{"id":1531,"date":"2007-05-31T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2007-05-31T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/publish-and-perish\/"},"modified":"2007-05-31T05:36:58","modified_gmt":"2007-05-31T10:36:58","slug":"publish-and-perish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/publish-and-perish","title":{"rendered":"Publish and perish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an article about how Perseus Books Group is closing down two of its imprints<\/a>: Carroll & Graf and Thunder’s Mouth Press. The further away I get from my indie-publishing days, the less I can understand how any of them stay afloat. This passage summed up how I tried to see things back then:<\/p>\n

“When you see the book world conglomeratizing, it can only mean less diversity of voices,” said Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books, a Brooklyn-based imprint distributed by Perseus. “When I sign up a book, it matters more that I love it than that I’ve identified a good marketing niche for it. That’s the real essence of independent publishing — it’s not a deal, it’s supposed to be a labor of love.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then I lost the love.<\/p>\n

I hope the founders of those presses got a decent purchase price when they joined up with Avalon Publishing (which was later acquired by Perseus), but I have a feeling that I can see where the “labor of love” part collided with the “good marketing niche” part:<\/p>\n

“At Carroll & Graf, we bridged the gap between small, lesser-known presses and the larger houses when it comes to gay literature,” said Don Weise, a senior editor who is losing his job. “In the four years that I’ve been here, I’ve acquired more than 100 books, and no one has ever told me no, I couldn’t do that. In the book world, that’s unheard of.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I probably would’ve moved his attribution, along with the “senior editor who is losing his job” part to the end of the paragraph, to make my point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an article about how Perseus Books Group is closing down two of its imprints: Carroll & Graf and Thunder’s Mouth Press. The further away I get from my indie-publishing days, the less I can understand how any of them stay afloat. This passage summed up how I tried to see things back then: “When … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Publish and perish”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,27,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-big-business","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-oH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1388,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/skygod-is-keepin-it-real","url_meta":{"origin":1531,"position":0},"title":"Skygod is keepin’ it real","author":"Gil","date":"March 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Zeus is such a player he can bed his old lady by telling her about all the times he cheated on her: But now let us go to bed and turn to love-making. For never before has love for any goddess or woman so melted about the heart inside me,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6701,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-hassling-the-hoff","url_meta":{"origin":1531,"position":1},"title":"Podcast: Hassling The Hoff","author":"Gil","date":"December 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories \u2013 season 2 episode 15 Scott Hoffman - Hassling The Hoff \"When people talk about the death of books, they couldn't be more wrong. Physical books may exist the way vinyl records do, for collectors or fanatics, but people read more today than they have at any time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11295,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-261-robert-weil","url_meta":{"origin":1531,"position":2},"title":"Episode 261 – Robert Weil","author":"Gil","date":"March 20, 2018","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 261: Robert Weil \"Translation editing is all about the idiom.\" Liveright Publishing editor-in-chief Robert Weil joins the show on the eve of this year's Festival Neue Literatur to talk about editing translations, why great translators are heroes (and ought to get credited on book covers), and his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_9309.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_9309.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_9309.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_9309.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_9309.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1338,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/quitters-never-win","url_meta":{"origin":1531,"position":3},"title":"Quitters Never Win","author":"Gil","date":"February 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, I received the dissolution papers for my old publishing company. I waited quite a while before filing to dissolve it. While some of you might suspect it was because I harbored a romantic desire to get back into publishing, it was actually because I was scared that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375725784","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2293,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/catch-a-fire","url_meta":{"origin":1531,"position":4},"title":"Catch a fire","author":"Gil","date":"August 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't agree with all of this guy's points about the future of digital books vis a vis the success of the Kindle. I'm optimistic that the presence of the Kindle and other e-readers will help drag book publishing out of the horrifically dysfunctional returnable bookstore model that it's currently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001CBMX7Y","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8854,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-122-a-muse-apart","url_meta":{"origin":1531,"position":5},"title":"Episode 122 – A Muse Apart","author":"Gil","date":"June 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #122: Jonathan Galassi - A Muse Apart \"The literary writer still needs someone to have a dialogue with, to help shape their book, understand it and make it as presentable to the world as possible.\" FSG president Jonathan Galassi has been a literary editor and publisher for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/jonathan_galassi_535.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}