The pandemic has this way of both stretching time so that it passes really slow, but also, like a snapping rubber band across a room, really fast. We are entering mid-August territory, which means the end of summer is upon us. Normally, I would be relishing in back to school vibes, though the idea of "school" is this strange uncertain thing that feels the same, but is entirely different. Soon, I will walk outside and find the one tree at the end of the block has dropped its leaves over night, almost embarassingly early. Already the light and weather is different.
For the press, that means the open reading period will soon be ending and I'll no longer be dipping my toes in the pool for an occasional read, but diving in wholeheartedly. I also feel like we are in a weird place, not necessarily just the pandemic, but the fate of the USPS, on which the press depends wholly (and which corrupt politicians seem to be trying to quell for their own nefarious purposes) . If things go sideways there in terms of shipping options for single copies, it may require revamping the entire business model and format of how we issue books (it could be done--digital chapbooks, which of course would be free, maybe giving authors the option of print volume in larger orders that could be fed exed. Which would make the books more widely available and affordable (a plus of course, but also harder to keep us in toner & cardstock--we depend on single sales as much as author copies), but I still also believe too much in print to let it go entirely. Hopefully it won't come to that, but I'd like to have a bit more certainty before I take on books for next year so I know what to be able to promise authors on publication offers- business as usual with regular single copy distribution, or something more hybrid, more electronic, but still solidly in print. Losing USPS functionality would put a serious dent in publishing in general, so let's hope it doesn't come to that. It would also make it much harder to ship artwork and prints cost effectively, or anything reallly..
Instead I choose to focus on the goodness in my inbox of potential manuscripts (which is a little harried, if I owe you an e-mail, I am wading through a morass.) There are still a sizeable batch of books to come for this year, a little bit behind schedule because of my pandemic brain and struggling to get orders for existing tites out after delays, but they are still coming this fall, hell or high water, when after November, the world will hopefully be a better, sounder place.]
Until September....
