David Baratier, Editor, Pavement Saw Press
Jendi Reiter conducted this exclusive email interview with David Baratier, editor of Pavement Saw Press. The press sponsors a literary contests for both chapbooks and full-length poetry books, and publishes the literary journal Pavement Saw. The chapbook prize offers $500 and 50 copies, and has a December 30 deadline. The Transcontinental Poetry Award, a $1,000 prize for a full-length manuscript, accepts entries from June 1 to August 15, and is open to authors with no prior book publication. Below, Mr. Baratier talks about the mission of his press, discusses the best contests for new authors (including his own), and notes the tell-tale signs of contests that are a bad deal for writers.
Q: Please give a short description of the history of Pavement Saw Press and its artistic/cultural mission.
A: Pavement Saw Press is a non-profit organization which has been publishing steadily for eight years. This year we published five full-length collections in both paperback and library edition hardcovers, one chapbook and a yearly literary journal anthology. We specialize in finding authors who have been widely published in literary journals but have not published a chapbook or full-length book.
Many well-known authors and editors have supported these titles, including John Ashbery, James Tate, Cornelius Eady, Len Roberts, Jim Daniels, Edward Dorn, Leslie Scalapino, Harryette Mullen, Robert Kelly, and Judith Kitchen. Their praises appear on back covers, in reviews and in other support materials we use to market these books. Reviews and other free coverage have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Georgia Review, Small Press Review, the AWP Chronicle, Taproot Reviews, A View From the Loft, and many other fine publications.
Until 1999, we were mostly known as a publisher of fine chapbooks. Our results from releasing chapbooks by first-time authors were phenomenally successful. In 1998 we started to receive funding from the Ohio Arts Council. At this point our focus started to change and we released Will Alexander's full-length title Above the Human Nerve Domain. As with all of our full-length titles, both hardcover and softcover editions were published.
In 2000, we published seven titles: 5 full-length books, a literary journal and a chapbook. Among our latest books is Dana Curtis' The Body's Response to Famine (forthcoming), which was chosen by Bin Ramke as the winner of our full-length book poetry contest last year. Ramke is the editor of The Denver Quarterly as well as the University of Georgia Press' Contemporary Poetry series.
Pavement Saw Press' mission is to establish a large, efficient, non-university-affiliated press, publishing works of national significance, magnitude and influence. We will publish quality books of national importance by known and unknown authors from the United States. Our goal is to benefit Ohio culturally and economically by receiving national and international recognition for our efforts, by attracting outside visitors, and by exposing our authors to a national and international audience. Pavement Saw Press' long-term goal is to have a national reputation established for the press and for Columbus, Ohio within five years.
Once a year our literary journal, Pavement Saw, is published. The journal has grown to eighty pages, perfect bound, and features an under-represented writer in each issue. The content of the journal is poetry and various forms of prose including letter-writing and short-short fiction. Authors who have appeared in the journal have gone on to have books published by University of Georgia, Mellen Poetry Press, University of Illinois Press, Tri-Quarterly Books, Sulfur River Literary Review Press, Sun & Moon, and many others. They represent a section of upcoming poets and writers who have recently won the Academy of American Poetry Prize, NEA Awards, various state grants and fellowships (including the Robert Frost Fellowship at Breadloaf), and some have recently appeared in Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. The journal is released annually.
Q: How are your contests judged? That is, do you and the guest judge read every manuscript, or are there readers who screen out the best work? If so, whom do you hire as readers?
A: We have a staff of eight volunteers who work through the reading of the manuscripts. At a certain point this is pared down to 50 entrants. These are then made anonymous (the publication credits and other personal information are removed) and set aside for Stephen Mainard, the Associate Editor, and myself to read and pare down to 25 which are then forwarded to the guest judge to read. I write down my top five for the editor's choice award before the work is sent to the judge, then the judge picks his or her top five. The monetary winner is the judge's choice, which also includes book publication. My choice has his or her book published as well as a standard royalty contract.
Q: How many submissions do your contests get every year?
A: This varies radically from year to year. On years where the book contest can only support the cost of the contest, we have only published one book, when our costs are covered more favorably, we publish two, and so on.
Q: Your contests are judged blind: entrants' names are kept separate from their work. Would you say that blind-judged contests are more open to new writers, and/or more likely to be purely merit-based?
A: I can only speculate, as I have not run a contest differently. What I can say is that I have not seen winning books from other presses with only two publication credits, like Daniel Zimmerman's Post-Avant, my choice for 2000-2001.
Q: Would you advise authors who have a full-length MS on hand to concentrate on book contests?
A: No, I would suggest a mixture of chapbook and book-length contests. And also to establish relationships with small presses who run both journals and book publishing outfits under the same roof. Continued relationships with journals, rather than one-stop, "I've conquered their pages" type mentalities, are another successful possibility.
Q: In your opinion, are contests the best route to publication of a first book?
A: If one only wants one's book published, then self-publish. If one wants a distribution network which is already well-established, then a chapbook or full-length book contest may be a good route. Chapbooks are often the gateway to a full-length book but only if they are well-distributed. For our chapbooks, the editions are published in a run of 400 copies, perfect bound with spine. While chapbooks are rarely reviewed, we are one of the only presses that has had our chapbooks talked about in Publishers Weekly, The Georgia Review, Small Press Review, Rhizome and others in the last three years. Previous winners have had subsequent full-length books published by University of Georgia, Hanging Loose and others forthcoming. That type of exposure will not happen with a self-published chapbook or a "one by one" $99 book available from companies offering to publish your book.
Q: What are some of the most common flaws that you see in the non-winning manuscripts submitted to Pavement Saw? Any literary styles or themes that are overused/underused?
A: Usually that the author is like everyone else. If I divide the material into narrative and experimental poetry, we have a diverse publishing practice, there are an enormous number of people who are too close to each other in terms of what they write. We are not a theme-based poetry place.
Q: What are the warning signs of a dishonest or amateurish contest?
A: Look at the $ signs. With our book contest, the prize is $1500, and a $15 entrance fee; therefore we need at least 100 to break even. Add onto this the cost of advertising in Poets & Writers, the Boston Review, Rain Taxi, Small Press Review and others plus a few thousand envelopes informing others about the contest, and it becomes apparent that we need a large number just to cover our costs. Watch out for $10 entry fees and prizes of $200. Some places run press runs of 100 copies in chapbooks. I think chapbook contests and "winning poems" are the easiest scams. See the quality of the chapbook before you submit, or of the literary journal if the contest is single-poem submissions.
I believe an entrance fee should net you a free book or a journal subscription. If they can't give you back nearly the money in free books I would look elsewhere.
I also would add to this discussion the number of university book-length contests and journals with new affiliated presses which are publishing among their own group of peers. In the last two issues of Poets & Writers there are a number of winners of contests which came as no surprise, and some I knew beforehand.
Q: Which are the best poetry-book contests for a first-time author? (In terms of prestige, openness to new writers, quality of printing and publicity for winning book, etc.)
A: The chapbook prizes I am impressed with are Slipstream's, Pearl's and Kent State University's. Slipstream publishes a fine collection every year; they even published Sherman Alexie's first chapbook (and his first collection). Four Way Books has been really impressive also, publishing first-time book-length authors with whom they have no previous affiliation.
Winter 2001-2002
