Kevin Walzer, Co-editor, WordTech Communications
Jendi Reiter conducted this exclusive email interview with Kevin Walzer, co-editor of WordTech Communications. At the time of this interview, WordTech sponsored about a dozen poetry manuscript contests through imprints such as Word Press, David Robert Books, Turning Point and Cherry Grove; those contests were discontinued in July 2004 when the press switched to an open-submissions model. My first book, A Talent for Sadness, was published by Turning Point Books in the fall of 2003. WordTech's various imprints have published such authors as Allison Joseph, Rhina Espaillat, Barbara Crooker, Ann Silsbee, and J.P. Dancing Bear. Mr. Walzer received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Cincinnati, is the author of five books of poetry and criticism and won a Best Academic Book award from Choice magazine. He is the partner in publishing and life with Lori Jareo. They have two sons, David and Bobby. Visit his Twitter feed to learn about new WordTech poetry titles and other publishing news.
Q: How did WordTech get started? What was your inspiration?
A: I have been a poet and editor involved with small-press publishing for more than a decade. I earned a Ph.D. in creative writing in the mid-1990s intending to go into university teaching. However, lack of job opportunities sent me to the business world. After working in business for a few years, I decided to combine my love of poetry and my business experience by starting a small poetry press. My partner, Lori Jareo, and I started our operation in 2000, intending to publish a single book per year. We sponsored a contest, selected a winner, and published the book in 2001. This experience was very enjoyable and we decided to expand by adding additional imprints.
Q: Who are some of the more well-known authors published by WordTech and its affiliated imprints?
A: Previous authors include Vivian Shipley, Richard Hague, and Naton Leslie—all poets who have published more than one book before publishing with us. We have also published outstanding first collections of poetry by Leslie Anne Mcilroy, Tina Kelley, Alison Pelegrin, Page Dougherty, and others. Authors currently under contract include Allison Joseph and Eric Trethewey.
Q: At last count, WordTech had 14 active poetry contests, most of them for full-length manuscripts. Why so many? How do you manage the high volume of submissions?
A: To fund poetry book publication—a market niche where books seldom break even, let alone make a profit from sales—a publisher has two major business models available. The most widely used method is to incorporate as a non-profit and seek grant funding, donations, and other subsidies. Most of the major poetry presses are set up this way. Sales are part of the revenue as well, but non-profits are heavily dependent on funding from public agencies and private foundations. The other method is to raise funds through contests. Many non-profits, in fact, use contests to help raise funds as well.
We are not a non-profit organization, so grants are not an option for us; fundraising is a time-consuming process that we feel could be better spent publishing books. Because we seek to publish as many good books as we can, this forces us to rely on contests. Each contest supports prize money and publication for the winner, plus publication of one or more runners-up. We are hoping to publish three or four books from each contest, so it is quite possible that we will eventually be publishing 50 books per year. This would likely make us the largest poetry publisher in the United States in terms of number of titles released annually. We invest extensively in technology to help us do this efficiently and professionally.
In terms of handling the volume of submissions, there is no other way than simply to read and read and read.
Q: How are your contests judged? Who does the initial screening, and who makes the final cut?
A: We handle all judging ourselves. In practice, I manage the poetry side while Lori manages the business side, so I do initial screening and make the final selections in consultation with Lori. We see little value in having "celebrity judges" select manuscripts. This does not ensure continuity in terms of the press's quality year over year, since different judges have different tastes. Also, we have to stand behind the work we publish, and delegating the selection to an outsider makes it more difficult for us to keep this commitment.
Q: What kind of press run, design, marketing and publicity should winners of your contests expect? How do these compare with other leading manuscript contests?
A: We use Lightning Source, a print-on-demand service affiliated with Ingram, the largest book distributor, as our printer. Print-on-demand is a different printing technology from traditional offset printing that changes the economics of printing; whereas reprinting in offset printing is extremely expensive, making it more cost-effective to do a larger press run initially, print-on-demand costs the same per unit whether the press run is one, one hundred, or one thousand. Given this, print-on-demand greatly reduces production costs, while Lightning Source's affiliation with Ingram means the book is widely available through bookstores, through Amazon, etc. This approach allows us to publish more books.
We do not compromise on quality, however. Our books feature glossy covers and fine typography, and we feel they are as well-designed as any in the market. We market and promote our titles through direct mail to libraries, listings on our websites, announcements to trade journals such as Poets & Writers, and also in partnership with the author's individual efforts.
We are probably ahead of other publishers in terms of using print on demand, but for us it is the only viable way to publish. We generally measure our sales in the hundreds, not thousands. It is more cost effective for us to do small or even individual printing of books than invest thousands of dollars in a standard press run of 500 or 1,000 and hope it sells. Our early titles, printed in the traditional manner, lost significant money even though they sold well by small-press standards.
As far as our marketing and promotion, I suspect we are similar to most other small presses in trying to be creative on a small budget. We do not have the resources of a major independent press, such as Copper Canyon, or a large university press such as Pittsburgh.
Q: The websites for your various publishing imprints (David Robert Books, Cherry Grove, Turning Point) don't indicate their common affiliation. Why did you decide to allow each brand to stand on its own, instead of building a single brand (e.g. Word Press) with a larger list of published books?
A: We want each imprint to stand on its own, with a distinctive focus in terms of subject and/or style. I feel that it would be silly for a single imprint, such as Word Press, to run a dozen contests per year. Instead, we have each imprint, with a different focus, running two contests per year. Because most of our imprints are in their first or second year of existence, it takes time for them to establish that focus, but we know it will happen. To be consistent with this, we encourage poets to submit only to those contests that fit their work.
Q: Are there any styles of poetry that you particularly like or dislike? E.g. formal verse, experimental, "language poetry," narrative free verse, etc. Do you look for different styles for your different contests?
A: Yes, we do look for different styles. Here is the focus of each imprint:
Cherry Grove Collections
Lyric poetry.
CustomWords
Diverse styles of poetry. More experimental poetry would have a better chance with this imprint.
David Robert Books
Poetry written with special attention to craft. In practice this means formal poetry or free verse that has careful attention to sound and rhythm.
Turning Point
Narrative poetry.
Word Press
No restrictions on subject or style.
WordTech Editions
A thematic focus on connecting human experience to the larger world.
We definitely consider the imprint's focus when reading a manuscript. A manuscript may be excellent but just obviously not a fit for a particular imprint. For instance, long-lined narrative free verse in the style of Robinson Jeffers would simply be inappropriate for Cherry Grove Collections, but might be an excellent fit with Turning Point.
Q: Any advice for poets on how to organize their poems into a coherent manuscript?
A: We look for manuscripts that work well as a book and also on the level of individual poems. This means that each poem has to be well-written, and they have to work together to create a larger whole as a book. The coherence can be in terms of theme, story, style, subject, or some other principle. Regardless of how it occurs, all of our titles have this larger coherence, as well as being gatherings of strong individual poems.
Q: With hundreds of small press poetry books being published every year, what advice can you give to help poets attract the attention of readers and reviewers? How can poets market their work most effectively on a limited budget?
A: In our experience, the poet is the single biggest driver of sales of his or her book. A publisher can send out flyers, list the book on a website, and advertise if the dollars are there, but it is the poet that creates his or her audience, and it is the poet's audience who will buy the book. Doing readings and signings is probably the best way to market the book. Our best-selling titles are those by poets who are very energetic in doing these kinds of performances. Poets can give readings at bookstores, libraries, coffeehouses, schools; there are many areas of the community that are interested in poetry and might support this. We support the poet's efforts by offering a substantial author discount on books, by developing flyers that the poet can mail out to individual readers, and through other means.
By contrast, if a poet does little to promote his or her book, I guarantee it will sell poorly, no matter how much effort the publisher puts in. A couple of our titles have sold fewer than two dozen copies, chiefly because the authors have not done much with readings or signings.
Q: Poetry critics occasionally complain that there are too many books and literary journals being published. They argue that there are more writers than readers. On the other hand, the explosion of Internet poetry sites suggests that there is great interest in poetry, but many people's literary tastes and writing ability are still at the amateur level. Can the readership for professional-quality poetry be broadened? How would you begin doing that?
A: I agree that there are more writers than readers of poetry out there. When we have experimented with email marketing of our books—for instance, offering a discount on a new title for folks in our database, authors who have submitted a manuscript to us in the past—the returns are laughable. We might sell one or two books this way. By contrast, when we extended a contest deadline earlier this year and notified the same individuals via email, traffic on our website went through the roof—obviously people were checking out the contest guidelines. And, in fact, we got a good batch of submissions based on this email. It seems clear that there are more people willing to pay for the chance to have their poetry books published than there are willing to buy poetry books written by others.
I don't believe that the key to increasing poetry's readership lies with the number of people writing it. Most of our book sales are to individuals who have a particular interest in the author. Perhaps they are a friend of the author, or perhaps they live in the author's community and heard the author read. Or perhaps they are interested in the book's subject matter. These readers are not necessarily poets themselves, although some probably are; their common denominator is the fact that they are moved by the poetry of that particular author. The way to increase this audience is to publish more interesting poetry, and to find creative ways to promote it. If the poet is energetic in performing his or her work publicly, and otherwise cultivating his or her audience, this is an enormous help. In general, though, it's difficult to know in advance what will work; sales of some of our books have greatly exceeded our expectations, while others that we thought would sell well have not.
Q: Aside from your own contests, where do you find new writing that excites you? What literary journals and publishers do you particularly admire?
A: I like Poetry Daily and Verse Daily—independent Internet sites that feature good poetry. I check both out frequently, and in fact, made initial contact with one of our authors because of a poem I saw on one of these sites. These sites have largely replaced journals in my reading time, largely because of their accessibility online.
In terms of presses, I admire Copper Canyon Press, Story Line Press among the big independents, and Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and LSU among university presses; they all publish outstanding work in nicely designed editions. Among smaller presses, Zoo Press and Tupelo Press are especially impressive startups. Zoo Press has managed to sign up an astonishing number of major poets as advisers and affiliates (Kenyon Review and Paris Review are associated with their two major contests), and their books are beautifully designed. [Note: Zoo Press ceased publishing in 2006.] Tupelo Press is also notable for the quality of the work it publishes.
Summer 2003
