lit comes from 'alternative literary fiction' cf 'alternative rock', thus potentially "alt lit fic -> alt lit". quickly reduced to bisyllabic, two morpheme 'alt lit'. interesting note here is the rumbles of things like "neu lit" and "nu lit" in eg beach sloth blog posts from 2012 (i always enjoy seeing the failed terms proposed for a genre, in retrospect, e.g. 'post rock' referring to stereolab in 1993).

 

the term 'alt lit' seems to have been coined by (then anonymous) founders of Alt Lit Gossip, but i have to assume the term came about prior to this, perhaps ironically, or earnestly, by some outside journalism, seeing as how Alt Lit Gossip was founded in 2011, while Tao Lin (main figurehead of alt lit) had been publishing online since ~2004, with several books released in his iconic style prior to 2011. indeed, googling with date filters shows the rumpus mentioning "alt-lit" in discussing 'kmart realism' in 2009. vogue uses the term to describe dave eggers ~2001 (obviously this eggers link isn't pointing to what we'd call 'alt lit' today, although it showcases the semantic vacuousness of any term with 'alt' in the name).

 

another fun fact about genres is that notable, central figures to genres across music/art/writing/etc. almost always reject the term ascribed to their (pioneering) work. this is true from progressive rock (king crimson) to noise rock (zach hill/hella) to IDM (aphex twin) to, of course, alt lit - mira gonzalez, sam pink, jordan castro, and many other key figures in the original alt lit days all soundly reject/rejected the label for their own writing on twitter and in interviews. i'm using flimsy logic here but, to me this rejection of the term is almost always evidence of being a key figure for the term, haha. relatedly then anyone hyping themselves up with this term, especially in 2020 (ahem, josh, if you're reading) may as well be doomed to never gaining any cult status as pioneer.

 

i should also note here that for some number of (younger) people who are newer to internet writing and who didn't experience alt lit in its peak, the term "alt lit" is a stand-in for "alt right", the ~2016 term used to describe young, (extreme) right wing idiots on the internet. i think this is because of terror house magazine, whose founder is/was alt right/nazi/white nationalist and who has been central to various blow ups in the scene as regards harassment, publishing problematic people, etc. I'm not trying to be prescriptive when i say "alt lit" is not a stand-in for "alt right", but the fact is that the term 'alt lit' predates 'alt right' and historically has/had nothing to do with conservative politics; as far as i can tell almost all alt lit and post alt lit writers identify as to the left of the spectrum, with some random exceptions; what feels like the real political divide (aside from leftist vs liberal) aligns with some notion of 'free speech' and/or 'i am not my brother's keeper' - i understand most of the expat people often accused of harboring right wing views/pieces, for example, were staunch supporters of bernie sanders, but like with anything i don't think this is a simple left vs. right issue.

4. Post Alt Lit

anyway, alt lit is dead. it more or less died due to public backlash to the style and more damningly a series of scandals involving its key figures and institutions. but its impact is still felt today and we are seeing, i think, a sort of 'new wave of alt lit', at least in terms of style and interest in alternative forms of publishing (and less so the interpersonal dynamics and emphasis on new york city drug life and, i hope, predatory behavior). trends i've seen, i think, in which the scene today departs from original alt lit range from the pop culture under analysis (today there's more on 'always being online' as a default as opposed to a choice, video games [which are more 'normalized' in 2020], the military industrial complex, and overtly political content) to the expanded life experience of the authors (parenthood, different types of jobs/careers) to the level of irony (less sincere, more ambiguous in intention, or else much more sincere and unironic entirely) to the type of introspection (more nostalgia-based autofiction, in many ways more 'traditionally literary' than the here-and-now of alt lit) to the class aesthetics (emphasis on working class perspectives, junk food, and alternatives to traditional education/career paths, in contrast with alt lit's focus on college, big city life, and 'working in media/tech'). something else i've noticed is that, while alt lit figures were known for being prolifically self-promotional, post alt lit authors reject 'standard' approaches to self promotion on e.g. social media; they do not use hashtags, participate in "writers lift" or "follow fridays", seem to feel uncomfortable suggesting that anyone actually buy their books, and often (temporarily) delete their twitter accounts. we are also suffering, i think, from a traditionalization of online publishing, in that exposure is still mainly achieved through a submission queue process as opposed to a more grass roots, inner-circle based invite/solicitation model.

 

in terms of online venues, i see the neutral spaces blog as a sort of central melting pot across various subscenes; the prolific (and thus sort of hazy, in terms of scope) explicitly post alt lit venues like xray, maudlin house, and to some extent hobart; the 'vaguely transgressive' bloc of places like expat, surfaces, selffuck, tragickal, and cavity mag; the still-going older (sometimes tepid) alternative venues like the nervous breakdown, tyrant magazine, vol. 1 brooklyn, and muumuu house; the class of what i think are/were maybe the 'core' of the scene in mostly defunct venues like soft cartel, philosophical idiot, faded out, wohe, and others i'm forgetting, but where i'd also include back patio; and the myriad, peripheral flash fiction/mfa-lite venues like wigleaf and some others i don't really follow. there's also the prolific, vaguely literary, normcore kind of venues that often pop up and get a lot of hype but ultimately to me feel directionless and without clear aesthetic - barren mag, rejection lit, HAD. there's a lot of bleed over and crossing of these and other venues (i was torn on where to put hobart, for example), and i think many suffer from lack of editorial vision due to output and editorial staff size/rotation. there are other scenes i'm less familiar with, ranging from those that don't really publish but who are still a little crew of friends, to the safer lit places like moonchild and perhappened and etc., to the communist/anti-publishing outfits like paintbucket and prolit, to the various other thematic places like occulum and black telephone. in terms of book presses i'm thinking of back patio, house of vlad, expat, and to an extent clash, ghost city, maudlin house, 11:11, apocalypse party and some others i'm forgetting. there's generally a trend across these presses of publishing 'actual alt lit' names like noah cicero and sam pink, as a sort of signage, maybe, of editorial vision toward "post alt lit". 

 

if anything, i think this paragraph and its probably obvious, numerable omissions points to a large problem with a cohesive scene, in that there is a constant deluge of mostly uncategorizable content across a million little platforms. with the democratization of publishing (to whatever small extent it's actually been democratized) we have both a rising meaninglessness in what it means to be published as well as a continual burn-out culture and general obscurity; it's incredibly easy to be a nobody and to publish nobodies and so we shouldn't be surprised to see nobody in particular standing out. this feels in contrast to alt lit proper, where there were only a few time-honored institutions and an emphasis on one-time, collaborative/solicitation-based publishing, which, combined with the less active stream of social media, meant that publishing took on, i think, more of an 'eventive' sense. basically, there was less of it, it was harder to find, and it was much more heavily curated. we can complain about poor imitations of tao lin and what his centralized authority meant for people, but it's important to note that he curated and promoted these imitations. i want to take more time to think about this and where it may or may not be applicable today, but there's something bizarrely more individualistic in today's aesthetically washed-out scene than in alt lit, and this washing out means no particular sensibilities are really cultivated or explored, maybe.

 

i obviously haven't thought much on this, and i'd be curious to hear form people on what they think is happening, today, stylistically, across these communities. please comment or email me your thoughts, if you feel like it. but i think the amorphous nature of this lends itself to the problem of naming the scene, discussed below.

 

5. Problems in (Post) Alt Lit Onomastics

so anyway the question now is, what comes after alt lit in terms of onomastics? we have some obvious but wordy options available to us: "post alt lit", which i've been using here, "nu alt lit", "alt lit 2.0", maybe. we see some hits on "post alt lit" and variations on google, eg a review for sam pink's White Ibis described as post-"alt-lit", an interview with Bud Smith hesitantly referencing the amorphous writing scene in 2020, and a (tyrant books based) recommendation article. but we have the problem of wordiness - how many three-morpheme genres do we see naturally used? and is it clear for our purposes what "post alt lit" means as a style as opposed to simply a period of time? is 'post alt lit' clear in style or simply the writing happening after the alt lit world? what happened when i typed "new wave of alt lit" above, can we turn that into something useful? can we reclaim "new wave" and divorce it from the music?

 

the problem is compounded by the fact that neither morpheme in "alt lit" is strong enough in semantic meaning to successfully merge with other morphemes; neither 'alt' nor 'lit' in isolation can mean 'alt lit' in the way that 'metal' or 'gaze' or even 'wave' can evoke their historical music genres. 'Alt lit' is like 'alternative rock' or 'post punk,' I think a 'terminal genre name' that can thus only flounder with additional modification, which doesn't stick.

 

other issues are that there are fewer literary fiction subgenres compared to alternative music, ie. not as many productive morphemes available (basically just 'lit' and 'fic'), maybe because literary genre formation is slow and less open to experimentation across genres. For example, 'magic lit' does not mean 'magic alternative literature', 'alt realism' might not mean 'alternative literature realism'.

 

and yet another problem is that the existing genre names, eg 'realism', 'modernism', never become monosyllabic genre roots, eg we don't have 'mod' or 'real' when talking about literature. this hinders genre naming as well. what would modern alt lit be called? what would alt lit with magical realism be called? (note i think this is where post alt lit is sort of headed, maybe, in fits and starts)

 

5. Conclusion & Discussion

so we don't have a clear path from 'alt lit' to whatever is happening today, either aestheticaly or onomastically. this means that our best bet for a new genre name hinges on a brand new coinage, eg invention of the literary correlate of 'metal' or 'shoegaze' that may generate a new productive root, something that comes externally, e.g. via journalistic reportage, and that points out either some circumstantial (time, place, community aspects) or aesthetic component. while 'alt lit' was a more or less an umbrella term for a loose collection of advances in literary fiction (much like 'alternative music' being everything from like REM to Talking Heads to Smashing Pumpkins in the 80s/90s), there was still a general sense of aesthetics, eg. objective narration, disaffected voice, emphasis on consumerism and technology, etc. all novel genre terms require strong aesthetics for a new term to evoke (again cf 'metal' or 'shoegaze'), and yet the current pool of 'indie lit' is aesthetically diverse, even more diverse than the original alt lit scene. therefore, unless there's a clear movement to create aesthetically fine-tuned writing, a programmatic decision to invest in and develop a genre with a strong aesthetic a priori, there's little hope of a journalist-coined genre term and thus little hope at broader marketability as eg a 'movement'.

 

what we're stuck with, for now, is the washed-out "indie lit". this is plagued by problems of existing connotation: the demipopularity of indie rock from 2004-2014, for example, as well as lack of clarity in its denotation: is indie lit simply any kind of literature that's independent? that wasn't true for indie rock, with death cab for cutie going platinum in 2008 and arcade fire winning a grammy in 2010, and especially now in 2020 with "indie" meaning, apparently, anything that's not clearly pop or traditional rock - cavin has described maroon 5 to me as 'indie', for example, which is insane and funny to me. this is all to say that 'indie lit' now is only barely useful, and its ambiguity i think accurately reflects the ambiguous nature of the scene.

one last thing to note about today's scene is, i think, that it will most likely never be taken seriously in a larger way like alt lit was, due to a variety of reasons i don't know if i can do justice to here, but which include changes in internet publishing (e.g. vice no longer paying hundreds of dollars for short essays) and social media (end of blogs, rise of single-channel experiences on phones via twitter and instagram, etc). unless someone like ashleigh bryant philips or bud smith really break through as literary darlings and lift up everyone else in their wake,  i don't see today's era really making much of a splash. it's entirely possible that they or someone else 'strikes big' and moves up and out, but will they continue to run indie presses and publish in indie mags? we have a series of increasingly high hurdles to recreate the successes of alt lit, if even that's something we want to recreate (again, not talking about the scandals, but simply the output and impact). this is all to say that this whole discussion may be pointless - do we really deserve a name at all? possibly not, or at least not yet. thanks for reading.

update 11/9/2020: after publishing this at 9am on november 3rd, dawson (@dawtismspeaks) posted on twitter about the term 'alt lit', unsure of the historical baggage and 'anxiety' around the term, which sparked some good discussion where people shared their personal understandings of the term and, where, jake blackwood (@JBlackwoodSays) seems to have coined the term "cyber writing." the term is obviously in the vein of "so dumb it's funny" and quickly spread as a small-scale meme over the week, perpetuated mostly by cory (@melancory666) and crew, drawing confusion/curiosity/jokes from people throughout the scene, including junk funky and Dave. i like thinking that the term will catch on somehow because of how stupid it is (and how it doesn't make sense to me so much since it seems to refer to the medium and not the content or style, but, whatever, who cares). jack has had some serious-seeming tweets trying to articulate a sort of manifesto/reasoning for the term, and cory has mentioned working on an actual manifesto of sorts and has been seeking input from people, and josh sherman has sort of leaned a little too heavily into the term as a bit, i think, which feels 'on brand.' vaguely hoping this blog post gets archived as a primary source when the term becomes ubiquitous and famous.

unpublished manuscripts

i don't have a particularly clear vision for this blog post. recently i've been reading more unpublished manuscripts. socializing 'as a writer' (i do not identify as a 'writer', i think, but i am a writer, i guess), as i understand it - or maybe because of my inability to understand anything, and so i rely on this as a form of socializing because of not knowing what else do to - means, more or less, talking about 1) recent experiences with publishing (rejections, acceptances, places under consideration for submission), 2) thoughts on/recommendations of certain books or stories, 3) complimenting or otherwise reflecting on someone's recently published piece of writing, and 4) trading manuscripts of unpublished material.

i enjoy reading someone's manuscript of unpublished material but i'm unsure why (i'm unsure why i like/do anything). part of it may just be because it's what people do, and i have nothing else to do, and/or am following along with the existing social etiquette. i have had productive DMs and email exchanges with many writers now regarding the above topics. many of these correspondences also involve small talk, personal confession, and discussion of current events (both world news/politics and indie lit drama). i have come to appreciate the way in which social media (maybe just twitter, due to how it's constructed) obfuscates, or easily allows for the obfuscation of, personal information. most writers i see in my little sphere and end up engaging with in some way are, more or less, complete mysteries to me. i do not know what many of them actually look like or sound like, where they live or where they're from, what they do for work, what their education background is like, etc. I have had many preconceptions about writers in this weird small sphere challenged once these conversations begin. for example, i have learned about both "secret MFAs" and "community college dropping out", about which authors people have or have not read, and even personal and/or romantic relationships with other writers vaguely within the same community. i enjoy learning about these kinds of things and seeing the way that it colors my understanding of the community, the people involved, their aspirations, etc., both in terms of general curiosity as well as helping me better understand myself, my aspirations, etc. in general, i feel like more people than i expected have some sort of desire to 'make it' as a writer, e.g. get long-ish literary fiction into prestigious journals, acquire an agent, and publish a book on (an imprint of) a major book press.

i feel like i am more or less open in most of my correspondence and i worry that this comes off as self-centeredness, which is a fear i've harbored since ~4th grade when my dad pulled me aside to tell me that i often talked over my friends (since that experience i have, generally, in person, become more reserved, meek, and dispirited in most casual conversation in person), and so i make, generally, a concerted effort to reflect on what i've said and emphasize asking follow up questions and/or including compliments, etc., in these kinds of conversations with other people. i tend to write lengthy, neurotic emails in a tone that is much different from  my tone here in these blog posts, my tweets, and my fiction/poetry. i feel, to some extent, like a failure for so poorly constructing a thoroughly consistent 'persona' across modes of conversation, as compared to other people. i feel worried that this discrepancy in communication style makes communicating with me jarring or frustrating or disappointing. i am often also easily overwhelmed by maintaining personal correspondence, especially via text message. i am currently sitting on a backlog of something like 8 people i need/want to send emails to (and thus several manuscripts i want to give feedback on).

anyway, the point of this post is about reading unpublished manuscripts i've been sent as part of these kinds of correspondences. as a means of being a conscientious, 'reciprocal'-minded conversation partner, i make an effort to ask people i talk to about what they're working on and for them to send it to me. i also 'solicit' manuscripts from people in a non-publishing-oriented way, out of genuine curiosity/interest, if, for example, their website is outdated with broken links, and i'm curious to read more of their writing, or things like that, in situations where we don't otherwise have an ongoing unrelated conversation. i have received 3-4 'manuscripts' that way, and several more from the 'exchange' type of conversation. i'm not sure if i'm making sense. i have a worry, as someone involved with a small press, that these kinds of interactions 'carry some weight' re: publishing, which i dislike, since it usually comes from a general, genuine interest/curiosity and less an active plan on 'scouting manuscripts'. sometimes people don't send me anything, citing its unfinished nature or nonexistence, although sometimes those people eventually send me something a long time later, citing a delay due to various personal reasons. i think, in general, from my personal experience with expectation/hope/etc., that these kinds of manuscript exchanges/solicitations 'result' in something publishing-related, cf. a friend of a friend passing on a demo to a record label executive, and i expect this vague hope is usually mutual, but so far i don't think it has happened, aside from me expressing interest in publishing two books for back patio press. in general, i do not know how someone initiates this kind of exchange with asking someone to read my own work, but it seems to be a thing people do, and do successfully. i have considered reaching out to people to ask them how they initiate these kinds of conversations.

i struggle with giving useful/good/reasonable/acceptable feedback on manuscripts for a few reasons. one is that i have basically no experience with 'workshop etiquette' from e.g. BFA or MFA programs or paid independent workshops, which means that  people who have this experience will expect a certain approach to feedback that i am unfamiliar with, which has resulted in me overstepping boundaries or making careless assumptions about a variety of things, resulting in me to some degree hurting the other person and flailing uselessly in apology. related to this is how to separate or communicate personal preference from helpful/useful/objective feedback. for example, i would not feel comfortable trusting my opinion on genre fiction because i do not know what makes genre fiction 'good', and/or i feel some vague sense of disagreement with what makes it good. this applies to 'literary fiction' in a similar sense; i have more or less strong personal convictions (probably misguided and stupid) about literary fiction. i think everyone is the same. i do not know how to give good feedback. i am bumbling through it, generally. i think i have an arbitrary insistence on high standards and am bad at just saying nice things. for example, one time i was talking with a coworker about the pastries from coffee places near where we worked and she tried convincing me that a certain place had really good cheese danishes and i insisted that she was probably wrong. she eventually bought me one to 'convince me' and i maintained that it wasn't very good. relating this story to my wife, she informed me that my coworker was most likely trying to connect with me on a human level and i had been an aloof asshole and that i should have just lied and said it was a very good cheese danish and that we should go to that place for pastries with some frequency, as friends. because of my failures at being a good manuscript exchange partner, i am now overly self-flagellating re: the 'force' with which i suggest or describe anything. i'm trying to think of a word here but can only think of 'demure', which doesn't make any sense and isn't a verb.

as a result my lack of experience/familiarity with providing feedback on writing, i often spend some amount of time dipshitily asking for what kinds of feedback would be useful to the sender, although i rarely get a clear sense of expectations, which isn't anyone's fault, i think, aside from mine. in terms of what kind of feedback that i have found useful for a given story, aside from generic 'praise' which functions as encouragement and copyedits (for typos, etc), i have benefited from hearing interpretations of the 'purpose' of a piece and how the choices in style, tone, etc., affect the execution of that purpose; in general, if someone feels 'confident' in how to interpret a piece of my writing, it feels like a sort of failure on my part, operating from a vague desire to write ambiguously and combat the idea that any given piece of writing must have a discernible 'purpose/moral' aside from evoking an emotion or presenting some kind of unique imagery. i'm not sure what i'm trying to say - usually if an editor, as part of a 'tentative' acceptance for a literary journal, suggests rewriting the ending of my story, i feel like this is evidence that i should not change the ending, based on how i feel about the endings in most stories published by the relevant literary journal. i do feel, however, that feedback on a manuscript as a whole, in terms of sequencing, pacing, size, etc., is very useful and informative, maybe because i tend to have lots of strong opinions about these aspects of a manuscript/book, and so it would feel validating maybe to see other people think of a manuscript in terms of these things.

i'm trying to think of instances in which my feedback was taken into account for a published book. i sent cavin extensive copyedits and some sequencing/cutting/rewriting suggestions for his book I Could be Your Neighbor, Isn't that Horrifying?. the largest impact was recommending that he cut ~3 chapters/stories that developed a sort of subplot that i felt was distracting from my understanding of the purpose of the book. he seems to feel like this was a good idea. i gave some general copyedits for Time. Wow. and suggested that one story be rewritten based on my understanding of a scientific observation which neil had gotten backwards; someone i told this to noted that it was funny to bring up scientific accuracy in a collection of fantastical, calvino-esque interpretations of scientific observations, but it felt important to me for some reason, and neil simply cut the story as opposed to rewriting it. i recommended that tj larkey cut 2 short non-sequiturish chapters from his book Venice, by way of messaging Cavin, who messaged tj, which he agreed to do. i think i gave useful feedback on giacomo's Chainsaw Poems but i can't remember what that would be, i think maybe some suggestions on a couple specific poems as he was writing them and not so much during the compilation of the book. i think i recommended that mike cut or reorder certain poems in an early manuscript which was later reworked into gateway 2000. i have been giving dan some edits/suggestions for watertown from a 'cohesive manuscript' perspective as well. nick farriella claims to have reworked an unpublished collection of his i read a while ago and in retrospect thinks it benefited from things i said, or something to that effect, which felt good to hear.

i also have embarrassing experiences of misunderstanding 'how things work' and not realizing that people charge money for manuscript consultations even though, i think, they don't explicitly advertise that this is something they do for money. in this way i feel stupid for having 'lead someone on' for a sale without realizing it and feel like this kind of interaction has negatively impacted my relationship with people. i don't begrudge anyone who does this but in general i personally feel uncomfortable with paying/charging for manuscript consultation (feels hard to articulate a personal opinion without sounding judgemental of others, cf. being a vegetarian - i think it's ok to charge/pay for manuscript consultation if it's important/useful/good for you).