BICHN: the reissue

Here was my to-do list for the last two weeks:

--REISSUE BEFORE I CAME HOME NAKED
--design new cover for BICHN
--choose interior fonts
--lay out copy
--lay out cover
--get printer bids
--secure ISBN for reissue
--purchase ISBN
--get bar code with ISBN
--get Library of Congress Control Number for reissue
--research rules for setting up own press
--dig out PageMaker and create files
--check fonts and graphics
--research POD options
--research Espresso Book Machine options
--research Amazon seller criteria
--contact campus bookstores
--do all the above while also starting new semester with five classes
--etc.

Yes! After some hemming and a lot of hawing (I like that this makes me sound like I was sewing pants and yawping around the house, which is fairly accurate, minus the pants part), I decided the best option would be to set up myself as a press and reissue the sucker myself. There were deadlines to meet, which meant I wouldn't have time to approach some other presses and see if they'd handle the reissue, and, you know, I figured that I could learn as I went.

And actually, it wasn't that hard. Let me clarify: I don't want to run a press or print other poets' books, because that entails doing the marketing and fulfilling bookstore orders and worrying about getting some money back on the investment. The only fun part might be calling up prospective authors and telling them I'd like to publish their books and then holding the phone away from my ear when they screamed, and picking new fonts. But in my case, because the book was already known and in some demand (the scenario that led me to the need to reissue in the first place), I figured I'd cut out the press middleman and just do it myself. What I need, right now, are copies of the book that I can sell to the five classes (!) that are using it as a text this semester. And so I took a deep breath, registered myself as a press named for my favorite dinosaur, and set out to reissue it.

Here I should say I am grateful that after buying a new laptop last fall, I hadn't yet dismantled and wiped the old one, because that clunky machine still had PageMaker loaded on it*. InDesign is the future, but PageMaker is my trusty buddy, the one that helped me lay out the 1999 yearbook, the 2006 and 2007 issues of the Blue Earth Review, and the 2007 thesis posters that featured my co-reader and I in smeared lipstick with cigarette lighters stuck into our cleavage. I am also grateful for all the days I spent holed up in the BER office during the spring of 2006, eating Taco Bell and cursing my predecessor who failed to leave me any instruction manuals, because I learned by doing, slowly, and with many beans spilled on the keyboard.

It came in handy.

While I didn't have the time to make a truly kick-ass cover, one I'd drawn myself, I did manage to find a photo (taken on this trip to Bushwick in early 2010) that I thought was appropriately creepy and interesting, and I had some fun with re-setting the interior pages. The poems and the order are the same as the first version**, but the book is a little more my aesthetic this time around, and for that, I am grateful for this whirlwind experience.

People have asked me how I feel about finding myself in this situation, what with my first press closing up shop and the hijinks we had along the way, and I say this: I don't regret anything. Working with that press taught me a lot, and my editor/former editor has been nothing but gracious with her time and knowledge. But I am also glad that I was thrown into the deep end of the pool and made to go through the process of the reissue, if only because it reminded me of the skills I have and want to acquire. Maybe one day I'll write an article about the whole process, but then again, I am certainly not the first poet to have this experience, so maybe not. BORING.

Anyway, now I know how to ask the Library of Congress for numbers, so that might come in handy one day.

I am waiting on proofs today, and I am sure there might be some hiccups in printing or layout because there always is, and I still haven't decided if I want to sell this version through Amazon or just fulfill orders directly through our web site, the latter which affords me the ability to tuck little letterpressed broadsides and plastic dinosaurs into the copies I send out. But I thought I would come back and tell you what it is that I've been up to, and what it looks like around here. Thankfully, there are far fewer beans on the keyboard this time.


*fun fact! Who let me graduate, what with my software piracy.  
**fun fact! I cannot call this the second edition, because there is not 30% new content. It is instead a new version, or reissue. You're welcome!