Monday, July 23, 2007

big news

Okay this is one announcement I can't possibly sit on for more than twenty minutes since confirming it, but dgp will be venturing into the world of full-length books next fall. I'd been musing over using LULU as a printer and taking the plunge like so many other presses (No Tell, Dusie, Bloof..) and I wanted the first longer book to be something special. Not just an everyday collection, but something exciting. Robyn Art, who has allowed us to publish two of her chaps in the past, approached me with an idea for another text/image project on a grander scale than scenes from the body, incorporating some of what was in Vestigial Portions and photography by Robin Barcus called Dear American Love Child, Yours, The Beautiful Undead. (and you know I could never say no to a title like that..).

While I'm not sure if we'll be adding full-length titles to our repertoire permanently, we'll see how it goes. I still like the handmade feel of our chaps, and the inexpensiveness, and the chap as an art form, plus they allow me to play with paper in a way digital printing does not. But due to the projects length, and the quality of the photos, glossy and slick is definitely the way to go in this case. Though I'm thinking , at least as far as any copies ordered directly from the press (as opposed to directly through Lulu, Amazon, etc.) there might be a special handmade touch like a sleeve or a box, or something cool like that for the book. I have a year to figure it out.

8 comments:

RL said...

Hope it goes well for you! Let me know if you have any questions.

Brandi said...

Yay!! This is fabulous news. Really, who COULD turn down a title like that...

Ivy said...

Exciting news! :-)

Radish King said...

YAY!
Big congrats.

Relief Map said...

How exciting. Huzzah!

Valerie Loveland said...

Congrats!

Christine E. Hamm, Poet Professor Painter said...

Yay! I just want to warn you (not to discourage you, just maybe so you can think of some way to deal with this) that I went to a book seller who insisted that my chapbook from Mipoesias was self-published, because it was from lulu. And this was not someone from outside the contemporary poetry scene.

It made me a little mad.

kristy bowen said...

Yeah, I sort of figured that might be the case--sucks...of course, I've all but given up on the possibility that most bookstores would carry decent poetry titles anyway. Sad, but true. Of course, I no longer really shop in bookstores largely for this reason.

I do plan to get an ISBN should a bookstore want to order it, but other than that, all our sales are online based anyways...

I suppose a way to get around it would be to not make the book available via lulu to anyone but myself, which is an option, sell exclusive to myself and then ship all titles direct from me, but which would sort of be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'd wind up paying more to ship that way, and thus have to charge more for the book..
I'm not sure which is better...