Publishers and Writers

Publishing is the second hardest thing to do in the world; writing is first.

Publishing a book always takes twice as long as the publisher and the writer think it will take, not unlike building a house which always takes twice as long as the builder thinks it will take (and cost twice as much). This is an incontrovertible fact, immutable and eternal, even in the age of e-books and print-on-demand.

Time favors the writer first, and then the publisher. The writer, in complete control of his or her material, is not at the mercy of time, at least the writer of the kind of books this publisher hopes to publish. The publisher is at the mercy of more than time; the publisher is at the mercy of the writer, the designer, and the printer, all of whom have the reins of time in their hands, and the publicist, an increasingly time-sensitive component of the publishing process.

Publishing a book is a messy kind of fun, at times depressing, at times exhilarating. Often the greater the project--and by greater I don't necessarily mean most ambitious, though I might mean that too--the greater resistance there is to it. And who resists? Who doesn't? The writer, of course, having written the greatest book ever; the designer who can make a beautiful object of the words supplied by the writer but who refuses to read the thing, thinking that reading the thing will diminish the powers of his design; the publicist, the one who manages both the writer's and the publishers expectations; and the chief resister, the publisher himself for whom a completed project is a kind of death, who, not wanting to die, can't wait for the next project to begin in the midst of completing the one currently underway.

Publishing: I can't think of an endeavor more collaborative. Writing is solitary, so solitary it scares off most writers. Publishing is gregarious. Sometimes the twain doesn't meet.

Let me illustrate: a couple of years ago I published a book, a novel, the first novel IF SF Publishing had undertaken, Monsieur Ambivalence by Thomas Fuller. I, the publisher, was happy with the book, the story of an American man living in a French village in the middle of nowhere who attempts to sit in a room for one hour without distraction, as proscribed by none other than Blaise Pascal. A good story, timely, well-written, and the book was beautifully designed. I hired a publicist, set up a number of book parties and readings for the author etcetc. When I told Mr. Fuller that I expected him to attend these events he said, "isn't it enough that I wrote the book?" 

Aha! I actually like writers who put writing first, being one of them myself.

IF SF Publishing is bringing out its 20th book this coming April, American Dream with Exit Wound by Dawn McGuire. Dawn's a poet and a neurologist, and dedicates the book 'To my patients: Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Wars at Home.' They're raw poems, made mostly from her work with men and women who've been seriously wounded, victims of "the tremendous war" Walt Whitman spoke of in 1864 in The New York Times: "The tremendous war goes on. Every family has directly or indirectly some representative among this vast arm of the wounded and sick."

I just now held an advance copy of American Dream with Exit Wound in my hands. It's a book where everything came together in a sort of symphonic harmony--meaning, I'm happy with the writing, with the design by David Barich, and with the publisher himself. The book's alive, the poems break some kind of sound barrier, breaking up something stony and dead and perverse in our national culture with the kind of light that comes from love. I didn't write the poems, Dawn did and because she's a real poet no one else can write a Dawn McGuire poem, but it feels like I wrote them. And for a publisher to feel like a writer isn't a bad thing.