We're moving

Exposition is moving to Wordpress, where it will become the official blog of Fifth Star Press.

The way we distribute now.

From the Poetry Foundation, Janaka Stucky on the realities of poetry publishing expressed in units.

Publishing 2100

If readers of literature are to be grateful to this clustered and chaotic age for anything, it may well be the innovation imposed upon publishers who find themselves simultaneously confined by harsh economic conditions and freed by technologies that allow them to do things for almost nothing that used to be very expensive. Here from the Guardian are four models in small press publishing, each of which are notable for how they confront the economic and technical realities of the current marketplace and each of which are notable for how they may affect what sorts of work get published.

The first, Unbound, uses a subscription method, by which readers can go to their website and pledge money toward the publishing of a book. Then in return for his or her stake the pledger receives a copy of the published book, a signed copy, an invite to the launch party, depending on the amount given. Subscription publishing is nothing new. It is, according to the article, how Samuel Johnson’s dictionary was published. And it can boast as its most attractive advantage full funding of a book before it comes to print. However, to succeed a title must generate enough buzz to meet its projected cost and thus far Unbound has mainly relied on well-known names, such as former Python Terry Jones to clear that bar. Nevertheless, at a time when survival has become the primary preoccupation of all sorts of businesses, there is something refreshing about a model that is by its very nature self-supporting.

Many American readers are already familiar with Melville House. Here the Guardian highlights the publisher's “hybrid book,” an intriguing publishing model in which readers purchase a bound book and then unleash “illuminations” by scanning a QR code. These enhancements are comprised of “an anthology of readings and illustrations that explain the cultural milieu and legacy of the particular novella.” The idea of a book coming packaged with the equivalent of DVD extras inspires a certain degree of ambivalence. While I was excited at the idea of an anthology of five classic novellas—including those by Chekov and Conrad—all titled “The Duel,” I can’t imagine wanting to read the book more knowing there will be pictures.

The third model is the British venture Boxfiction, billed as a “TV series you can read.” The less said the better. Similarly, the new Penguin Shorts go the ebook one better, not only are they digital but they’re short. “All we can do is respond to what the market wants,” says founder Venetia Butterfield. Which is certainly one way of looking at it.

Random Media Guy

One advantage of being an editor at a literary magazine was that it ended any conversation initiated by the question “So, what do you do?” with a single sentence. “Interesting” was the most representational reaction to my answer, if not the most common. “Bo-ring” was the most honest. (Yes, someone did say this to me once and I wanted to kiss her for it.) The fact was that that was what I was, and there was little more I could have said about the job that anyone asked, or cared, to hear. I have since discovered that from an employment standpoint the title of lit-mag editor is not a door-opener either, and the fact I was at it for so long only highlights my folly rather than marks me as a dependable, dedicated worker. Therefore it was probably inevitable that—while I waited for someone to glean general indispensability from my very particular resume—I would find myself cast into a variety of far flung endeavors over the year and a half.

The Launch of a Concern and a Community

 After a more than a year of meetings and preparation, we are prepared to make public a new big idea in small press publishing: Fifth Star Press, a not-for-profit book publisher of trade nonfiction and fiction with a local focus on Chicago culture and history. There would seem to be, you might say, something audacious (if not flat out nuts) about starting a publishing company during the worst economy in 70 years, at a time when the one thing people think they know about books it that they are going away. However we are entering into this enterprise with the exact opposite mindset.


We conceived of Fifth Star as an antidote to the impersonality of the Kindle and other electronic readers. We have nothing against such gadgets; however, our research has indicated that while e-readers have become the indisputable favorites of mystery, romance, and science fiction readers, the print medium remains the destination of choice for readers of non-genre fiction and nonfiction. We believe that offering the majority of people who prefer books to electronic devices the sort of book they want to read is a good business model.


Our mission is twofold: we hope to bring popular and marketable books to a broad audience and we seek to prove that a lean, sales-oriented model of publishing can prevail at a time when so many publishers are closing or scaling back their operations.


Our first books will be out in the spring. I will be saying a lot more as the publication date nears and more about how this model fits into our view of the current state of publishing in the weeks and months to come.

The Book That Coined a Conundrum

Catch-22 is 50 years old. I first read the novel when it was 17, and I haven't read a book I liked better since. If I'd known that would be the case then I might have been depressed, but the reality is that books that help to form our consciousnesses will mostly be read when are young, so it's natural rather than sad to be more attached to the adult books we read early in our teens than those we read later, regardless of merit.

Along the same lines, a critic once said of Heller, Catch-22, and his subsequent novels that any author who creates a idiom will never write a work of equal or greater importance. That always stuck to me as an odd sort of curse, since most writers, having coined the paradox of a generation, would be happy to call it a day.

From my inbox

Woke up to this today. Sort of a weekly thing. I love the first two comments. I'm not sure if they're referring to the event itself or to the post-print apocalyptic landscape.