Adam Robinson of Publishing Genius Press describes his search for writing that startles him in a positive way
Adam Robinson
Adam Robinson is the founding editor of Publishing Genius Press, which he set up in 2006. Based in Baltimate, USA, the publishing house has four imprints: Paperback Books, Chapbook Genius, isReads and Everyday Genius. Previous publications include the first edition of Light Boxes by Shane Jones. Adam tells us how for him the cover letter is the least important part of a submissions.
How did you come to found Publishing Genius Press?
By 2006, I’d been interested in publishing books for several years, and I had been interviewing very small presses to see how they go about it. When my friend had a chapbook published by Bronze Skull Press, a very beautiful, simple book, I realised that I’d been making too much of the starting process, so I just jumped in by making staple-stitch chapbooks of my friends’ writing.
After about a year I discovered how easy and affordable it was to make perfect bound paperbacks, so I started expanding. Things took off from there.
What’s your professional background?
Ha, my professional background. Until late 2005, I was a night auditor at a hotel and a temp. Both positions allowed me lots of time to dream up artistic aspirations, so I played in bands and wrote plays.
Then I got a pretty good job as a buyer for an asset management company and went to the University of Baltimore and gained my MFA in a program called Creative Writing and Publishing Arts. The focus was split between writing and publishing.
Both the job as a buyer and the MFA afforded me the money and know-how, respectively, to get into publishing.
Plus there’s nothing better than on-the-job training, right?
What makes Publishing Genius Press different to other publishing houses?
Publishing Genius is different from the big publishing houses in budget, primarily. And having a smaller budget means I can take bigger risks. My tastes veer toward “experimental” writing, which I think has a smaller audience. That makes sense for me because I can’t print as many books.
I think my press is different than other small presses because of the four different venues within Publishing Genius. There’s an online journal that updates every weekday called Everyday Genius, which features poetry and very short fiction (generally fewer than 500 words, though sometimes a longer one sneaks in).
There’s Chapbook Genius, which publishes small books online and in a way that readers can print from home. There’s IsReads, which is a poetry journal wherein the poems are hung up outside in cities across the country. And of course there are the books. I’m putting out more books than most other independent presses this year, for better or worse.
What kind of books does Publishing Genius Press publish?
PG handles poetry and experimental fiction. It’s interesting that there is that designation for fiction, right, but not for poetry. Really the poetry is pretty experimental, too. All writing is, in a way. I think everyone who makes up a story or whatever says, “Here, let’s try this and see if it works.”
But the books I put out tend to make the “this” a little weirder than normal. So the last collection of poetry I did is Mairéad Byrne’s wonderful book, The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven, which is 200+ pages of what might be considered occasional writing - poems about the weather and living in Providence and being a poetry teacher and a mother – and it’s wonderfully funny and profound.
And a short story collection that will be officially released in September, called Pee On Water by Rachel B. Glaser, works so far out of the framework that I just stand back and marvel.
What happens to a submission once it reaches your office?
We use Submishmash, which is a really wonderful submissions manager. Once something comes in there, for any of the venues, I’ll read it and either reject it - generally with a form letter - or I’ll send it to someone else, like an intern or a friend, and see what they think.
What do you look for in a submission?
Like every editor probably says, I want to be surprised. I want to get the feeling that the writer worked really hard on the piece, and I want to see that reflected in the language. I also really, really want a good story, whether or not it’s a story. I mean, I want even the poems to give me a bit of story.
How can a new author get past the slush pile?
The best way is to write something that startles me, in a positive way. I know that’s not saying much, and sometimes I get the feeling that a writer will try to startle me by being uncouth or excessive. That’s why I say “in a positive way.”
I generally read all the submissions blind, meaning I don’t read the cover letter until after I’ve made a preliminary decision on the piece, so there isn’t much a writer can do through that letter. Unfortunately, the most concrete answer I can give you is to say that the submission has to be fantastic.
I guess it’s good news for the new author that I’m not putting too much weight on their previous publications, if they’re new and don’t have many.
Once you have accepted a manuscript, how do you prepare it for publication?
Usually I’ll do a round of edits with the author. Sometimes this is extensive, with a lot of emails and drafts being handed back and forth (the “Track Changes” function in MS Word is invaluable!), and sometimes, like with Mike Young’s book that will be out later this year, I’ll just go through the manuscript and highlight what’s working and why, and make very few suggestions.
Then I get to work on the layout, working with the author and perhaps a designer for the cover while I do the reader pages. Then we do a final proofread, during which everyone is so exhausted that we inevitably miss a few things so I send it to a proofreader and still manage to miss a few things, then the book is off to the printer.
What is your favourite part of this process?
Telling the writer I want to publish the thing.
What is the most challenging part of it?
The most challenging part, hands down, comes after the book is back from the printer: getting people to buy it.
Whose writing has excited you recently?
Well, okay, I won’t rattle on about the books I’ve just published or that are about to come out, even though they move me like crazy. So yesterday I received Eugene Marten’s book, Firework (just out from Tyrant Books), and even though I’m almost finished with Nicholson Baker’s amazing novel, The Anthologist, I couldn’t resist reading a few pages. And it’s amazing, too.
I’m also so, so, so taken by Dorothea Lasky’s poems in Black Life from Wave Books.
But I think I’m most looking forward to the two books that Blake Butler has coming out with Harper, though. His work as a writer and as a prime-mover is so smartly WHOA that it’s going to be interesting to see what the heck he does with these things.
What would you say the main challenges are for an aspiring author?
There are so many challenges, great and small, but I think of them as opportunities. Most of these are opportunities to discover the thing that makes writing worthwhile on a personal level.
The killer though, I think, is maintaining your motivation. It must be incredibly hard to not lose faith, from the time that a writer starts a book or starts submitting, until the time he or she achieves her goal.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Find a community that you like, in real life and also online, and share with them. Do a lot of work for other people.
Talk about other people more than yourself. Write everyday and once in a while, rhyme.
For more about Publishing Genius Press, please visit www.publishinggenius.com
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