You may have spoken on this elsewhere, but how do you have anything of Beckett's on ubu? I understand his estate--and the man himself, when living--are pretty fierce about his works, the staging of his plays, etc.

Sure. We have tons of Beckett on Ubu:

Beckett on Ubu Film
Beckett in Ubu Sound
Beckett in Ubu Conceptual Writing
Beckett in Aspen Magazine on UbuWeb

I meant to ask how do you have anything of Beckett's? I've seen the great stuff at ubu, but in light of his estate, what I remarked on in the earlier post, how is it you have it? Relates to the copyright question(s) you pose in your post.

We simply post things we find interesting. If someone objects, we take it down. Since we have a strict policy of not selling anything, people don't seem to mind. Again, in the economy of no economy, we live a privileged life. In the case of Beckett or John Lennon (who is also on the site), they have real economies unlike 99% of what we host on UbuWeb.

kenny, have you seen any of cory doctorow's posts on copyright issues and (science) fiction at boing boing? he releases all of his books simultaneously in free e-editions and says not only has it not adversely affected the sales of his books, it seems to have *increased* his book sales. boing boing is also hosting podcasts of some of his stories, etc.

there's also a debate happening right now, between editors and poets, as to whether poems posted on personal blogs should be considered "previously published" and thus ineligible to appear in many mags and journals. there's plenty of disagreement of course, but i think in general the internet-based magazine's editors are more lenient/less restrictive about crossover/simultaneous appearances. that's a good thing, i think, and a new issue. sort of related i suppose to what you're talking about here.

as the project editor on a HUMONGOUS anthology of collaborations recently, i was very frustrated with permissions processes for two presses, one major trade/commercial and the other a prominent university press. every poet and poet's estate run by a poet happily agreed to let the poems appear in return for a complimentary copy (with 250 contributors + postage for comp copies, that's a huge expense and pretty much blew our budget alone) but these two presses not only charged fees upwards of $100 per poem, but made simply getting in touch with them to inquire something of a nightmare, requring postal mail requests only or faxes (faxes? no emails? i haven't used a fax machine in at least 5 years), not giving contact info on their websites, etc. it was really a pain. i imagine some anthology editors simply give up, not having the time and/or budget for such bullshit. since anthologies are largely aimed at an academic/general reader market, that's really too bad, because they're very good tools for turning new readers on to poetry, and often serve as a stepping stone to purchase full books by contributing authors, etc. i know when i was in high school and undergraduate college, anthologies were the first place i found to look.

Shanna,

Yes, I have seen Doctorow's piece on copyright and adored it, even more so by the fact that he was paid by Forbes magazine to write it! Brilliant!

There are two worlds: the official world of publishing and the unofficial world of poetry. I live in both. And I play by the rules in both according to what world I happen to be in at the given moment.

I too, have done books that require pain in the ass permissions. But I got paid to do those books -- and I paid out to the contributors as well. Fair is fair: everything was above board. These rules are very clear.

It gets more interesting on the web, with blogs, with self-publishing where there is no money involved. We can re-invent the rules as we go. Certainly UbuWeb is a result of completely making up the rules as we've gone along. And it's really worked!

My point is that as poets, we are obliged to take advantage of the lack of rules: to experiment, to explore, to invent. Fercrissake, there's nothing to lose!

above board, yes. not sure how i gave the impression something wasn't? the poets in the anthology i mentioned *were* paid, though granted it wasn't much. (the two presses that were charging permissions fees were doing so re: the work of deceased authors whose family/executors had already granted permission for the same payment as the rest of the contribs. it's actually a common practice among small presses to grant permissions gratis to each other, so it seemed absurd that these two presses were asking for fees exceeding our entire promotional budget. i was annoyed, but we did pay the fees because we felt the poems were too important to leave out.)

and brought this situation up because it related to the copyright considerations you raised in your post--reprint permissions are a copyright consideration that seems particularly tricky for poets. permission fees make perfect sense for all kinds of books--but in the case of poetry are unecessarily complicated and tend to suppress the reach of the work, as most presses would not be able to afford them. so i'd advise poets to think about their reprint rights when signing their contracts (if they even get contracts.)

i'm not disagreeing with anything you've said, in other words. ubu is fab and its really cool that most people have allowed their work to be archived there. i agree poetry suffers when treated like a widget (and blather on about this alllll the time). commercial publishing suffocates it.

hope i make more sense now. :)

For obvious reasons, we have to be street-legal for all poems that appear on poetryfoundation.org. This means that we generate a contract for every poem in our archive that is not in the public domain. Imagine the faxing, emailing, printing, phone calling, check cutting (more on that later), and data entry required to seek permission for its thousands of poems.

It slows us down. It limits the ideas for stories and articles about poetry that we can publish. For example, John Felstiner put together an annotated list of his favorite ten environmental poems for us to add to the archive. That was six months ago, and we're still waiting to hear back from some publishers.

I understand why it takes publishers so long to respond. They too have to generate and track contracts on a per poem basis. For long established presses, permission fees for "classic" poems, or poems that anthologists often seek, fund the publication of new work.

We conceived the archive, in part, as a kind of fluid canon, one that would be built over time as poets and journalists approached us with ideas about poets and poetry. Every story we ran, the theory went, would either be about poems in the archive, or add to to them, thus letting the archive reflect aesthetic choices other than ours, which are inevitably subjective.

Now we reject a lot of story ideas because we know how long it will take to get permission for the poems they feature. We can't, like Kenny, post what we want until someone objects. And, our permission fees support publishers, poets, and literary estates--a good thing, we think.

So Shanna and Kenneth, what if a Soft Skull or DIY title, or poems in your books became so valuable you could live off them, or use them to publish more books, would you decide not to charge for them?

Emily

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, emily! if that ever happens, i'll let you know!

it's highly unlikely that permission fees for single classic poems pay for/toward any future volumes of poetry--the publishing industry mostly publishes poetry as a "loss leader" or "prestige" category. the fees are not so much designed to generate revenue as they are to "protect" the investment of the initial publication of the book by preventing another outfit from cannibalizing the copyright and impacting their profitibility. this doesn't serve the poet, of course. the logic is, i guess, that a single poem reappearing in an anthology will negatively impact the sales of Famous Poet's Collected Poems? that's absurd. a poem in an anthology may very sell additional copies.

in almost every case unsubsidized poetry publishing (i.e. that done other than via academic/university presses or nonprofits or via a contest-model) has a miniscule chance of making back what the publisher spends to put it out, mostly because the traditional printing/distribution networks are too expensive, and get more expensive as the print-runs get smaller. (POD publishing and short-run digital printing can correct some of these problems, which is why i'm always yakking about how it's better for poetry.) the point is, the economic considerations of large commercial publishers are hobbling poetry.

if it "doesn't make money" they're not interested in it. if they're not interested in it, they won't take a chance on anything even marginally risky or new. thus, all they tend to publish is what they already know. (not knocking the knopf backlist, or peguin poets--i just realize that's only a fraction of what's really being done.) if "poetry doesn't make money" is that because of the poetry, or the way it is being published? and if it's the way it's being published and distributed, what can be done about that? thus the activities of DIYers and smaller-scale presses.

so the thrust of my argument(s) on this topic is always: separate the art from the business, at least insofar as possible, if you (as a poet or as a publisher) want to serve the art best. since public arts funding seems too much to hope for what with all the political tangling (see also: canadian poets who have it *much* better than we do, having their presses supported and even receiving travel funds, etc.), our best move is to eliminate the bulky industry networks and connect poet to reader in as few steps as possible. it's way cheaper. it has the bonus effect of being cheering for the poet who might otherwise feel frustrated at being "ignored."

the US has wrecked itself, culturally speaking, but the artists just have to keep on.

i don't mean to sound snide or whatever--this is all well and good of these larger presses--they are businesses, even some of the smallest ones. (soft skull included.) but poetry is not a business and it is simply not served best by a large industry. it's a culture vs. capital nightmare. (same goes for most "literary" genres.) one can look to film and music to see clear parallels--indie labels and filmmakers like david lynch dropping all his distributors to do inland empire diy style. (the $$ there is greater across the board, of course, but the analogy still holds. publishing books is a tough business for all kinds of reasons that do not come to bear on film and music.)

as for DIY poetry, it is mostly distributed at cost or very near it, and often swapped or gifted. that is a big part of the DIY culture and it lines up perfectly with the poetry-gift-economy that kenny talks about (and eileen tabios is always talking about on her blog). the poems changing hands is simply more important than money changing hands.

[sorry, i'm typing on the fly. this comment is probably all over the place...]