 |  |  |  |  |
the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by Tim W. Brown
Fleeced by FC2:
Government-Funded Vanity Publishing
Something is rotten in the State of Florida. And Illinois.
And Alabama. A small experimental fiction publisher, Fiction
Collective Two (FC2 for short), has in its thirty-two-year
existence wriggled to the center of the academic-government
complex in these states and in Washington, DC. Although there is
nothing inherently wrong with seeking and obtaining public
money in support of the organization, often the beneficiaries are
the principals and board members of FC2.
Full disclosure: I submitted my novel, Walking Man, to FC2 in
2004. When submitting I knew the book didn't precisely fit with
FC2's list; still, it was thematically quirky and formally inventive
enough to stand half a chance of acceptance. The book was
ultimately rejected.
When I recently contacted FC2's Executive Director, R.M.
"Ralph" Berry, a creative writing professor at Florida State
University, with my questions about FC2's operations, one of the
first questions he asked me in his sarcastic reply was whether I
had submitted my work to FC2 in the past, suggesting I were a
disgruntled rejected author. Making such an accusation is the
first refuge of literary scoundrels, an inversion of Dr. Johnson's
formulation that patriotism is the last refuge of political
scoundrels.
For the record, Walking Man was submitted to several other
publishers that year. However, I don't have reservations about
their ethics, and, therefore, I'm not writing an article
investigating their practices. In any event, it's probably
necessary to submit work to FC2 to catch a glimpse of the
submissions process in action.
FC2 has been in existence for 32 years. It was founded as an
“author-run” press at Brooklyn College in 1974 by Jonathan
Baumbach, Peter Spielberg, Mark Mirsky, Steve Katz, and Ron
Sukenick in response to the constant flow of rejections these
writers received from trade publishers in their early careers. The
press has published such authors as Russell Banks, Samuel
Delaney, Raymond Federman, Mark Leyner, Clarence Major
and Gerald Vizenor. Says one publishing industry insider who’s
familiar with FC2's operations in the 1980s and 90s when it was
run by Ron Sukenick and his successor as director, Curtis White:
"They published a lot of good people over the years. Of course,
they always made sure to publish themselves first."
The word "collective" in its name connotes the image of self-
publishing hippies, and the commune model is, essentially, how
the press operated until recent years, with each "member," or
author it had published, having a vote on incoming manuscripts.
FC2’s organizing principle changed in 1999 with the decision to
replace the cumbersome, if more democratic, governing process
of yore. A board of directors, advisory board and editorial board
were created, and comrade Berry was named ED during the
coup d’état.
FC2’s books are written by tenured radicals based in creative
writing programs in universities around the U.S. Together they
form a "collective," a small coterie of authors of fiction on the
self-styled "cutting edge." FC2 authors fancy themselves avant
garde and "transgressive" – as transgressive as you can be, I
suppose, living in college towns and congregating in university
classrooms. FC2 long ago left behind Brooklyn and any rude
edges it ever had, and its operations are now divided among three
verdant state university campuses. Collective members are
extremely tribal about whom they choose to enter their club.
Acolytes of über-plagiarist Kathy Acker, they exist outside her
Downtown space/time continuum, but they sorely wish they had
hung out in the East Village back in the 1980s and made the
scene with her.
Yet my interest in FC2 isn't really about the content of its list – if
the press considers surrealistic logorrhea to be fine literature
and want to publish it, that's perfectly okay with me.
The truth is nobody has much interest in FC2's books' content,
there being far less interest than I expected before my
investigation. The press sells small print runs of their titles
mostly to libraries. A recent grant application to the Florida
Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) expressed the “hope” of
selling 700 out of a total of 1,500 copies printed of each title it
planned to publish in 2005-2006. Despite a few admiring critics
who have reviewed their titles in a handful of mainstream and
independent periodicals, there isn't much public curiosity in or
commercial market for their books.
FC2’s operations and funding are extremely opaque. It was like
investigating Enron when I looked into its business affairs. Early
in my inquiry, I emailed Berry asking about the relationship
between public funding of FC2 and regular publication of its
board members. Berry responded, imperiously, “[W]e are not a
division of Florida's state government, we are not subject to its
‘sunshine laws,’ and disclosure of financial information is at our
discretion, as in the case of other private corporations.” Because
Berry was less-than-forthcoming about FC2’s finances, I was
forced to rely upon publicly available tax records and grant
application information to piece together FC2’s business
operations. Here are the known facts:
FC2’s “executive offices” are located at FSU. As ED Berry “is
responsible for all business and promotional decisions of the FC2
non-profit publishing house, as well as for fundraising.”
The English Department's Publications Unit at Illinois State
University, overseen by Tara Reeser, its Director, handles
manuscript screening and other editorial duties through
graduate assistantships and student internships. In other words,
students who haven’t yet matriculated are making decisions
about FC2’s incoming manuscripts. Berry defends this practice,
saying, “To place the editorial decision-making process in the
hands of authors, not sales managers, industry insiders, and
inexperienced recent graduates of liberal arts colleges, was why
the Fiction Collective came into existence.” I’m not certain how
FC2’s method is any better than trade publishing’s, other than
using cheaper labor, but at least trade publishing’s junior editors
have finished school.
FC2’s "publisher" is the University of Alabama. UA’s
responsibilities to FC2 include contracting with third parties for
printing FC2’s books and paying for associated production costs,
according to Dan Ross, Director of University of Alabama Press.
UA Press publishes six FC2 titles a year under a system of what
Ross calls "pay as we go" funding.
I asked Ross how this approach pays for printing FC2’s books,
which lose money each time out. FC2’s Florida 2005-2006 grant
application claims, "The press has been successful ... as we have
been able to fund the press through our book sales." This
statement is false – there is a regular shortfall between FC2’s
book sale revenue and its production costs. Indeed, this statement
is contradicted later in the very same document in the budget
section in which FC2 expected sales of three books totaling
$7,350 and printing costs totaling $10,500, not counting expenses
related to shipping, distribution, marketing, or administration.
FC2’s 2000-2001 grant application indicates the press expected
sales of six books amounting to $22,000 and printing expenses
alone to exceed $25,000. Ross answered that UA Press will
probably have to lower the number of copies printed and raise
the cover prices to attempt to close the funding gap.
In the period I examined, going back to 1999, FC2 received
numerous federal and state arts grants. The National Endowment
for the Arts awarded the press a total of $27,000 between 2001
and 2006. FC2 is regularly awarded money by the Florida DCA,
and as recently as 2004 it received funding from the Illinois Arts
Council under the Unit for Contemporary Literature’s
application for that year. (More about the Unit later.)
To Be Continued....Part TWO Next Week!
===============================================
Tim W. Brown online: www.timwbrown.com
===============================================
GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
