Chapbooking: some reflections

Kieth has an interesting post on the intricacies of chapbook production -- a guide for the DIYers. One thing though: for Sky of Ink, I downloaded a chapbook template from the League of Canadian Poets website, here. Downloads are free for anyone. We were able to alter its configuration to take legal sized pages folded in half, which is a size I like for poetry, as it provides "breathing room" especially for long lines. (It does limit, though, one's choices of paper.) The nice thing about this template is that you paste the poems in sequentially and it automatically recto-versos them for you in the right order. Then we take the file to our local copy shop and presto!

Chapbooks, as Keith says, can serve as a poet's business card. They're the literary equivalent of the music EP.

The chapbook length, as I've said elsewhere, is to my view the most suitable for poetry, considering the intense demands poetry makes on its readers; one can conceivably get through a chapbook in one sitting. The full length trade book demands a considerably greater a commitment. Was it Thorton Wilder who said that out of any city we create a village we call our own? Most poetry readers dip into collections; it could be said that out of every full-length collection, we create a chapbook we can call our own.

Besides, look at the organization of many a poetry collection: a lot of them are simply subdivided into parts -- a series of chapbooks.

For all its advantages as a reading experience, the chapbook in our culture has a problem of status. It is akin to the part-time job. Full-length books, like full time jobs, get all the benefits: reviews, prizes, inclusion in libraries, etc. -- even though part-timers may put in the most inspired work! (I know that's true of teaching, at any rate.) In the States particularly, there are a number of chapbook manuscript competitions with promise of prize $$, honour, publication -- some of these may even raise money for their publishers. You can find them listed every month in Poets & Writers. But there are precious few prizes for finished DIY-type chapbooks. The BP Nichol competition is one; the WCDR international chapbook challenge, in which our own Nina Bruck came out a winner for 2008, didn't run this year and appears sporadic, if not defunct. These are the only ones I know of. Can anyone out there suggest another?

Another disadvantage: chapbooks tend to get lost on a shelf.

So why make chapbooks? Well, these productions are a joy to make, and a means to grow. Publishing is an integral part of the creative process: juxtaposing poems in fresh combinations, seeing how they relate to one another, or how motifs repeat can be a real eye-opener. Ones' editorial skills are instantly honed when one prepares one's work for public exposure in this way. If one doesn't have a tradebook publisher ready to publish one's work, this can be a good intermediate step.

Getting ready for takeoff...

A brain wave came to me yesterday, after I had settled into a hot bath, of all places -- but it makes sense, it's a good place for the mind to let go. The result is that I've changed the title of my forthcoming collection of prose poems from Field of Gems to Passenger Flight. The former, while it resonated with prominent elements in the collection, was more than a tad precious (play on words entirely intended). Passenger Flight really reflects the tone and concerns of the book... it's also a prominent motif from beginning to end, and happens to be the title of one of the best prose poems in collection . Everybody (all five, so far) involved in this project agrees with me that this new title is far better.

My book contract arrived yesterday with the old title on it, and I had to ask my publisher to send me another. My editor and I were just about to get down to final editing and book design would soon follow. Catalogue copy is due next week. One blurb endorsement had to be changed slightly; another one has yet to be written. So I feel very lucky that my brain wave came when it did.

Below and above, some images, found through Google Images, that might make it to -- or inspire -- the book jacket. There have to be clouds. I love clouds.

Double Exposure

"CPAP", my poem about the trials of love while suffering the travails of sleep apnea (yes, I've suffered that most of my adult life), appeared in the current issue of CV2 -- but with a couple of typos not in the manuscript I sent them. Snide witticisms could be made on who was "asleep" on this one. After I graciously pointed out the errors (yes, we're all human, etc.), they offered to reprint the poem in the coming Winter issue, #31.3. That was classy of them.

Cautionary tale

Considering sending to poetry book publishing contests? Here's a cautionary tale -- a true horror story -- from Stacey Lynn Brown. With freezes and cuts in government arts funding, such contests are also becoming more common in Canada. The same caveat, of course, applies.

UPDATE, Aug. 29: It seems that Stacey has found another publisher. Good for her!

Poemeleon

Here's a damned nice internet poetry review.
Quite enjoyed a number of the selections. Their next deadline, for an issue devoted to persona poems, is only a few days away.

Expozine

It seems that whenever you enter into a new field or indulge in a new form of creative expression, you soon find yourself in the midst of an overwhelming crowd of others doing much the same thing, putting to a severe test any sense of originality or impact that may have excited you in the first place. Expozine was no exception. Once we spread out our wares amid more than two hundred tables of other small and self-publishers, zine- and trinket-venders, the vast majority of them just from the area of Montreal, it soon became obvious that it would be a serious challenge not only to sell a copy or two but give our freebees away. Like nearly everyone, we brought at least three times as much stock as we actually needed, for the sake of display and just in case of some wildly improbable, dream-like demand. With a techno back beat pounding from overhead speakers, and the crushing throng of browsers, it soon became obvious that what would catch people's eye was the eye-catching, the novel, the cute, what would bring on exclamations of "That's Neat!" I think the guy who packed away the best sales on the floor was a maker of not books but leather belts: I'm sure he sold at least a half a dozen of them. So much was on hand it was hard to focus on anything, let alone read, absorb, assess.

And yet, this blaring marché was unpretentious and fun, the direct relationship between makers and buyers refreshing. A number of the venders had such marvelously eccentric wares that it restored, in a strange way, my faith in humanity. It was amusing to see what kinds of people noticed our table at all, and what elements in the crammed, enormous smörgåsbord caused them to notice us. My Guatemala & Other Poems -- it looks like it was printed yesterday although it's nearly 13 years old -- caught the eye of one sensitive-looking young fella (he turned out to write poetry himself), who leafed through it, put it down, but came back an hour later in a rush to buy it, exclaiming it had made his day (and for sure, he made mine.) One young woman really took to Nina's book, claiming she loved its title and austere, graphic-free presentation -- refreshing, she felt, in the context of so much eye-popping stuff. (I think she was as unusual in this regard as the book itself.) We were happy to cut both these people half-price deals because it seemed sure they would read them. I traded Francisco's book with Ann Diamond for her collection Terrorist Letters, but also bought My Cold War from her -- the context for these transactions was already created by some lengthy dialogue on this blog, and it was really enjoyable shooting the breeze with her in person once again. The owner of Véhicule, a major small press publisher, came to our table and bought Nina's book after I purchased David Solway's Reaching for Clear. It was fun chatting for the first time with him -- he recognized me and I him from other literary events in town -- and it turns out he knew Nina and was delighted we had pushed her to finally publish. Small world, of course, that of Anglo literary publishing in Montreal. The place soon became packed to the point that the multitudes had difficulty making their way, and ten minutes before closing time, there was scarcely a sign that things were coming to an end. At the end of the day, we made back our costs and then some, and came away with a real sense of success. Too bad I forgot to bring my camera to do a little photo-journalism. That'll have to wait till next year, when we're likely to rent a table for two days.

A poem -- with finicky changes, minute considerations and such

My poem, Downriver, is now up at Carte Blanche for all (some, few, one) to see. As so often happens, there are some finicky changes I'd like, mostly to reflect my initial submission, so I wrote them a letter about it. The most important changes:

1. (Dorwin Falls, Rawdon, Quebec) is not a part of the title, but a subtitle. It should be under the title, Downriver, and in italics. (Actually, too, I asked them to eliminate "Rawdon". That the falls happen to be in or near the town of Rawdon, I now realize, is rather unnecessary information...)

2. In line 8 from the end, the word "feels" should be italicized, methinks:

(This I only feels light, I can tell

Ah well. I suppose I'll delete this or affix an addendum when the changes are made.

Bye bye, Blackbird

Funny, having been a denizen of blogland lo these many years and published in net reviews coming out of places as far-flung as Berlin, London, Geneva and Santa Fe, I've come to assume that pretty well any internet journal that did not expressly state otherwise was open to writers from the world over. Well, welcome to Blackbird. Certainly one of the handsomest and most distinguished literary journals on the net, this one claims at least to have excellence as its sole criterion. But looking through the poets it's published over the last three biannual issues, virtually all -- about sixty in total -- are American. I've never seen anyone not from the US publish there. Hard to believe that there haven't been plenty of good submissions from other places. (Indeed, impossible -- yours truly was turned back a couple of years ago. Not that I mind. No, really...OK, a bit.) Anyway, the pattern is clear, and I rather doubt I'll go through the effort of perpetuating it again.


P.S. I just sent this post to the editors of said review, with the letter below (they do invite reader feedback). It will be interesting to see if I get a response.

Dear editors,

I just wrote the post below on my literary blog, Out of the Woodwork. I wonder if you would care to refute it? Is it because of the complexities of international payment that you don't have more international representation on your web pages? If so, why not just say so -- or say that you publish the best in American writing? Anyway, I do respect much of the content of your review, despite the rather huffy tone of my post.

Sincerely, from Canada,

Brian Campbell

NINA BRUCK: STILL LIGHT AT 5:00

Here's the first chapbook off Sky of Ink Press (photographed outside, propped up on a flowerpot on my balcony -- at 5:00, to be precise, for obvious symbolic reasons & to take advantage of that beautiful waning afternoon light. Click through to see it large -- and caress that card stock with your eyes).

Clearly, its author prefers that her words speak for themselves. Be that as it may, I find it hard to resist tooting a few notes on her behalf.

Several things can be said about this remarkable woman. One is that she’s an extremely talented poet, possessed of a quick intelligence and the surest eye and ear. Even at their most tragic, her lyrics are leavened by a playful wit and warm, easygoing sensuality; many of her poems are pure fun. Here's another: she's written a lot of poems, quite enough to make up at least one or two excellent collections. Everything I've seen by her is good, and much of it, very good. Here's another: up to now, she has hardly published at all -- a handful of appearances in reviews and a League of Poets anthology; one poem was read out on CBC Morningside by Peter Gzowski. In 1992, on a whim, she entered some poems into Matrix Magazine's "New Voices from Quebec" Competition, and emerged with First Prize. She has submitted nothing since. And here's another thing: she was born in 1923. (Yes, she won that "New Voices" prize at the age of 70.)

I first met Nina Bruck at Susan Gillis's "Tiny Sea in the Ear" QWF poetry workshop back in 2004. It was a particularly good workshop, with a lot of capable writers around the table, so a number of us continued on afterwards, meeting on an informal basis about once a month for a couple of years. It always struck us as odd that Nina had never really published; indeed, once we grasped her depth of talent, it became deeply frustrating. Finally, my friend Raphael Bendahan and I prevailed upon her to produce at least a chapbook before she departs. By this point, we had clearly demonstrated how well we related to her work, and gained her trust as editors. So one fateful Saturday early last January, before any final qualms or "cold feet" could take over, Raphael and I stormed her apartment (on invitation of course), and with her fished out of her voluminous papers -- she had taken them out of her drawers and they covered her table, bureau, desk, in huge, disorganized stacks --twenty-one poems worthy of a fine chapbook and banged them into my laptop on the spot (before they flew away, so it felt). It took between 2:30 and 10 pm, with a break for supper. What fun! At that pace, we expected it to be out in a matter of weeks, but what with life's interventions, differences on how to order the poems, time required to refine a few lines, copy-editing corrections and re-corrections, all the usual (and some unusual) finicky details, it took the full nine months required to have a normal real baby. And now that it's finally out, it feels good to hold this little poem-being and flip once again through its contents.

To give you some taste of what I'm praising, here's a prose poem, the only one in the selection:

THE HEINTZMAN -- 1933

The day they repossessed my mother's baby grand I heard them leave, scaring the canary. The house forgot to breathe, then the fridge began, louder than ever. The walnut bench still stood, crammed with a thick Scarlatti in a yellow jacket and the sheet music from Rose Marie. I was supposed to be their own Yehudi Munuhin someday or failing that, to simply "play for your own comfort." Anyway there we were, the empty space filling the room. I knew they expected me to cry but I was mad, at the canary, its small bones, its timid knees, its inability to make a sound.


Some publishing details: Printed in an edition of 100 copies on high-quality cream-coloured paper with a cardstock light grey cover, Still Light at 5:00 is 25 pages long and contains 21 poems. The dimensions of the chapbook are, we think, typical of Sky of Ink Press productions to come: 8 1/2" by 7", that is, legal sized paper folded in half. Although this size can be inconvenient because of limited range and availability of quality paper stock, we like it because, compared to the typical folded 8.5x11 chapbook format, it leaves lots of room for a poem to breathe: longish lines aren't squeezed at the margins and there is no problem sticking to a decent-sized font.

Still Light at 5:00 is available for $10 Canadian or American including postage -- or an interesting trade. Just write to me via my website.

For more on Nina Bruck, click on the label below.

Doorways to Distribution

Last week I got this little e-mail missive. Its writer just gave me permission to reprint it here:

I am a student at Langara college and I recently read a poem of yours posted on Paul Headricks office door. It made me smile, especially the last line--"grunt".

Jen Gordon

Have to say, you made my day, Jen.

Paul, it seems, is a real fan of this poem of mine that appeared in The Antigonish Review. He's even gone to some extraordinary lengths to get it reprinted elsewhere. Ironically, just posting it on his office door has probably gotten it more readers than The Antigonish Review itself -- or for that matter, any of the other "purely literary" venues he tried to get it reprinted in. (However, he has tried, besides Geist's "Findings" section, Harper's and CBC radio -- we have yet to receive news from them...)

Pressed & dried

Two copies of Saranac Review arrived today, with my poem somewhere in the midst of its 170-odd pages and 50-odd contributors. Initially it was a kind of a bitter-sweet feeling, finding oneself in the midst of such a huge lineup after such a long wait (nearly a year, in toto). It is, though, a glossy, lovely review... and it's a pleasure to see one's words in old-fashioned print. Other Canadian contributers I know: Barry Dempster, Brian Bartlett, Tom Wayman, + Louise Warren, a Quebecoise translated into English, whom I should know. The rest Americans I don't know, some with impressive credentials. I read a couple of poems with interesting imaginative leaps. Good company, in other words. I look forward to looking at their work over the next few days.

Today (now yesterday) I spent 4 hours or so cleaning house -- it was that rainy day we were waiting for after so many sunny days and scorchers. Then I spent about 6 or 7 hours going through online lists of Canadian poetry book publishers at the Canadian League of Poets website and at CV2's site, reading & copying their submission guidelines, paying special attention to whether they want whole manuscripts, samples, etc., looking at their author lists etc. and sorting them into an A-list, B-list, C-list and D-list according to prestige/desirability, + an additional category, Chapbooks & Alt. Formats. I actually got the whole job done: it's possible to cover this whole country in one long sitting. There are about 35 book presses in all -- just under one for every million of us, think of that! -- 20 of which got onto my A and B lists. For a break, I played some interesting 8-bar blues riffs I learned off the net. Right now, my back and neck are sore.

SUMMER SPECIALS, ANYONE?

Does anyone know reviews that read (or at least accept) submissions during the summer? Three off the top of my head: Harpur Palate, West Coast Line (its reading period is July-August), and the internet review Octopus. Internet reviews tend to be more flexible in their reading periods as well as publication schedules than print, so many of which are affiliated with universities ... going through my links lists, I don't doubt I could find several, but you know these lazy summer months. I would prefer that they came to me! (If I find others, though, I'll list them here...)

Why publishers pass on masterpieces.

Seth

It was amusing to read Seth's rant on the sociology of poetry, a post from a couple of years back that still holds true... although he nearly goes apoplectic about Ron Silliman.

Gift economies

I write somewhat addled by wine after returning from our launch. It was a enjoyable event, attended by 25 or so discerning souls, with poetry readings in 3 languages (yes, we lived up to that billing -- couldn't help but, in fact), lots of music (some provided by moi) and variety. I enjoyed reading Francisco's texts -- boy, are they good -- with Elizabeth Robert, and also acquired a deeper appreciation of the deadpan wit of Blomgren's texts when I re-read them with Elizabeth, who read her French translations. Most of the audience seemed to enjoy the readings too; we got several compliments that I took to be sincere. Rather typical of poetry, sales were nevertheless slow: we sold 4 copies of my translation, 5 of Walkups. I've heard tell of poetry launches selling one or two copies (these dire statistics are usually kept hush-hush, as R.W. pointed out in a comment a few posts ago), so this was not entirely unexpected. Reflecting on my audience, I don't have any reason to be disappointed. Several of my guests had bought copies already. I suppose a few of hers had too. A couple of people there were, I think, genuinely interested in buying my book, but had literally empty wallets. These are poets who live on an especially frayed shoestring -- so I take their word for it. You can be sure that special arrangements, if and when we cross paths again, will be made. Free drinks were provided with each sale, and I decided to give away free "promotional" CD's (or copies of my book) with each sale too . The cafe, whose huge air conditioner over the entrance has long been broken, was uncomfortably hot. At the end of the evening, we raffled off a number of our books and CD's (Adage, the other publisher, had quite a few remaindered books to give away) and gave free drinks for all eight or nine guests who remained. So it was a fun celebration in all, a generous gifting away of cultural products, with the usual words exchanged about how poetry is indeed a gift economy, etc. I'm actually proud of all my cultural products, so getting them into hands that could not otherwise readily afford them is really quite gratifying. Better than having them under my bed. I have lots of booze left over from our celebration, enough to keep my partner and me well stocked for the next few weeks. Not to mention books.

Some reflections on political poems

If you write a political poem, there is a good chance that it will lose its topicality, or at least become somewhat dated, by the time it gets published (if indeed it does reach that fortunate end). I am thinking of a poem or three of mine which have , because contexts have shifted somewhat, gone past their political "due date" languishing for months in slush piles of various magazines. The slowness of reviews to consider, accept, and publish work acts itself as a sort of censor. This aside from the unwillingness of many reviews to venture into unsafe territory (call it middleclassness, apolitical bias, what you will.) If you need to rush a poem into print so that it have the impact of timeliness, you have to be either some kind of celebrity (at least in the poetry world), or lucky. The alternative is self publication -- blog or otherwise -- with its inherent limitations.

P.S. This post provoked some good discussion which has helped clarify my own views on this subject. Just click on "comments" below... Bravo, Rob, Andrew, Jill & Pearl!

Margaret Atwood at the Bleu

I just came back from Blue Metropolis (Metropolis Bleu) Festival, where I took in an interview of Margaret Atwood by Jian Ghomeshi, host of Q, a new daily arts show on CBC radio. It was a remarkably entertaining and insightful interview. Although I've heard tell of Atwood's caustic wit, it surprised me to discover just how quick-witted and downright funny she could be. (This woman really speaks her mind, and speaks it well - to have that liberty, she pointed out, it's a great advantage to have no boss or grants dependency to make you look over your shoulder.) After icebreaking trivialities that went on long enough that I started to wonder if they'd take over the interview, the discussion got suddenly serious when it veered towards Atwood's attitudes towards mortality, aging parents, and then, cultural politics. If I synopsise some of the things I found she put exceedingly well, I imagine they will sound banal -- i.e. how we are never really prepared for the shock of seeing our parents suddenly rendered helpless by aging, the role reversals that entails, & how the same goes for that final journey: how can we be prepared for what no one has come back to (convincingly) describe? So too with many other unknowns, including the subconscious we live with every day (and night). At the same time, she has always "loved to travel...", ha ha. For a taste of some of her political views, try out this entertaining and frightening article, published in the Globe and Mail three months ago, slamming the Harper governments' cutbacks to cultural promotion abroad, and to culture in general. Atwood still holds to those views, although they're criticised as harsh, feeling that -- although this government does its best to remain inscrutable -- its arts policies are quite knowing and deliberate. In this interview she likened the cutbacks to the NHL destroying its farm teams and thereby sabataging any future hopes of producing more Wayne Gretskys. She pointed out that if it hadn't been for the funding back in the 60s and 70s of little magazines and publishing houses like House of Anansi (which published her first books) and Coach House Press (with which Michael Ondaatje among others was closely associated), Canadian authors of international stature like herself probably wouldn't be where they are today. Probably the Harper government would wish that we fall back on a system of private foundations like we find south of the border, but we have none of America's advantages: no grand-scale corporate philanthropic tradition, which was, after all, begun by a class of robber-barons trying to clean up their tarnished public image. Wagering our cultural future is economically wrongheaded, she argued, considering that the Canadian arts and cultural industries bring in at least $40 billion a year, more than many major industries.

$40 billion a year -- it's hard to know how she (or her info. sources) arrived at that figure. Is it by defining the arts so generally as to include, say, sports, tourism and leisure? Then possibly a much larger figure could be generated -- but it would seem a specious argument, confounding much of that cultural-economic activity with, say, Canada Council fine arts funding and its spinoffs.

Even so, reflecting on the economic spin-offs of my own relatively modest cultural activities, it would be easy to see how one could arrive at a humongous figure, even if one limited the definition of culture to literature, film, music and the fine arts -- & if you included those spinoffs. Two weeks ago, I put on a musical event at a local cafe with three other musicians. We attracted, despite inclement weather, a crowd of about 50 people, who spent a total of about $900 on booze and food. Factor in the costs of transportation -- many took taxis, including the performers -- and we're at over a thousand dollars in spinoffs for the local economy just for that event. A poetry reading with 18 people benefited the cafe at least $200 (including a modest space rental of $40). There were photocopy bills for posters, & LCP handouts. Those 18 people probably spent about a hundred dollars to get there. Multiply that by all the events across the country, including advertising, hotel bills and airfares for festivals, + factor in expenditures on raw materials for cultural activities (photocopies, computers, art supplies, musical instruments & equipment, postage, etc.) + book & CD buying and I'm sure you're well into the billions. (The artists, as always, get a miniscule slice of that pie.)

Of course, regardless of dollar value, the arts -- as she pointed out -- are essential to being human, and cutbacks in that direction could be construed as an attempt to cut back our humanity. Anyway, all very thought-provoking and worthwhile.

Neglectorinoitis (zat spelt rite?)

I have to thank C.Dale Young for pointing out this article in the Globe and Mail on the upcoming GG's & the glut of poetry books and prizes and the like. It includes this quote:

"I can't see any reason to publish because there's more people out there writing it than reading it. . . . We have so much information that we don't want and don't need in this world and writers have to take a measure of that, I think. If you don't have anything new to say, don't say it."

As I said in my reply to his post, after writing my lengthy essay in Rock Salt Plum review on the "Can Poetry Matter" question, I for one feel quite cured -- at last -- of the old neglectorinoitis that afflicts so many poets (including, of course, myself once upon a time.) Now it seems so much crock. Write for the joy of it -- of doing the best at what you do best. Take pleasure in sharing with those worthy few. Let the world catch up if it will.

Dutrope; Me; Li-Young Lee

Thanks to C. Dale Young (who learned about it from another blogger), I've discovered Duotrope, extraordinary site listing lit mags, response times, etc. As CDY was saying, it's more searchable that Jeff Baher's compilation. It's also more international (it has quite a few Canadian magazines), links to websites, etc. I think I'll put it on top of my magazines list.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I've lined up a gig at Noches de Poesia, which has fast become Montreal's premier multicultural poetry venue, and one Montreal's premier poetry venues period. (Well, there are only about three or four of them.) I'll be reading along with four others (as well as performing some music) on Wed., Nov. 1 starting at 6:30. Further details here.

~~~~~~~~~~

This weekend I read through Li-Young Lee's Rose, which I recently received in the mail along with a batch of other books. I love this poet's emotional warmth and depth, his disarming ease and innocence of expression. Poignant works about childhood and father -- a kind of looming (yet disturbing) hero-figure -- blend into beautiful poems about his own fatherhood, woven together by such elemental motifs as hair, blossoms, fruit -- and despite what that descrption may suggest, nary a word trite or precious (tho he he does verge at a couple of points. Good for him, I say.)

The reason I ordered Rose is that about a year ago in The Sun I came across some damned good poems from that book. Here's one of them. (And here's an exerpt of the interview with Lee in that same issue -- and I see now that Ilya Kaminsky is one of the interviewers. Interesting.)

Of course, it's often best to read first books first: that's where so many poets quite definitively define themselves, and from what I had read of Lee, I wanted to see that. Now I'm inclined to order his latest, perhaps, and work backwards.

P.S. I see also now that there's an interview with Li-Young Lee in the current issue of Rock Salt Plum Review. Very interesting. I'll have to read it when I have a free moment. My essay is also there, but funny, it didn't leap out at me that Lee was featured in the same issue perhaps because I hadn't read much of him yet.

Boosting Poetry's Profile by Ordering Locally

In response to what I wrote about online ordering a couple of posts back, my friend and fellow-writer Elise Moser, who happens to work as a publisher's representative, passed on these thoughtful remarks on the advantages for poetry's profile of ordering through local bookstores rather than on-line -- considerations that had frankly never crossed my mind (pls. excuse the tiny font: formatting it small was the only way to transpose an e-mail into blogger without having line-breaks all over the place):

...I wanted to mention, having seen you post on Amazon and other online
book ordering services, that there is always also the option of ordering
through a bookstore here in Montreal. That has two advantages. One is,
they pay the shipping and you avoid customs charges. The other is that
when you make a special order it affects their view of the book market.
So for example if they get some special orders for a specific title or
author they might order some of those books for their shelves. And if
they see a lot of orders come through for, say, poetry books, they are
more likely to order poetry titles for stock. This is especially
important for a subject like poetry, which is underrepresented in
bookstores due to lack of knowledge on their part, but also due to the
perception that no one buys poetry. I wouldn't say you should give up a
good price or some other advantage, but if it's all the same, why order
from U.of Chicago direct when you could raise the visibility of poetry
at Paragraphe, or Bibliophile, or the McGill Bookstore? And this would
have the benefit for you, in future, of making poetry books more
available and, potentially, therefore even broadening the market for
poetry. Just a thought.