Earlier this year, poet Chase Twichell announced that Ausable Press, the independent publishing operation that she founded in 1999 in Keene, New York, will be acquired by Copper Canyon Press, the country's largest poetry publisher, located in Port Townsend, Washington. Under the auspices of Copper Canyon, all Ausable titles will remain in print, and Copper Canyon will honor all existing book contracts. Twichell, who will stay on as editor-at-large once the deal goes through next January, recently spoke about her decision.
Why, after ten successful
years, are you passing the torch to Copper Canyon?
I started Ausable in 1999 with the intention of dedicating
ten years of my life to it. I had received an inheritance from my grandparents,
so the idea was to see if I could stretch it for ten years, put a bunch of
books into the world, and then see where things are. I was actually more
successful than I ever anticipated being, which was wonderful, except it became
too much work for one person. So I began by hiring one person and then another
person, and so on and so forth. The money ran out about five years ago, so we
became a nonprofit; there are now five people working at the press.
It went from being a kind of mom-and-pop minus the pop to a real business that requires a tremendous amount of work not directly related to publishing. We have to raise money year-round; we have to have a fund-raiser; we have to schmooze rich people. We have to do all kinds of things—the taxes and the paperwork and the payroll and all this stuff, not to mention writing grants, which gobbles up a huge amount of time.
Not exactly the romantic
notion of an independent press.
Well, it became clear that we either had to let it off its
leash and let it grow or I would have to hold it back as a tiny press that
published two books a year. Because we were on a roll and because I was
completely naive and ignorant about what it would be like to be a nonprofit, we
went ahead.
It's been a fabulous ride, but for the last three years I've been putting in fifty-plus hour weeks, and everybody works really hard for way less than they're worth.... For me it's just a dream come true. I could not think of a better possible future for Ausable Press.
Still, it must've been a
hard decision.
It was because it's been
my life, and I really can't imagine getting up in the morning and not going to
see what disasters have happened in the last twenty-four hours that I have to
race in and take care of. But I've always thought of Daniel Halpern's magazine,
Antaeus. I really admire the way he brought it into
being, it had a brilliant run [from 1970 to 1994], and then he stopped it. So Antaeus is immortal. It did a great thing, it did it for
a short time, and then it ended. And it seems to me that that's a great model
for small presses, too. Do it for five years, put twenty books into the world,
and then get out. People get so anxious about establishing a brand name and
then keeping it going and keeping it going.
Any advice for readers who
want to start their own small presses?
It really helps to talk to somebody who's done it. Don't be
shy about calling people up and asking them. I think most small press
publishers—we think we're in a club; it's a big family, and people are really
generous about helping other people, telling them how to do things. So if you
know somebody who's involved in it, don't be shy about asking.
Kevin Larimer is the deputy editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
