Copyright Discussion

From the lengthy copyright discussion going on, now brought above the fold. Please feel free to chime in.
Emily Warn wrote:

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

Shanna Compton wrote:

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...]