I have been working for Green Lantern Gallery and Press for about a year and a half, first as a gallery intern and press assistant and now as Assistant Editor.  Last year, Caroline Picard, the Director of Green Lantern asked me to compile a list of bookstores around the country and then to contact them and hock our books.  

Together she and I made this list, and she showed me how to make my first spreadsheet.  This was a real departure for me, and it took a great deal of focus on my part.  Spreadsheet?  But… but… spreadsheets are for accountants and advertising executives!  I’m a poet and an artist!  I can’t make spreadsheets!  To me, making a spreadsheet was somewhere on the level of investing in the stock market or getting dental insurance. 

At some point, though, it began to occur to me that through the magical tapestry of this spreadsheet, perhaps The Green Lantern could start to sell books.  And not just 20 or 30 books, but hundreds of books, and that these “new or forgotten voices” (that’s from our mission statement) might start to speak, sing, yell, however faintly, from the masses of consumer oriented tomes  stacked high in bookstores like Border’s and Barnes’ & Noble that control the book market, and in turn, control what people read.

I became more and more interested and excited by the process.  Finally we had a two page spreadsheet with names of bookstores, their phone numbers, email addresses and names of buyers from all over the country.  I started at the very top: 

“Hi my name is Lily Robert-Foley, I’m calling from The Green Lantern Press of Chicago.  We’re an independently run small press that publishes marginalized works.  Could I maybe talk to you about some of our books?”

By far the most common response was,  “We don’t buy directly from publishers.  We suggest you go through a distributor.”  Applying to distribution companies takes a great deal of time and capital, whereby you have to be able to make contact with important people, and send out lots of books that you have already printed, that you probably won’t get back.  We have been trying though, and we currently distribute through SPD, Small Press Distribution.

There were a few places that bought from independent publishers.  They asked me to send them a catalogue.  We built a catalogue, and wrote emails, and sent letters and heard back from very few of them.  Of the few we did hear back from, the majority of them never paid us, would not respond to our emails requesting that they pay us, and we never heard from them again. 

All of this took a great deal of time and effort, and caused a great deal of frustration.  I make my living as a piano teacher and time, effort and frustration are not things I have in great reserves.  I am also an artist and a writer, and finding time to make art and write while you are working to pay the bills, and simultaneously fight the unpaid good fight as an independent guerilla lackey for a small time renegade publishing company… well… I don’t think I quite need to explain the effects of that on the human mind and body to all of you. 

Likewise, as a writer, you do not send your manuscript directly to big name publishers, who have big name distribution companies who can sell to big name bookstores (which is where the vast majority of Americans buy their books).  It is possible to find a small time independent publisher (such as The Green Lantern) to graciously publish your book.  Chances are they are coming up against the same obstacles I have just described to you.  This means, if they do publish your book, there is a very small chance that very many people will actually read it, or for that matter find it (since small time publishing companies cannot sell in big time bookstores, which is where most of America shops).  They are also most likely coming up against the same obstacles of time, effort and frustration that I just described and may not be able even to read your manuscript, as hard as they may try and as much as they may want to.

So, as a writer, if you want to have a large audience for your writing, you must seek an agent who works in a big-time agency, who is connected to a big-time publishing company who is connected to a big-time distribution company who is connected to a big-time bookstore chain (that has big-time advertising contracts, through which Americans might begin to gain awareness of a given book.  Or they have the money to buy a book-of-the-month slot on Oprah), which is where most of America buys its books.    

What I’m trying to show with all of this is that between the writer and the reader there is a giant, heaving, meat wheel of conspiracy—I mean industry.  And at each level of this meat wheel, a work of literature that strives to be conscious, critical, political, or even just good (god forbid if you’re writing something new or experimental), is beaten into a bloody, greasy, ground chuck. 

You might ask:  why do I think each level of the book market industry incrementally decreases the power of a work to be challenging, conscious, critical or quality?  Because part of the value artists and writers have in a society is that they work towards a vision—whatever that vision may be.  They work for the sake of truth, or humanity, or beauty, or knowledge, or goodness, or science, or change, or whatever—they work for a noble cause.  They are a race of superheroes spread over the universe to combat evil and promote beauty and learning—like The Green Lanterns. 

And all the while, while writers are writing and sacrificing themselves (possibly fruitlessly) for beauty and nobility, book market meat processors are working for something quite different.  Something quite singular.  Money.  Money, money, and more money.  This means, control over the market.  This means control over publishing, over distribution, over book sales and more terrifyingly, over writers and their manuscripts, and even more terrifyingly, over readers. 

 

If mass media control over readership is not a political problem, I don’t know what is.

 

So, I hope this explains to some extent why I feel that Green Lantern is political.  Although, for a gallery that is currently hosting a giant white penis with a quote from Al-Malaki pinned to the side, and giant flags proclaiming “Declaration of Victory” hoisted above, I don’t quite understand why I needed to bother.

 

Buy Small Press,

Lily Robert-Foley,

Assistant Editor, Green Lantern Press