Plan B Press

The UK's largest independent poetry press, Salt Publishing, has staved off bankruptcy after appealing for help from its fans...

on their way from the printer is Talia Weisz "When Flying Over Water" and the first reprint of Francine Tolf Like Saul.

Is Slam in Danger of Going Soft? as it appeared in New York Times. For the record, I don't much like slam poetry nor Mr. Smith. Slam does not translate into a book. It's good on DVD perhaps, or a CD. But on the page? I can't think of a single book by a slam artist that has been successful...

Stupid Things Booksellers & Publishers do. It's an ongoing situation, isn't it?

Publishers Meet in New York, Going Paper-freeWe read this and shake our heads. This is a Printing Press! Remember it!!

Japanese author Koji Suzuki, of the 1998 Hollywood film "Ring," poses with toilet paper rolls printed with drawing of a ghost on them to promote the product in Fuji, central Japan, Saturday, May 23, 2009...

I was sent this NPR article this morning on the business of poetry:Large publishers have been hit hard by the recession... But one corner of the publishing world has its own strange economy. Poets and those who publish them are used to earning next to nothing for their work.....

Moving along at,…well not breakneck speed, but we’ve completed all but one book, and the layout on that one is nearly finished. Ever since getting our computer back from the shop it’s been coming and going, freezing when overtaxed (every 45 minutes or so)...

also wanted to mention that Plan B Press poet ryan eckes is the host and curator of the Chapterhouse Reading Series in Philadelphia.

A handful of years ago now, after I stopped hosted the Eternal NOW! poetry series at Robin's Bookstore in Philadelphia, I was discussing the next evolution (as I saw it) in poetry reading presentation with Michele Belluomini and Jim Mancinelli...

Elizabeth Bodien reports that Plumb Lines is a finalist for the first ever Poetry Award that will be given by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. The winner will be announced at a dinner in late July. Congrats in advance to Elizabeth...

For two days I had been trying to telephone our Apple store to find out how our computer repair was going. Busy signals. beep - beep -beep... Since I had been told that they anticipated the part coming in on Tuesday, I figured Tuesday night would be a reasonable update day. Busy signal...

Our little computer is back at the shop as of Sunday morning. It is supposed to be back today, but I've given up plotting a timeline. Needless to say, our entire book production is on hold...

As we are computer-less at the moment, it's amazing how little we can actually accomplish. 1) No proofs to authors. (in fact no progress on layouts or covers either)2) No blog posting or website updates3) No typed correspondence or purchase orders possibleWe're back to pen and paper on everything...

Well, our Macintosh just died on Sunday. The power supply is kaput. So our local Apple store has ordered the part and should have the working CPU back to us at some point between Wednesday and Friday hopefully...

the winner of the 2009 Plan B Press chapbook contest is - You Must Not Know Too Much by Chris Bullard (Collingswood, NJ)congrats to Chris and all the wonderful submissions we received this year!

2009 seems to have been a stellar year for the submissions to our contest. The readers are beside themselves dealing with so many fantastic manuscripts. Congrats to all who have participated, you will all be notified once the judge makes her decision...

So I heard that Philly.com will start charging a fee soon to view content. As someone who likes to have access to online news, my first reaction, obviously, is to say, "No." However, my rational side quickly steps in, thankfully I have one, and thinks it over a bit...

We are laying out our three books for 2009. Two proofs are already completed. Printer quotes need to be gotten. Covers need to be thought out. The anthologies that will be available to the public probably won't go up until this summer. I plan to release them as a unified bunch...

I reach for an empty mug of coffee, awake since the kids stirred at 5 AM. Hours of whoosh pass, Katy off to work and the kids now napping. I reach for an empty mug of coffee. And stare at our running man. The running man...

We had our first official meeting in months yesterday. It was actually warm weather the last time it happened. We've been managing fairly well in spite of this, but... signals were getting crossed, assumptions were being made, and we didn't have time to really regroup...

The contest has now ended and we will be reviewing and sorting the manuscripts, setting them up to be judged. Once we receive the results we will create the book and and announce the winner online...

We seem to have been on a bit of a posting hiatus lately, but we're back!Our poetry chapbook contest is still open. Details. We've received dozens of entries so far and are purging them of identifiers for our readers, and piling them up...

One of our daily press priorities is upkeeping our web presence. Whether it's working on the website, updating our blog, maintaining our social networking sites,or searching the website for other opportunities, we frequent the internet...

Katy made this small "art book" a few years ago, and Tom Tavenner put it up as a flipbook, it's the sort of project that we seek as a Press. Katy's little book

It's almost mid-February and we are rounding the final turn, heading into the home stretch for our 2009 poetry chapbook contest. It's exciting for us as we will soon be publishing yet another NEW book (which we thrive to do)...

Someone sent me an article from a recent Time magazine on this subject and here's a similar article from the New York Times both dealing with the multilayered subjects of self-publishing, audience development, distribution, publicity, etc...