who's asking

see the two previous posts for a lead-in to these questions:

are publishers who don't issue their books via a Print-On-Demand model,

immoral?

Are they ecological criminals?  

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I of course have to self-publish my books via POD, because no legitimate publisher—like the 3 mentioned in the previous post—would have my books on its list. 

I don't have a stake in that game, so it's easy for me to stand outside and call its players immoral.  

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Notice that the book featured on John Gallaher's blog, by poet Matthew Cooperman, is being sold via a CreateSpace venue:

https://www.createspace.com/4159818 

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immoral

in my last post I urged readers of this blog (if there are any, which is doubtful given that the statistics provided by Blogger indicate there aren't)

to click the link to Jaded Ibis Press and to read their manifesto-like justifications for the choice to publish books on a POD basis,

implying that the way Farrar Straus & Giroux and Copper Canyon and Four Ways and other normative publishers operate is,

ecologically framed, immoral—

but here's what Jaded Ibis says, copied from their site:

Jaded Ibis Press uses digital and print-on-demand publishing because we care about the fate of the environment. Our business decisions are guided by an attempt to perpetuate literature that is intellectually, culturally and ecologically sustainable. Every year we donate part of our proceeds from one book or music project to a non-profit organization dedicated to environmental and/or cultural sustainability. Learn more about our Giving Projects.

YOU SHOULD KNOW.

Each year in the U.S. alone hundreds of thousands of new titles are published by traditional printing methods; that is, in bulk quantities. An average of 150,000 multiplied by an average print run of 5,000, multiplied by an average of 200 pages per book equals nearly 150 Billion (150,000,000,000) pages annually, plus book covers and jackets.

Half of these books will be returned to their publisher and destroyed or liquidated. Those that cannot be liquidated will also be destroyed.

Timber is cut down not only for the billions of book pages and covers but also for the wooden pallets on which to ship the books. Two-thirds of the world’s cut wood, including rare hardwoods, is used for shipping pallets.

It's difficult to put a number on the enormous amount of energy used to warehouse undemanded books; to manufacture the ink, paper, binding materials, and shipping pallets; to transport the pallets from printer to warehouse to bookstore; to process the fuel used to transport the pallets of paper products and books, to manufacture the transport vehicles, to manufacture the parts used in manufacturing the vehicles, ad nauseam.

impodpressing

Here is the home page of a press I wasn't familiar with before today,

when I followed links from John Gallaher's blog:

I urge you to read down and find their thoughts regarding print-on-demand publishing,

and the reasons why they favor it—

needless to say, as a POD author myself, I agree with the ethos they profess—

it's interesting that they use the services of CreateSpace, which I also employ to issue my print volumes (see my "book collections" blog via the sidebar here):

http://jadedibisproductions.com/

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collapsar, maybe

just opened the mail a copy of the new Poetry Magazine,

next page to last has an advertisement for the 2013 BAP

which begins:

"Featuring known stars like Kim Addonizio, Tony Hoagland, James Tate and Mary Ruefle . . . "

—well, there's another term for the prestige I failed to attain in my poetry career:

known star.

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new blog

please note my new blog—there's a link via the sidebar here—

a "book collections" site

which is really an old blog refurbished with a new title and format: 

it used to be a "collected poetry" site on which I had uploaded all (or nearly all) of my books for online perusal, and which I deleted 3 months ago due to the frustration of maintaining it—(Blogger has made it increasingly difficult to upload large print files, and trying to fix any errata in them once they're up here is maddeningly painstaking)—

anyway, recently I discovered that with "Google Drive" I can more or less do the same thing, ie publish my books online, to the extent that I want to have them online, much more easily by uploading the pdf print files onto "my" googlydrive page or site or demon-nexus or whatever they call it—

where the pdf books (does that make them "ebooks"?) can be read online and/or downloaded (for free)—

One virtue of this new system is that I can efficiently fix any errata in a book quickly by simply deleting its previous pdf incarnation and posting an amended version, all in just a few minutes—

the links to my print publications and to my online pdf publications will be posted in the sidebars of this "new" blog,

in an ongoing shambles of indecisiveness and manic-depressive ditching-switching, the books

appearing and disappearing as my whims will have them.

If anyone reading this is interested in access to my books, please consult that blog there— 

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unlucky star of the Lemmist school of poets

  "Lemm's appearance didn't work to his advantage . . . He moved laboriously, swinging his ungainly body forward . . . Some of his movements recalled the clumsy actions of an owl in a cage when it senses that it's being looked at but itself can hardly see out of its large, yellow eyes as it blinks fearfully and yet drowsily.  
  Pitiless, prolonged sorrow had laid its indelible stamp on the poor [German music teacher and would-be composer,] distorting and deforming his body, which was by no means attractive to begin with. . . . Lemm might have joined the ranks of the great composers of his fatherland, had his life been different—but he was born under an unlucky star!  He'd written a good deal of music in his day, but he hadn't been destined to see even one of his compositions performed.  He didn't know how to go about things in the right way, how to ingratiate himself in the right places, how to assert himself at the right moment. . . .
  Lemm finally renounced all his hopes, and the years did their work as well: his mind grew as calloused and stiff as his fingers [on the piano keys]. . . ."

/
As a Lemmist myself, I identify with this pathetic dilettante who comes to life (and death) in Turgenev's novel "A Nest of Gentry"—

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from page 345 of The Essential Turgenev (edited/translated by Elizabeth Cheresh Allen):

"Lemm always greeted every new personage in the [provincial Russian] town of O—, whereas he always turned away from his acquaintances on the street—that was the rule he'd made for himself . . ."

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help

how charming or how insulting: these "poet-clerks" will tell you what books to buy as if you didn't know what you wanted yourself,

though of course they would never tell you to buy my books which they couldn't do anyway since this bookstore refuses to carry my vanity volumes,

I offered to donate some of my self-published throwaways to this "Open" bookstore and they refused to accept them because their shelves can only bear real books, you know, books published by legitimate authentic publishers like the ones that publish Elizabeth Austen and Maged Zaher, the poets who will tell you what books to buy because you're too stupid to make your own choices:

http://openpoetrybooks.com/?p=6


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