"Crossed wires. I'm clueless. Got it!"

(Annals of an Editor, #79)

Typically the entries in Annals of an Editor are drawn from my correspondence with authors hoping to work with my small press. This time around, I would like to share an exchange that took place on Facebook.

An academic acquaintance of mine is the editor of a book  being released this week. I saw an announcement about the release, and commented, giving him the email address for our New England Review of Books. My thinking it would be useful for the publisher to have yet another contact for potential reviews coverage. Well, things got a little tense, if not quite outwardly antagonistic.

An Immigration Story

Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a stringer for the New England Review of Books. He is based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and writes to us to share his recent interaction with the passport authorities there.

---

On a rainy Friday morning in August, I sat in a small room on the second floor of the Federal Immigration Service Office in Port Harcourt. I wanted to finally do what I had put off doing for a long time—get a passport. I had earlier been connected to an agent who would help guide me through the process. He was not on site when I arrived, so he instead referred me to a co-worker. I was then asked to wait for a minute, and then for a few minutes, and then for a few hours. Finally, when I was called in to submit my application documents and sit for a brief interview, it was almost evening. When I protested over the long wait, I was told I was lucky to have gotten it done today at all.
When I asked how long it would take to get the passport, I was told three weeks.
I asked, why does it take such a long time?
They were currently out of materials, he said. And when the materials do eventually arrive, the people who paid for express delivery would be attended to first.
I paused. I wanted to point out the absurdity of a government office not having the basic materials needed for its running, and wanted to further point out the irony of express delivery. But I was exhausted from the long wait, and late in getting home home, and three weeks wasn’t so bad. So, I let it go.
I returned to school in Bayelsa—a neighboring state—the next day. Tied up with schoolwork, I forgot about the application, allowing for a full month to pass before I called the agent to find out my pickup date. The materials had still not arrived. His tone was apologetic, but removed. He assured me they would definitely arrive the following week.
I called him back on the Friday of the following week. He picked on the third ring and gave me the news in a somber, almost reluctant, manner: no, the materials had not arrived. Not even the ones for express-delivery. When I asked what could possibly be the cause of the delay, he sighed vaguely.
I lost my patience when I called three weeks later to be greeted yet again with the news of the passport’s non-arrival. I raised my voice, calling out the government’s ineptitude, and even threatening to withdraw my application if care was not taken. (In retrospect, I found this funny—for it was only myself who would stand to lose if a withdrawal was effected) The agent waited until my tirade was over before telling me, in a calm voice, that the situation was hardly his fault, and that if anyone needed to be shouted at, it wasn’t him.
In the second week of October, I commenced exams for the second semester of my penultimate year. Preoccupation with these took my mind off the passport for a while, at least consciously. On a Thursday of the third week of the month, I had reason to briefly visit Port Harcourt, and I called, sensing as I did that some hopeful news awaited me. The agent’s silence after our first hello dispelled this hope.
Instead of asking if the passport had arrived, I asked him if it would ever arrive.
Surely, he said.
When?
Very soon.

---

Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a staff writer for Brittle Paper, with writing most recently in McSweeney's and on the short list for the Gerald Kraak Prize. Connect with him on Twitter. || Photo by Ashim D’Silva, showing the silhouette of a person at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport; via Unsplash. || Readers may also enjoy the story "At the Airport in Kalai" by Floyd J. Miller, appearing in a 2009 issue of The Charles River Journal; and "Waiting for a Visa" by B.R. Ambedkar, written in 1935 or '36.

What is in a marketing prospectus?

So, you've completed a manuscript... congratulations! And now you want to start sending it to publishers. (Or, shopping it to agents.) Many shops -- Pen & Anvil is one of them -- are prepared to consider a book proposal only if it comes attached to a marketing prospectus. What goes into such a thing?

Well, details and requirements vary. You can find detailed accounts of what is most useful to include in such a document in any guide to submissions, or by consulting an experienced editor or agent; but in our view at Pen & Anvil we believe a prospectus should definitely include:

• an account of what books in market are comparable to yours (and how you made that determination), along with their sales prominence/numbers
• an account of how you'd intend to participate in the sales marketing process -- festivals? course adoptions? reading groups? store appearances? leveraging your social media network? -- in the 1-2 years following your book's publication
• an account of your promotional resources as an author (the size and Klout of your social media audience is relevant, but the more relevant question is: can you explain how you've had success using that social media network to drive a sales campaign, or something analogous like a petition, event registration, etc?)
• a list of your primary "connections" in the literary sales space -- editors, program heads, etc; and so on. 

The whole document might come in at 2-4 pages. Your prospectus should be geared toward answering three questions in the affirmative:

1. Has this author given serious thought to the work involved in promoting a book?
2. Does this author have a realistic understanding of how their book compares to books in the market?
3. Do resources existent to convert promotional labor into sales results for this book?

This might seem like a big ask, even an impediment. "I just wrote a BOOK! Why do I have to do all this additional work?" Actually, though, don't be discouraged by the requirement to prepare a prospectus. You should want only to work with a publisher who is considering the book through the lens of market prospects. If you aren't being asked questions up front, why should you trust that the publisher is oriented and equipped to connect an audience to your project?

You don't have to be a marketing expert to prepare a prospectus -- no publisher is going to expect you to lay out your philosophical preference for the funnel model versus the flywheel, for example. But you do need to be willing to work collaboratively with your publisher on the marketing and promotion of your book if you want to maximize your audience size. Each side is bringing something to the table: your publisher has the business systems, production acumen, and market intelligence; you have the authorial skill, the intellectual property, and the personal incentive. Together, you should work out a plan to work as an integrated marketing team so that your book can be discovered, sold, read, and enjoyed by the reader you want to connect with.

On "humankind & nature"

Graphic from the homepage for the course "Human Nature and Human Diversity" at Rutgers University.

The following text was included in a call for submissions sent out earlier this year for our journal of nature poetry:

      Hawk & Whippoorwill, whose theme is “man and nature,” is now reading submissions for our December issue. We invite you to submit yourselves, or, to share this call for submissions with other writers in your circle.
      Originally published back in the 60s, H&W has been host to poets from all walks of life, and we hope to continue that tradition with the “new series” revival of the magazine ... We will gladly accept any unpublished poems which deal with our theme of man and nature. (Of course, we read “man” as “humanity” here, not as a gendered term. While we inherit the original tagline, we are definitely interested in challenging its restrictive implication!)

Among the replies we received to this solicitation, we got a particularly thought-provoking email from Barbara Ras. She wrote:

Sven Birkerts on the Digital Submissions Tempo

The monthly email newsletter AGNI sends to subscribers and supporters is worth reading, but as far as I can tell, the mini-essays that editor Sven Birkerts contributes to these newsletters aren’t available elsewhere. Wanting to share these more widely, I’ve elected to re-print some of these newsletter essays here on Ampersand.  Enjoy! 

- ZB 

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“AGNI's Own Midnight Madness”
by Sven Birkerts

[The AGNI email newsletter, October 2018.] I've been thinking a lot about the literary arts just recently. I don't mean literary in the already-between-covers-and-on-the-shelves sense. I'm focused, rather, on the poetry and prose now coming to AGNI over the transom.

 

Pouring in, I should say. On September 1st - as every year - we re-opened our online Submission Manager, which had been closed since the end of May. Opening day always brings a deluge from writers who've been waiting to send work all summer. It's Midnight Madness - quite literally. That's when the sluices open.

 

Having been out of town for the first few days of the month, I was braced to find more submissions than usual on my return. I was not braced to find 970 lined up in a queue. 970! Screen after screen of stories, poems, and essays - all to to be opened and read, all bearing the invisible good-luck hexes of their authors.

 

The number shocked me backwards out of my chair. I saw in a flash what I would be doing for the next weeks, maybe months. The thought of so many hours nearly overwhelmed me. But then, as if in compensation, there came a new and more lifting recognition.

It was a recognition, simply, of the unending stream of the new. Having been caught up for years in the unchanging repetitions - click, read, evaluate - I'd all but lost sight of what was - is - going on under that grid: a movement not unlike that of history itself. All of us at AGNI are posted right at the intersection, where private visions meet the cultural moment. I think of myself as a broker, a weatherman.

Energized by the realization, I started in on my reading. And, as always happens, I found myself asking the old questions: What is it that makes for freshness? What compels my deepest attention?

This time the answer was quick in coming. I'm looking for (we're looking for) writing that catches experience before the crusts of habit form - poetry and prose that has a genuine pulse. I'm especially interested in work from younger writers who are not yet curating themselves as a brand-in-the-making. They have the least pre-filtered sense of our times. They are likely to be the most in touch with the atmosphere of the now, the so-called Zeitgeist.

The culture, we know, changes constantly. I've been minding the store here long enough to assert that the work coming to us now is different from ten years ago. How could it not be? A writer's expression encodes the times in all sorts of ways. It foregrounds new themes, tweaks syntax and rhythm, and often tries to veer away from former innovations that have become stale.

Reading, I'm watchful. I can't help but note the subtle changes of tone and the effects that go against expectation. They indicate the particular momentum of the times.

 

What are writers doing that feels different?

Years ago, I wrote some essays that asked how the features of our flourishing virtual culture would ever find their way into literature. Could our screen-intensive lives be conveyed in interesting ways? Could writers be of the times and also use the materials of the times to create strong narratives? Maybe those writers had the same hesitations, because for more than a few years I saw little evidence of change.

But times are different now. A generation of digital natives has joined the ranks. They're everywhere, striving to render their lives. Reading submissions, I find that Google, YouTube, Twitter, and dating apps are not only part of the subject matter in all three genres, they are affecting modes of narration. Fewer stories and essays, I notice, rely on sequential telling. Lateral association is far more common, perhaps reflecting the logic of the link.

 

So our fast-changing world presses steadily against the supposedly closed order of the written work. How could it not? We all track the news cycle nowadays, absorbing its energies and anxieties. Submissions have grown more dystopian, and utopian - both. I also see - no surprise - more exploration of the tensions around race, around gender imbalances, around acts of violence and coercion . . . 
 

I also notice more specific trends. I'm reading more "premise" stories - stories in which some unusual situation is set out and then worked through. A man wakes up to find his wife has vanished; a forgotten girlhood friend appears on a woman's doorstep . . . There are dozens of variants, most focusing on actions and reactions in the outer world and steering clear of murkier psychological interiors. I wonder about this. Are we losing the taste for inwardness? And what if we are? 
 

In nonfiction submissions, meanwhile, I'm encountering all kinds of "instruction" or "hermit crab" essays, where a non-literary structure serves as basis: numbered how-to lists - for example, "How to break up with your girlfriend" and so on. I'm also reading many more so-called braided essays, which weave a personal strand together with a counterpoint - about the history of hot-air balloons, say. The expository threads are clearly pulled together from online research. The writer arranges interesting bits to play off of the more personal narration. It's for the reader to integrate the dissonance. Both of these modes seem to me responses to the almost unmanageable complexity of our new world.
 

Finally, in the poems we receive, I have to remark how many proceed by chopping what are ultimately prose narratives into lines. Freed from formal expectations, the poets seem to ramble garrulously, and the idea seems to be that the digressions are often where the meaning is to be found. The poet trusts that voice and quirky turns will carry the day.
 

These are only a few of the trends - there are of course others. It's like we are all crossing a rickety bridge across a chasm. We can still see the ledge behind us, but there's no clear view ahead. Writers respond as they need to. Some of the pieces I read feel like old patterns and conceits retooled for fresh uses - true originality is always in short supply. But I also see work that takes on the new unknown in brave and original ways. Stories, poems, and essays arrive that are attuned to what Seamus Heaney called "the music of what happens." This is the needed thing that we want to keep passing along to our readers.

If Abebooks shuts you down, where will you go?

The following message was posted to the message board of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and is reproduced here with the author's permission. - ZB

To whom it may concern:

Antikvariat Valentinska is a large antiquarian bookstore based in the centre of Prague, Czech Republic. We have been selling books through ZVAB for about 15 years now. In 2014, we joined AbeBooks; in 2015, ZVAB definitely ceased to exist as a distinct website for booksellers.

Meanwhile, Abebooks has become the largest and almost singular marketplace for selling antiquarian books on a worldwide basis. The simple truth is that whether someone likes it or not, there is no reasonable alternative to AbeBooks at the moment.

In all those years, we have done our best to satisfy our customers and to maintain the best seller rating. We have never encountered a major complaint, neither by our customers nor by the administrators of AbeBooks. Whatever money we have taken in, we have regularly shared the agreed upon portion of our profit with the owners. Currently, we offer more than 20,000 individual titles on AbeBooks, from the Late Middle Ages to brand-new books.

On Thursday, 18 October, we received the following email from the seller support of AbeBooks:

Effective November 30, 2018, AbeBooks will no longer support sellers located in certain countries. Your business is located in one of the affected countries and your AbeBooks seller account will be closed on November 30, 2018. We apologize for this inconvenience.

The decision to close our account on such short notice has come as a complete shock, especially since no reason was not given even upon request. Just our company alone will almost certainly have to dismiss at least five employees. Furthermore, we do not have any idea where else to sell about 20,000 foreign books.

We are deeply concerned about this step, not only because of our own financial losses to come.

In light of the monopoly position of AbeBooks, closing all seller accounts in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary (as far as we know, these are the countries concerned) will basically mean nothing short of cutting these countries off from the worldwide trade with antiquarian books. Which countries will be next?

Whatever the reasons may be, the fair worldwide trade with antiquarian books will not profit from this step.

We therefore kindly ask the AbeBooks and Amazon administration to reconsider this unfortunate and discriminatory step.

Jan and Ondrej Schick
www.valentinska.cz
Antikvariát Valentinská
Valentinská 8
110 00 Praha 1 - Staré Město
Czech Republic

Translating the meta prefix

Amit Majmudar's new verse translation of the Bhagavad Gita, Godsong, includes extensive commentary, much of it illuminating in an accessible level to the typical reader. Here is an excerpt.

The first task of translation is finding a way to sound as little like a translation as possible while still maintaining accuracy. The terms that Arjuna asks about gave me great trouble. They consisted of familiar terms -- self, God, being, sacrifice -- but linked to a prefix that made them specific theological terms which have no English equivalent. The solution of other translators, from direct transliteration into Roman script (Sargeant) to "material manifestation" (Prabhupada) to "elemental-basis" (Feuerstein), were not for me. I decided I would carry out a process in English identical to the one carried out in the ancient Sanskrit. After all, these were not terms used in the everyday parlance or poetry of ancient India. They were theological terms, unusual enough that Arjuna asks Krishna to define them. So I hooked the familiar word to the equivalent English prefix. Adhi and meta are similar, and both have theological connotations. So it metaself, metagod, metabeing, and metasacrifice seem neither spoken nor poetic English but more like theological jargon, that is because I'm staying faithful to the original Gita.