CanDid Chat #3
Ian LeTourneau and Emergency Flash Mob Press
So for these interviews, most of them were conducted late 2024, in about 2.5 weeks. It’s really nice getting to listen back and to hear the lovely publishers’ voices again (less-so all my umm-ahh-like stumbling around).
With Ian LeTourneau’s interview, I had the great privilege of learning more than I wanted to about Zoom after finding the rendered audio/video from the first meeting corrupted, which Zoom’s tech support had no solution for.
I was eventually able to, with Reddit threads and sheer stubbornness, find a way to export a garbled technicolour mess with audio. Haven’t been able to reproduce the results since, but am feeling extremely grateful I was able to get this one back, and I’ve had much better fortune since (and gotten interview-ees to record it on their own end for insurance).
If anyone has any suggestions for free video-conferencing software (other than Zoom) that lets you download the call afterwards, please let me know. I haven’t really looked that hard into it.
All that said, it was really great to chat with Ian. I’m not sure I could tell you the first time I met Ian, because in Fredericton-Fashion, he was a poet who simply seemed to have always been there at all the things I was attending.
It’s really awesome to see Ian’s interest in poetry beyond poetry, in festival and community and scholarship, get expressed in its sharpest finest tip with EFMP.
Next in the queue I’m going to do some shuffling to share interviews with presses where I was meeting the publishers for the first time; some of these are groups I own books and even merch like t-shirts from, known by reputation, and others are completely new to me.
If you or anyone you know running a Canadian small/micro-press venue want to chat with me, don’t hesitate to reach out.
The turnaround is obviously pretty slow (one a month, nearly a dozen conducted in 2.5 weeks), but I may do a few months of [2 interviews / no reviews / no essays] to get some of the groups highlighted sooner than later. This means less pay-walled posts in the short-term, but I’ll try to put together some smaller goodies for those supporters who stick with the paid monthly. You can always message me and ALLCAPS yell at me if yer not getting yer $worth, I’m pretty impossible to guilt or shame into anything and perhaps you’ll feel better for it.
Everything played by ear. And wellness-pending.
With all that out of the way, here we go :)
The Gritty:
•Ian’s first chapbook, and his newest forthcoming trade, were both published by Gaspereau Press (in its Andrew Steeves era), published nearly 20 years apart. Ian was gifted half of the print run for that first chapbook. Unreal. 200/400. Very cool stuff. Can you imagine?
•Emergency Flash Mob Press launched its first titles in 2023.
•For submissions, Ian announces reading periods online and has, on occasion, been handed manuscripts in-person at a festival or two (not sure of the efficacy of this method, but it goes to show he’s no bogeyman). The Entrepôt Series subsection, prose on craft/poetics, is solicited rather than submitted, though this hasn’t been a discrete rule either. Ian seems to be excited first and foremost to read and enjoy the stuff more than be a hard-ass about any of it.
•The first titles were runs of 100 with 20 contributor copies, but EFMP is looking to move to smaller runs of about 60 with 15 contributor copies; I think the math on that is that authors are actually now getting 25% of the run instead of 20%, though 5 less in hand.
•The books have costed about 3 or 4 dollars to produce so far, and are printed and stapled by UNB Print Services. All other design and editing by Ian, with cover images sometimes commissioned by Ian or provided by poets. The layout is done using InDesign.
CL:
Hi Ian, it's great to see you. It's been, I guess, a few years. I would have seen you maybe at Poetry Weekend in 2023 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, which I believe is when you launched, maybe not launched, but that's when I saw first your new chapbook press’ first titles.
IL:
I launched about a year previous in so much as I solicited submissions. And I think my first book came out in May, 2023. That was Sue's book1.
I try to put out one chapbook a year that's prose, an essay or something about Canadian poetry by a Canadian poet. And the first one was a talk that Sue gave at our local literary festival here. And then I tried to have my books ready for Poetry Weekend, because that's the only place I know of that 60 poets congregate and buy a lot of books and hang out, and it's a great community.
A lot of the people that come end up getting published by Jim Johnstone's press2 or other presses, and then they come back the next year with a new chapbook. So it fits in nicely with the Poetry Weekend.
CL:
I like to hear that you're also focusing not necessarily just on poetry but also on non-fiction or prose on poetry, or giving writers an opportunity to maybe write about something outside of their normal purview. I know Sue writes about everything and all over, but I really do like hearing about non-poetry chapbooks as well.
IL:
That's mostly based on what I like. I like poetry, but I also like reading about poetry, theories and ideas and poetics and that sort of thing. So I'm just really trying to create something that I would like to find a bookstore or at a festival, you know, that's the impetus behind the whole thing.
CL:
Yeah, I think that's a great reason to make things. I'm wondering if that is the festival that Sue delivered that talk at that you started a few years ago when you were the poet laureate?
IL:
It was, yeah. “Word Feast: Fredericton’s Literary Festival.” Yeah. It was. And at that point I was not running the festival anymore, but I went to her talk, I liked her talk, and then when it came time, I didn't have a first entry in that prose category of my chapbooks and I bumped into her on campus and said, “Hey, what would you think about me publishing that talk?”
CL:
Was Word Feast an initiative of your time as the Poet Laureate?
IL:
Yeah it was. I was I was the head of it for three years, and I passed it on to Joanna Elder as the head. And then the pandemic hit, and she kind of saw it through the pandemic. I stayed involved in so far as to organize the one poetry event. But, yeah.
CL:
I think it's really important to have these excuses to gather, especially as poets. Poetry Weekend is kind of, yeah, it is unreal. [Redacted] always called it “the psychic abattoir.” When else are you going to listen to 60 people really earnestly read their poems.
IL:
Over the course of two days.
CL:
That's a lot of poetry. Yeah, two days plus usually a Friday something or other. It can be a lot. I'm wondering if you wanted to talk about the production of the books, how you're making them. My friend Daze had connected with Jamie [Kitts] at a conference and then sent me a photo holding the book up. I was like, well, that's bigger than the other titles I have from you.
IL:
I like how her book takes up more space on the shelf.
CL:
I mean, it's girl dinner, right? Girl dinner. Even just getting a Girl Dinner chapbook within however many months of the “girl dinner” memes on the internet, I think is a strength of micro press.
Getting a girl dinner trade book would be three or four years out from the original jokes.
IL:
Yes, and it would be going through the lawyers.
CL:
So what does the production of these chapbooks look like?
IL:
Well, once I accept a book and figure out kind of what order I'm going to put them in, I'll sit down with the manuscript again and take a lot of notes and editing, send it to the poet, and, you know, kind of work with them and finalize a manuscript. And then I'll lay it out in InDesign and ask them if they have any cover ideas. I try to include the poets on that part. Which has been great, because for Sue’s, she somehow came up with some funding through the university to pay an artist to paint that cover.
For Jamie's book I did solicit a local artist to do a watercolor. I couldn't pay them as much as Sue did, but I commissioned it and paid a little bit, a small honorarium.
And then once it's typeset, I'll send it to the poet and show them the kind of proof. You know, and there's inevitably a couple typos or something that stands out or something you need to fix in terms of layout. I've been working with the print shop on campus [University of New Brunswick]. They don't have a whole lot in terms of material, like say, Gaspereau would, with all the paper and that sort of thing. But the paper's okay and they do a really good job of putting it together and they're really friendly and good to work with. It's really straightforward. I would love to like hand produce things, but I just don't have the time really to do that.
CL:
You mentioned you're using InDesign to do your your typeset. Do you have any strong feelings for or against Adobe? I broke up with Adobe a few years ago. I'm no longer a student or affiliated with the university, so the cost—
IL:
I think where I'm lucky there is that I work at The Fiddlehead, I work in publishing, and we have that software available to me. So I borrow it. I'm very grateful. It was at no cost to me.
CL:
Well, I think, too, that like there's this spirit of small books and ephemera coming from just things that are lying around from other publishers, like the pamphlets, the size we make pamphlets now used to be the cuttings off of, you know, off of trade books. So, yeah, if there's InDesign ~around~, you should be making chapbooks with it, otherwise that subscription isn't getting its maximum yield.
IL:
And I designed, you know, The Fiddlehead covers and laid out The Fiddlehead for eight years before my current job. That's the program I'm very used to as well, right? I don't have time to try to figure out a new program. I mean, I suppose I could just lay out in Word.
CL:
*Sounds of disgust*
CL:
So what does your submissions process look like? I think I have an idea. I think I've seen your calls, but just for the reader, what does submitting to Emergency Flash Mob look like? Is it a open reading period or, you know, if they want to shake you by the lapels and beg you for a book, what does that look like?
IL:
I kind of have set it to be open in September for just any old submissions for poetry. For the prose, because it's harder to get an essay by someone, I will solicit some of those things. Like, obviously, for Sue’s, I solicited. And Danny Jacobs emailed me for the second one that I published this year, he just emailed me and said, “hey, I got this thing, are you interested looking at it?” And of course I said yes. And the same thing is going to happen for next year, but I haven't actually looked at the manuscript yet because the person said “are you interested?” and I said I was, and they haven't sent it yet.
At poetry weekend I had someone just hand me over a manuscript and say, “here, this is a bit unorthodox for your submission process, but here you go.” And that works for me, too.
CL:
Are you surprised by who's submitting, or is it mostly Fredericton, or New Brunswick writers that have been getting in touch?
IL:
I'd say it's probably a little over half that either Fredericton or Fredericton-adjacent. Like a former grad student that's moved away, recent enough that the connection to Fredericton is still there. And then this year I had submissions from people, I have no idea who they are, never heard of them, and they live in places like Saint John and elsewhere in New Brunswick. I was surprised. The university is not the sole producer of poetry, which is, you know, kind of where my day job is and where all my friends are and that sort of thing. I kind of forget that sometimes. How they found me, I have no idea. So it's great.
IL:
We're definitely not in it to make money. I'd say the primary motivation is, you know, to keep the community going and make connections and that sort of thing. I'm happy to break even. I think at the end of the first year, at the end of 2023, I sat down with all my receipts and a list of all the money I made. And I was $5, I think, in the positive.
CL:
That's huge, $5, wow. That's basically SSHRC money.
IL:
As long as it's still fun, then it's all gravy, really.
CL:
So, what's the average, I guess Jamie's book is bigger, so it may have cost more, but with your print shop, what's the average cost of making one of these books? Are you doing a run of 50 or 100? What does that look like?
IL:
I've been doing runs of a hundred. And I think that's a little slightly too much for where my marketing capabilities are at the moment. I'm feeling like there's 40 copies of things left. Even from the late ones in 2023, and tons from this year. And I made a decision going forward I'd probably make about 60, which is probably, you know, once the book's gone through its six or eight months, then there should be a couple copies left easy enough to store. Because I also live in a house with other people, and those boxes pile up and take a lot of space. And I hear about it a lot, you know, I want to kind of keep that to a minimum too.
CL:
A lot of people [poets published by micropress > micropress reporting] I'll talk to, a lot of people tell me re:print runs, “Oh, yes, I think it's like 100, or 150.” 100 is a lot. Like, do you know 100 people that you can confidently say read poetry? Like, could you list 100? Could you go through your Facebook friends list and say, here's 100 people I know read poetry and and then you know, even if that number were real, would it convert to sales? No, because not everybody reads every poetry book that ever comes out, although it feels like poets are kind of always reading everyone, you know, there is this kind of unspoken “practitioners read other practitioners within poetry.”
IL:
I hand number them all. When I get them back from the printer, I'll put them on the table here that I'm sitting at now and take out 10 at a time, and go through the whole hundred. I think for Jamie's book, I wrote the numbers enough to give them to her, and when I get a chance, I number more of them, as people order them and things like that.
CL:
I always leave, like, you know, number 38 is numbered in my file, 39 isn't numbered. So, you know, hopefully I remember. I also like to give number one and number two to the other people in the ‘launch’ for that season of the series, and then I'll give number one and number two to those people. So everybody, like nobody's clamoring to hoard the first of the first of their own.
IL:
Do you keep copies for your own archives?
CL:
Usually I will just keep an artist proof, like an “artist proof,” from my home printer, which honestly, if I could just print them at home, I would. So this is just like crappy printer paper, inkjet. Looks really good, honestly. But that printer can print without margins to the edge of the paper, all this and that. Staples, which is like, I'm not doing advanced printing techniques. I'm not talking to a printer (as in a person who prints as their job). I'm going to a self-serve computer. Staples, they're not great. So the zines are a little glossier in the final form, but they can get sharper images I find there. But it's like 48 cents per sheet in black and white. And so that's a lot of ink for me, but at Staples, it doesn't matter if the entire page is black with white text or whatever, the cost is flat.
I also know some people, it's like, well, they're making a 15-page chapbook and it's only costing them three bucks a book or something like that because they're printing in bulk I guess. And so, especially talking with a lot of other people, I should maybe make some larger books. But then to get those numbers I have to do 100.
Well, 100 at three bucks each is still more than 70 at $35 total, right? 70 books at $35, and I'm in the hole, like perpetually.
Yeah, so I won't keep any particular numbered editions for myself, but I'll have my artist prints, and sometimes I'll use them as a drink coaster or a notepad while I’m making an appointment. My nightstand has proof of one that I screwed up really bad. I exported it as a PDF but the fonts weren’t saved. It’s where I set my water cup each night.
I'm personally not very sentimental. I'm sentimental about the people, and giving them things like their materials I'm quite sincere about. Me, myself, I can print a crappy one-off if I really need to send one to someone or have one for me.
IL:
Because I'm really interested in documentation and archival kind of stuff, I do like the first two copies I just set aside and throw in a box. So I have number one and number two of the series of every book in a box.
CL:
Ian, honestly, my [first] chapbook…I don't have a copy of it. I Should. I should have one but I gave it away. I told the publisher that I think last year, he said “I can mail you the copy I have,” and I was like “why would it be important for me to have? You're the person who paid for it, you know?” It's not a common attitude, I don't think. I'm not a punk necessarily, but there was a kind of, “fuck you, print this thing, have it done” attitude for me when I started making my poetry zines.
CL:
Where were we last call? I was talking about being a punk or not being a punk. So yeah, what does being a poet or a writer with Emergency Flash Mob Press look like? Is there an honorarium? Is it copies? Is it a handshake and a pat on the back?
IL:
Copies, and I try to encourage them to come to Poetry Weekend. It didn't work out in 2023, but in the spring last year I had a little Zoom launch for the poets I put out earlier in the year, John Barton and Meghan Kemp-Gee. So I try to do an event at least for every one of the poets, but yeah, it's mostly copies. For the run of a hundred I was giving people 20 copies and if they wanted to buy more, they could do them at half price. And when I go to 60, I think I'm going to give the authors like a quarter of the print run, 15. Because I feel pretty confident I can sell 45.
I have a couple of standing orders, which I thought was exciting. The Harriet Irving Library Archives has a standing order, and the library in Woodstock, New Brunswick has a standing order. Shane Neilson has a standing order. Yeah. Sue also has a standing order. If anything, I’ll sell at least four books at minimum.
And then it's just, you know, selling by hand afterwards.
CL:
So you have a relationship with the university. I like to talk to people about like their job, and the publishing, because for some people it's very far apart and they like it that way and for some people it's kind of It's a little more an extension of one or the other.
IL:
It's definitely an extension. Books are my life basically. But everything I learned on my job I can apply to this fun project. At The Fiddlehead I've pretty much done everything. I was a poetry editor, so now I edit the poetry books. I was a layout and design person for eight years, and now I can layout and design these things.
I've talked to the people at Print Services before, so I could talk to them again. So all the experience and relationships I have at UNB has really just made this possible completely, like without, without trying to find an editor. And I kind of like doing things hands-on, except with the actual folding and stapling.
I like doing the editing myself. The designing. The designing is the fun part, the most fun part. Marketing is the only thing where I don't have any experience, and I think unless you're a professional marketer, it’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall, figuring out how to promote books.
I find even at The Fiddlehead, we try different things all the time. The Fiddlehead has a substack, and the Fiddlehead has bluesky, Throwing spaghetti at the wall to figure out what connects with people. And so marketing, I find is the one area where I wish I knew more, was better at.
CL:
Compared to your work with The Fiddlehead, you're kind of all of Emergency Flash Mob, right? And so you're not only selling these poets that you are generously putting into print but you're also selling you as an Emergent sort of Flash Mob, right?
So that's a thing I struggle with, how am I supposed to, I'm supposed to ask people to give me money for a sheet of paper I fold. The marketing end of it is a lot.
You're not doing a postdoc or anything are you?
IL:
The Fiddlehead job is now a full-time thing, so I wouldn't have time for school even if I wanted to. And if I did, I'd probably be going to library science, you know, information science or whatever it's called.
CL:
I was talking with Patrick O'Reilly a couple weeks ago. His partner Lisa, they're doing like library, like librarian school, you know, science and Patrick did the archives in the same program. And Patrick's like, “thank God I get to hide in the basement. I could not do what Lisa's training to do.”
But then the other thing Patrick said is, he wishes he had just been allowed to go on the job immediately because he learned a whole bunch of theory and then everything he has to do at his job is practical. And he learns it on the job. And he's been doing it for years now, you know?
And also, Alberta, I don't know if you know this, it's not, it's not a big bookie place. Not a shot for me here I don’t think. At Naomi Klein’s talk last night3 she kept going on like, “oh, well, in Alberta, like you guys probably don't read books.” And I was like, shut uppppp.
But interestingly, she said the last time she was in Alberta, Danielle Smith (before she was our premier), was in the third row taking notes. Like Danielle Smith was there, putting her hand up to ask questions. Naomi was saying “I think she's like an astute student of these movements and conspiracies and what people on the right, or like what people wobbly on the left might look for in the right.” And Klein’s like, “I think she's stupid, but I think she's clever.”
And it's like, okay, don't condescend to us. And then other stuff I'm like, well, that's hard to hear, but it is nice to hear. So anyway, and lots of woe is me. It's hard to be a poet, Ian.
IL:
I remember when I first moved to Alberta, because I lived there for, what was it, six years or so? Yeah, it was six years. First thing I did was go to the public library, of course, to get a card. And I was shocked and astounded. I had to pay for it. Oh, really? It was like 10 bucks or something. It wasn't a lot, but it was a fee.
CL:
For me to get a Calgary Public Library card, which I wanted to do just so I could take my nephews out for some of the programming. Or you can rent PlayStation 5 games from libraries if they have them. But for me to sign up for the Calgary Public Library, it would have been hundreds annually.
And it starts January. It doesn't get prorated. It doesn't roll over. And it was restricted. I could take out, I could have three holds at once, which included like requests and books out. And I wouldn’t have been allowed access to the public programming. And it's hundreds of dollars or something a year for this? I wanted access to a physical space, partly to work in, just cause I like a fluorescent hum and just like being around other bodies, but having room.
It's a 15 minute drive to the Calgary one, because of the Calgary sprawl, didn't used to be a 15 minute drive, and then there's one of my rural network libraries a 45 minute drive away. I was kind of shocked, to get quote unquote full membership to a Calgary library, but you know, the Calgary taxes go toward that, I guess, right? It's because I'm whatever miles out of the city limit. We’re good enough for them to dump their garbage in our fields but not good enough to borrow books from them I guess.
CL:
So you keep a couple copies for yourself and what numbers one and two, they're going into library collections which is great. The HIL, the Harriet Irving Library UNB Fredericton campus, and then is it the Woodstock Public Library?
IL:
Yes, the public library.
CL:
That's very cool. I haven't even got my trade book into libraries, I'm pretty sure. I've asked people to ask their local libraries. I did so much for touring my trade, but it was, libraries was the last thing on my mind then, you know, and I really don't know who would read it. I love my book, but I don't know who would read it.
IL:
I don't know who's taking it out of the Woodstock Public Library, but the director there is a poet. So she brings people to Woodstock to read, and she brought me and my wife there to read, and she asked for copies of all the chapbooks.
CL:
Do you want to talk a little bit about your previous publications, I guess like chapbook publications, but also like your poetry practice, like if there's a relationship to what you're publishing now. For example, what you're publishing now is varied: Jamie’s poetry is not like Sue’s poetry. I wouldn’t put them in the same pool necessarily.
IL:
I kind of like publishing different stuff. I just don't like one kind of poetry, and even though some things might not be to my taste, although Sue and Jamie are both to my taste, I kind of like having a variety, you know, and even some of the books that are coming out next year, a couple of them are quite different. So, it's partly based on what I actually receive.
CL:
I withheld from submitting to your first open season. I'd had something I thought I could send, but I was interested in seeing if a ‘house style’ emerged I guess. And yeah, and I guess now that you're two seasons in going into a third season, there's this feeling you're simply publishing things that you like, which to me is a good thing.
So do you have a relationship to to small press, micropress I mean? As a poet, as opposed to a publisher? You had a Frog Hollow book?
IL:
I had a Frog Hollow chapbook and my first publication in book form ever was a chapbook with Gaspereau. In 2006, so that's going way back. Which is kind of funny now that I've come full circle. I've got a trade book coming out with Gaspereau.
CL:
You're squeaking out one of the last Gaspereau as-it-is trade books. That's what, 18, 19 years apart almost, right? I'm not good at math.
IL:
It's like 18 years, so it'll be 19 years, yeah. Andrew actually emailed me last week, “I need to order cover paper X amount of time beforehand, and I just want to touch base with you if you have any ideas for colour for your cover.” I looked at the swatches and thought, well, I like that one because there's lots of the natural world in my book. And it’s this green, nice green color. But really, I said, “whatever color you think is good is good for me.”
CL:
Yeah, his his whole thing is his taste, which helps with him making nice books.
What did it feel like publishing a chapbook with them? Because even their chapbooks are also very, very nicely made, right?
IL:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I was on top of the world. Yeah. My first chapbook was with Gaspereau Press, and I was like, “blue skies and beautiful sunsets from here on.”
CL:
Yeah.
IL:
And it was great, although they don't put as much work into the chapbooks as I did with the trade books. But like you say, it was a stunning little book. And they printed 400 and sent me 200.
CL:
Oh, wow. I love that kind of granular stuff, because that's a wild number. That's a lot of a book to have.
IL:
And because they produce the books themselves in their shop, their costs are way down. So the chapbooks are five bucks. So, you know, it was really great as a younger poet just to have these beautiful handmade things that I could sell to people for five bucks. I went through that like nothing.
They had pressed some of the words on the cover without ink. Then, the same word over and over again, but once in ink. I would have never thought anything like that in my life.
CL:
He seems like he has a lot of fun. And Gaspereau is continuing on under a new owner?4
IL:
Keagan Hawthorne, in Sackville, so it’s moving to New Brunswick.
CL:
Because there weren’t enough poets in New Brunswick already. You’re giving Toronto a run for its money I think. All of New Brunswick versus Just Toronto.
And what's the name of your new book coming out? When's it coming out?
IL:
Spring-ish, last I heard. And they don't have, like, dates. They work on a book until it's done, work on the next book until it's done. So they can't give you a date.
It's called Metadata from a Changing Climate. I'm really excited.
CL:
I'm glad to hear. Yeah, that's awesome. I remember I got a full-length rejection from Andrew, and he'd written with gold marker on a piece of nice paper. Nice feedback, feedback that was kind of like, I don't know who will publish this, but he'd clearly read it. I've had a few people ask to publish that book since, and I think even just kind of getting a gentle rejection from him at that point somehow helped me be a little less desperate about who I would publish with, right? I still have that manuscript.
Conversely, when I published my debut trade book, that book I had put it together in a matter of hours. I'd had notes on another project, and I'd had all these kind of sub-notes and gags to the side of that. And like five minutes after I submitted, the publisher emailed me. He's like, “hey, I received this. We'll let you know within 6 months.” And then seven hours after that, I had an email from the editor saying he vetoed the vote system because he liked it and they were taking it if I said yes.
It wasn't that I didn't put care into it but it was like ‘the thing I spent a few hours in an afternoon collating’ is getting published versus ‘the thing I put my heart and soul into and crafted over years is not.’ It changed my perspective on acceptance and rejection. It reaffirmed a little bit my love of, not just Small Press, but of chapbooks, that velocity.5 Even my own next season of micro-zines, I have three poets, but it's four titles because I'm doing one as a reversible double-sided thing.
And none of the zines that were submitted to me in the initial pitch ended up being the books we put out, but I worked with everyone. We tried second ideas and big revisions and remixing. And it wasn’t any more work really, because the books are small enough they can only be so difficult to work with at all. There were some deaths in the family so correspondence took a little while, but it was maybe half a day with each of them for me to get the poets a proof.
And lots of the time when I make a micro-zine from someone out of just one sheet of paper, a lot of the time they take it really seriously. And they post about it when they have a trade out, they hold up their little book and their big book and they're like “my books.” I like to think of them as little business cards people can give out.
IL:
Yeah, you know, coming back to the marketing thing, I think ideally it is a relationship between the publisher and the author. The author really sells the book. I know a lot of publishers actually want authors to start a Twitter or Facebook or new things to help them. I don't expect that sort of thing, but I hope that my authors are out there trying to put it in people's faces, right, and try to sell them whatever copies they have. It's kind of a symbiotic partnership.
CL:
It's nice when everybody's pitching in, many hands make light work. And my my first chapbook, I was really worried. I didn’t know how we were going to sell 50 copies of this. 50 felt like an insurmountable number. But Patrick O’Reilly said to me a few weeks ago, “oh, I've got an Irish family, I can sell 150 books no problem.”
IL:
I bought your chapbook at Poetry Weekend, right? That sort of event helps. Yes. For chapbooks, you know?
CL:
Seeing my trade when I was out there 2023, watching the pile shrink over a couple days. I was like, “oh, these poor bastards.”
I think like writing that's commemoration or for an event is nice. I really love that you published Sue's talk, which is sort of the opposite, you're commemorating her talk by publishing it as opposed to publishing something for a talk. I think there's something really nice about that.
IL:
You know, like 100 years from now, that might be the only documentation about Word Feast, right? “Oh, this thing happened. This was the sixth annual talk. I wonder what else happened.”
CL:
You're way more optimistic about humans in 100 years than I am. You think there's gonna be libraries in 100 years. I think there's not gonna be water in 30 years.
IL:
Yeah, I just threw that number out there.
CL:
Is there anything else you wanna talk about for yourself or plug? We've got like a minute and a half left here. If you want to share your actual costs on books, I would love to hear it. If you're too demure, that's also okay.
IL:
I think it's somewhere between three and four bucks per copy.
CL:
That's about average, that's like three, four dollars, pretty well where everyone I know, other than people hand-making books, that's the cost. So I gotta stop talking to people and I'm gonna start making bigger books.
If I have any questions, I'll let you know and I'll shoot you a draft of it before anything goes out. We can footnote in corrections or anything you want to add or subtract. They are kind of long, even for long form interviews, but I want them as documentation for other people to look at later if they wanna study this stuff.
IL:
Yeah, 100 years from now.
Ian LeTourneau is the author of Metadata from a Changing Climate (forthcoming spring 2025 from Gaspereau Press) and Terminal Moraine (Thistledown Press, 2008), as well as two chapbooks, Defining Range (Gaspereau Press, 2006) and Core Sample (Frog Hollow Press, 2017). From 2016-2018, he was the City of Fredericton’s Cultural Laureate, and he was also part of the founding committees of the New Brunswick Book Awards and Word Feast: Fredericton Literary Festival. By day he is the Managing Editor of The Fiddlehead and Studies in Canadian Literature, and by night he is publisher of the chapbook press Emergency Flash Mob Press. He lives in Fredericton, NB.
Sue Sinclair’s “At the Frog Pond: On Ecological Beauty and the Climate Crisis.”
Anstruther Press.
November 2024.
A bit more context about the shift at Gaspereau. Andrew Steeves’ new continuing endeavours post-Gaspereau can be found here. And yes, I should probably poke him for an interview sometime soon too.
Not that small-press can always let you know less than 12 hours after a submission. But it wasn’t 9 months / me following up and them admitting they forgot to read it / waiting 9 more months for a rejection saying they haven’t read it and they’re resetting their slush pile and I’m welcome to resubmit to wait another 9 months; not going to name names here, and I suppose this isn’t even the most egregious version of this I’ve experienced.