Letter to --Ed.

This one from a reader named Mike:

Last year you said you were planning new Thieves Jargon Press books. What ever happened to that? Is a Belgian ex-hooker and a rock & roll porno junkie story a hard act to follow? Or is it that people just don't read anymore. I have the sense it's the latter. A comment a fellow writer/publisher made to me - "People don't give a second thought to buying new CD's or DVD's, but a book?"

My sense says the small press, even though it's gravitated to the internet with tons more readers than the paper zine days, is still the small press, always on the verge of imploding. Too many writers and not enough readers.

Well, this could lead in a number of directions, so I'll see what I can cover.

As for TJ Press books, there are two big differences between where I'm at right now and when Dollhouse came out. The first is that my job is completely different. A year ago I was answering phones in a call center, and the phones never rang, which gave me about six hours a day of unfettered internet/computer time. Now that I'm getting my cubicle on, there's much less time to devote to the proper promotion of a book. I can still do the editing and the layout and the printing, that can all be done on the down-time. But when I published Kittens in the Boiler in 2005, I assumed that by virtue of publishing Thieves Jargon on a faster and more reliable pace than any other literary journal, I'd have this built-in audience of book buyers who would be interested in reading books written by more notable TJ writers. Three books deep, I now know that for whatever reason (and we can theorize on that later) it's not enough. Which leaves the getting out there and finding as many strangers as you can and talking to them about books and trying to convince them they should buy the books you're publishing... and that right there needs to be done on a full-time basis. This has all been cemented to me as necessary by various classes I've taken on book marketing and publicity.

Which leads to the second big difference: I've been back in school since last fall, which creates an obvious problem in that it chews up most of my free time (class two nights a week until ten pm, at least two nights of homework, on top of the day job and maintaining Thieves Jargon as a daily publishing entity?).

Also, since I'm in a publishing program, I kind of want to hang back, learn as much as I can from professional book publishers, see how it's done, and absorb as much as I can before I publish another book.

All of which is frustrating, because I know of at least three good manuscripts that deserve to be published, and I could probably coax out and develop one or two more if I could have a reasonable opportunity to publish them. Which is why I need to meet more literary agents.

As for the small press and internet scene, I'd definitely say it's mostly writers that are reading Thieves Jargon, but I'd say the same thing about any other literary journal, online or in print. I ride the subway to and from work each morning, and am very interested in what other people are reading. I've never once seen somebody reading a literary journal on the train. I think mostly it's that the popularity of the short story (and poetry) is at an all-time low. You can say a journal like Ploughshares sells a huge amount of copies, but those are all going to MFA programs, not casual readers. Who is open to reading a short story collection by an author they haven't heard of? Who runs short fiction and poetry that gets read by casual readers opposed to non-writers? New Yorker. Playboy. Harper's. The Best American yearly anthologies. McSweeney's has some brand recognition because of Dave Eggers and their Believer magazine. That's all I can think of. In five years of publishing Thieves Jargon, I can count on one hand the amount of email I've received from people who said they enjoy the journal but weren't writers themselves, just looking for something punchy and interesting to read.

So, why would I keep doing this? Simple. I still stand behind the work we publish. There's no shortage of really good writing to choose from, and I take great pleasure from reading it and putting it up there for other people, even if it's only writers looking for a place to submit their own work. The shit's quality. Also, I have some hope for the future. I think America can't get much more stupid than it is right now, and I have hope that willful ignorance will at some point slingshot in the other direction. Maybe someday we'll get to see some sort of cultural renaissance and, among other things, general interest magazines will begin to run short fiction again. Someday a magazine editor is going to come calling, and he'll say hey, nobody's published more fiction than you have in the past x amount of years, any chance you know some talented and interesting writers who we can get published? and I'll ready to step up.