Editor Interview: Dead Man Publishing

Small Strange Books

Black Square Editions
BlazeVOX Books
Fence
Conjunctions
New American Writing
above/ground Press

Andrew Joron
Christian Bok
Will Alexander
Martin Corless-Smith
Brian Lucas
Aby Kaupang
Brenda Hillman

We offer authors a much higher percentage of earnings, one, because we aren't worried about making any money, and two, we won't make any money.
To be serious, though, I am attracted to experimental writing, but my location has put me in a community of writers with very different interests from my own. So, to scoop up the astonishing talent we have in the UP of Michigan, I make a special place for writers from my home and give them special consideration when they submit work.

Read some of our books. What we publish is quite an eclectic mix, but always strange.

A work that is lyrical and formally astonishing.

You don't need to be a published author. In fact, I kind of ignore lists of prior publications. All I care about is your work.

Publication history is nice but unnecessary. I just want to be astonished. If you want to discuss your work in an academic or philosophical way, I'd appreciate the insight... but even this is unnecessary. All I care about is your work.

For poetry, I will often read the whole manuscript. Fiction, I give it ten pages.

Can we format this thing into a small strange book and do we have cash on hand.

Check my email, read, make breakfast for my daughter, sometimes scribble some notes, read over whatever project I am currently composing, make dinner for my wife.

Really, the work should pretty much be in final form by the time it reaches me. Still, when it comes to poetry, I am willing to sift a manuscript and keep the jewels... if the author is open to that sort of intervention in their work.

Not yet.

However I can. Generally, I fund my publishing by working elsewhere 9 to 5. But money has come from alot of different sources: deployment overseas as a soldier (that was in the beginning of Dead Man Publishing), inheritances, employment, investments... but it is always a chunk out of me. I do this for the love of writing and publishing, not for money.

Good question. Let me come back to this in a few months. I will say, I have tried a few different tactics: readings, distributing books to potential reviewers, advertising in poetry journals like Fence. For me, the most success I've had at getting books into people's hands is the face-to-face encounter of the reading.