They Don’t Look Like Real Books: Taking A Stand on Print-On-Demand.

( Rebecca Wolff: Founder of "Fence" magazine



They Don’t Look Like Real Books: Taking A Stand on Print-On-Demand.

* With Rebecca Wolff at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival (Lowell, Mass.)


I was at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival on Oct 11, 2008 to take part in the Small Press Festival. There were a number of presses and magazines represented there, such as: Godine Publishing, Cervena Barva Press, Ibbetson Street, Boston Review, Fulcrum, Zephyr Press, Zoland Books and many more. I got the chance to speak to many folks, both publishers and the general public. Ed Sanders, legendary poet, and founder of the 60’s political/ folk/art/rock band the “Fugs,” as well as “Fuck You: The Magazine of the Arts,”( to name just a few accomplishments), was there. He was in Ibbetson Street 23, and I interviewed him recently for The Somerville News, so it was nice to run into him.

As I wandered around the tables, I stopped off at Fence Books, an offshoot of the hip and influential literary magazine “Fence” I spoke to the founder Rebecca Wolff, who I met briefly years ago at the Boston Alternative Poetry Conference. Since then she has come along way and Fence has received recognition from the literati, and is now housed at the University of Albany in New York, where they are the recipient (no doubt) of institutional largess. I admired the Fence books that were on the table and innocently asked if any were “Print-On-Demand.” Well Wolff was like a wolf on a meat truck, and replied: Never! “I never saw one that looked like a ‘real’ book.”

Well perhaps Rebecca works in a rarefied atmosphere, far above the banal masses of the small press. But as an editor and reviewer myself, I see a slew of poetry books each year, review my share: good, bad and indifferent. I certainly can determine what a “real” book looks like. And these perfect-bound collections coming from Print-On-Demand printers are “real” books, and books to be proud of.

I invited Wolff to come by the Ibbetson Press table to take a look. She did after I called out her name as she passed my table. She looked over titles and said: “ Oh, I don’t know, the covers look like pictures of pictures.” Whatever. She did allow; “ I suppose they are comparable.”

There was a small press panel during the festival, and I situated myself in the front row so I could partake in the Q and A. On the panel were Ed Sanders, Geoffrey Young, Anna Moschovakis, Rebecca Wolff, and Kyle Schlesinger. Somerville, Mass. poet Joe Torra, a neighbor of mine, moderated it.

I asked the panelists about the “elitist” attitudes I face when I tell people we now publish Print-On-Demand books. I used Rebecca Wolff’s comment as an example. I talked about the history of the small press and its role in fostering new talent, its job of getting worthy poets on the margin out there and heard. For many of us, without the largess of the academy, foundation grants, big lips for ass kissing, etc…the only affordable way ( especially in the economic straits we have now) is Print-On-Demand. Because of low and non-existent start up prices, and printing geared to exactly how much we need at a given time, we don’t have books sitting around collecting dust. The books are quality productions, our own have been bought by university libraries, bookstores, for classes, and we get regular commissions. We are lucky if we break even, but you go in this for the love.

Anyway the panelist seemed to agree that Print-On-Demand is a viable option. Sanders, a veteran of the Mimeograph Revolution on the Lower East Side of NYC in the 60’s reminded us of the importance of printing poetry, even if it is a simple broadside, and has a press run of 2 or 3 copies. Another panelist said if he had Print-On-Demand in his day, all the books decaying in his garage would not be there. Wolff made some comments about her advocacy of poets and her efforts for the best presentation of their work ( as if we don’t!). At the end she said: ” I am intrigued…” or something in that vein, well, you know the drill.

Whenever a new technology, or new approach, is around there is always a lot of resistance. But now publishers like David Godine Jr., and others are starting to experiment with Print-On-Demand. We must remember what Jerome Rothenburg points out in his preface to “A Secret History of the Lower East Side” ( as noted in the program for the festival:

“American poetry, the part by which it has been and will be known, has long been on the margins, nurtured in the margins, carried forward, vibrant in the margins…”

Perhaps, now that Wolff has joined the ranks of the literati, she has lost sight of the fact. Let’s encourage not discourage.


Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update