Thirty West Newsletter - June 2024
An open conversation about the press and our future.
Hi again and Happy Pride. It’s been a while since my last newsletter, and for good reason. As a brief disclaimer: this newsletter will be very off-the-cuff and I will be imploring you to support us financially shortly. Please keep that in mind. Nothing about Thirty West is spammy, and I try to respect your time. I’ve been having difficulty reaching even the closest of our readers these days. It almost feels personal to me and my dedicated masthead. People seem to never want to ask the tough questions anymore, thinking everything behind the scenes is alright and business as usual. So, I ask myself: what is happening with TW? This newsletter isn’t supposed to be woe is me, but hard to stay positive when the numbers don’t lie.
The elephant in the room is finishing the #antiwrimo project. Launching The Ternion last month has been the toughest part of this spring. I will admit, I am tired. Let me explain. This is arguably, the most challenging TW project since the first one, Those Who Scream: A Novel by 30 Writers. Each book has 3 authors, and 1 editor each, so that’s at least 12 people. We have 6 based in the USA and 3 in other countries. With hundreds of emails, Google chats, and Zoom meetings, it’s enough to make your head spin, and maybe cry in a fetal position.
These books take up the weight of 1/3 of our publishing calendar so the stakes are very high. Before we even break even, I’ll be paying out at least $450 in honorariums, then have to ship books with ever-increasing postage and printing prices all over the world. So far, we’re not close to hitting this goal for 3 individual books. It’s been a letdown because we’ve all been plugging away since I formed the teams in October 2023. I honestly don’t think I’ll be doing this project again, but I want these books to thrive, and they deserve to. I know a handful of these authors personally and would like to have them all together for a launch party soon.
Along with The Ternion, we just launched another book that’s been in the works for months. Some Things You Love With Your Insides, Your Guts. I can see this becoming a niche cult classic if read by the right people. Who this audience is? Well, if you checked the latest excerpt I think you’ll get the picture. I’ll be packing orders today and preparing envelopes for The Ternion orders, so you’ll be reading it just in time for the beach trip or mountain getaway you’ve likely planned.
We’ve taken many chances with our books over the years, and I hate to judge a book by its objective summations. There’s a reader for every writer, yet modern marketing makes it difficult despite the audiences being larger and ever-growing around the world. TW isn’t a Big 4 imprint that can shovel money to elite publications. As I mentioned before, when your core demographics (like the Westies Book Club) get thinner and harder to find, you have no choice but to rely on the algorithms.
While we still have 4 more titles after these aforementioned, I think it’s time to open for unsolicited manuscripts again. It may do us all good to prepare earlier for 2025. With this, I think I’ve lost the plot with the mission of TW. If you recall, we only published chapbooks. Imagine today, staking your entire existence on just 4 chapbooks a year. It’s wild to see what we’ve become. Short-run chapbooks may just be the mortar that keeps the bricks of our press together. It allows the strangest, most experimental work to find printed life. I print and bind them in-house with my hands and those of volunteers. As long as The Workhorse (my 8+ year old inkjet printer) keeps printing, I’ll keep publishing.
Alright, that’s all I have for you. Pivoting directly to binding dozens of chapbooks and packing books for the 1st Odyssey of the Arts festival tomorrow. Like this newsletter, I hope to inspire and connect with people in person, surrounded by art, and under a late-spring sky. Hoping for things to turn around soon. If I’ve learned anything from publishing, is that the tides come in and they go out. I predict a tsunami is brewing…
The Extra Bits
Thirty West Day is coming. A special, one-day-only celebration of our press and authors is happening later this summer. More info to come.
More Afterimages posts coming soon. Fiction by Amy Cipolla Barnes, nonfiction by Andrew Bertaina, and more.
The 8th Wavelengths Contest is almost done. Last week, the Longlist was announced. Stay tuned for the Shortlist and eventual Winner this month.