Monday, 1:30 p.m.
At 1:30 p.m., Alan Davis of Minnesota State University in Moorhead spoke to us about "Relocating a Small Press to a University Campus." I had met Davis when I was a Tom McGrath Visiting Writer at Moorhead last February. The relocated press in question is New Rivers Press.
"You know," Davis said, "a literary small press which produces its own book bag thinks too much of itself." He held up New Rivers Press's book bag, which was produced for those who had donated for upkeep of the press.
News Rivers moved to Moorhead when founder and original owner Bill Truesdale died in 2002, there to become "a teaching press." Due to the logistics of the univerity schedule, the press "can produce books only in the fall," Davis said. They have issued five this fall - two poetry, two fiction, and one reprint of an earlier New Rivers title. Students design, edit, and market the books.
"Two of us teach half-time and work with the press half-time," Davis said. "I like to think we're continuing to do what Bill Truesdale was doing."
He noted that there are 111 titles in the press's Many Voices Project to date (formerly called the Minnesota Voices Project).
Davis said: Bill Truesdale "was the kind of publisher that when he was right, he was so right that you couldn't argue with him; and when he was wrong, he was so wrong that you couldn't argue with him."
"I always feel him looking over my shoulder...."
When the press moved to Moorhead, Davis said, "we committed to the press that we would publish all the books that had been accepted but not yet published. This year for the first time we've published books that we've accepted."
"This is a very time-consuming but very fulfilling process," he said. "It might end up being a new paradigm for small presses. Students have an opportunity to get hands-on in the work-a-day world of publishing and marketing books."
"We're hoping to train a new generation to the value of small literary publishing," he said.
"We're careful not to take on more books than we can promote...."
"The more books you publish, the more money you lose. That's how it works in small press...."
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