Okay I cheated. I did some peaking around in the dgp submissions this weekend, when I vowed not to look until September. Truth is, in the last month three poets have pulled manuscripts from the pile because they were picked up elsewhere. The same thing happened last year. Since I hadn't really looked at anything yet, I don't know whether I'd have wanted them or not, but still... So I've started lining up titles for next year while the getting is still good.
I did a little number crunching, and amazing as it is, we are not at all hemorraging money from my bank account like I'd feared, and are in fact, breaking damned near even. Since this was the last year I'd have that nifty little student loan cushion, I figured we'd publish as many chaps as I could afford to since I could still spend a little of my own cash to finance books. Lo and behold, we're in the black by about 30 bucks these days (and that's even with replacing the pricey drum unit on the printer recently and splurging on fancier cover paper. (and a few misteps that involved re-ordering paper I didn't like, reprinting a screw-up, and the postcard debacle with andromeda.) And granted, a book a month has occasionally gotten crazy sometimes, especially when I was still in school and the last couple months with numerous projects doubling up (my Dusie chap, andromeda, and about three regular titles). But now, we've settled back into a groove. Are amazingly even ahead of schedule on the next couple.
So I'm going all in for next year again is what I mean to say. And from the looks of the subs so far, this is a damned good thing, since it's going to be tough to decide. 12 books, 12 months. I've lined up the first few months of the year, which I will announce soon, and still have lots of books in consideration for the rest, plus, I suspect we'll be slammed in August, since that's when slackers like me tend to send things in at the last possible minute.
