Pulp Futures

we are in the climax

I’ve been thinking about last week’s post about the batshit printing and paper situation ever since I wrote it, so today I’m continuing in that theme with some information I’ve gathered since then, as well as update you on what, well, I’m going to do about all this, Belt-wise.

If booksellers like to blame publishers for books not being available, publishers like to blame printers for being backed up. Who do printers blame? The paper mill, of course.

Paper is scarce not just for books. There is not enough paper to print voter registration forms in Texas, apparently.

Nor is there enough paper to print newspapers in Canada.

And this article provides more information that I’ve seen previously about why this shortage exists. Many mills have converted to cardboard given the increased demand for boxes (Amazon Prime, thank you), and that I’ve known. But there’s another factor I learned in this piece. Stop choosing paper over plastic in the grocery aisle, maybe?

More discouraging news can be found across the pond, in an article in The Bookseller, an English publication dedicated to the publishing industry, which reveals how dire things are there.

The only good thing in this article is learning the phrase “going to the wall,” something many presses think they may end up doing soon.

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Given the increasingly long turnaround time to get a book printed, I’ve made some changes to Belt’s 2022 catalog:

• How To Be Normal, our kickass book publishing on February 1, has been receiving more buzz than I anticipated when I sent it to the printer a zillion years ago, given the long turnaround time (okay, it was October). Therefore I may have underestimated the initial print run. But given a 20 week turnaround, if we sell through the first printing quicker than anticipated, we will be out of stock for a few months. I’m not going to let that happen. So, with Phil’s permission, and to the consternation of our distributor, we are going to go straight to paperback. We’ve created a paperback version of the book, dropped it in as a new title for Spring 22, and will hit the “place order” button over at Lightning Source as soon as we are low on hardcovers. It means we will take a hit, as hardcovers have higher margins than paperbacks—but maybe not, as paperbacks sell better than hardbacks, as least to our non-rich readers. Either way, it’s a bummer and exhausting to manage.

• Boys Come First, our first novel, which I’m extremely stoked about, was meant to be a hardback. I promised that to Aaron when we discussed him going with us a year ago. However, it took longer than we anticipated to get the draft into printer-ready form, and by the time we did it would be too late to do a hardback and also publish this spring, another promise I made to Aaron, given turnaround times for hardbacks. So, again with Aaron’s permission, and to avoid bumping the book to the fall, we are releasing it as a paperback.

And I’m considering more:

• We may publish fewer titles than planned for Fall 2022, in some foolhardy belief that pulp and paper grow on trees and will be more abundant by 2023.

• We are going to raise our prices, damnit. Our distributor doesn’t want us to. Indie booksellers don’t want us to. But we have to. Anyway, it’s a change that is long, long, long overdue, as I wrote about here. A snippet:

• I want to continue the conversation I started last year, and discussed last week, about getting a group of folks together to buy the equipment necessary to print perfect-bound books. You basically need a big Xerox printer plus a trimmer and a gluer and some other cool-named machines. You need a space, you need someone to manage it. You keep it very simple: a few trim sizes, maybe only one kind of stock? You promise to send all your printing business to this printer. I think regional presses could really make this work. I am 100% eager to hear from anybody who might want to help this project become, well, a business plan at least, if not a reality! Now, I don’t know about the paper availability issue, but there are lots of abandoned paper mills around here, so maybe get in touch if you want to buy a mill as well?

I feel like I should end this elegiacally, or with some joke, or some canard about how long the book has been around and will continue to be, or maybe something like: “jeez maybe this whole newfangled internet thing could provide an alternative to paper for books?” But all I have for you all right now is basically: can you believe this? It’s too soon for any sort of conclusion, let along a denouement.

Notes from a Small Press is the newsletter by Anne Trubek, the founder and owner of Belt Publishing.  Two posts per month are free; the other two are for paying subscribers (click button above!). Don’t forget to grab a copy of  So You Want to Publish a Book?, the book based on this newsletter that other people say good things about.