Photo by Jeff Janowski / UNCW
Emily Louise Smith
excerpted from The Overnight Success of Lookout Books
Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century, Milkweed
Among my favorite things about working for a boutique literary imprint and magazine is the opportunity to be involved in every facet of the publishing process—and my students are in turn exposed to the full spectrum; they grasp how the advance amount is directly related to print run and foreign sales potential, for example, and understand the layering of publicity, audience reach, and grant support. A day hasn’t passed in which a Lookout title didn’t serve as a reference in my classroom. Over the course of an internship with the press, I hope to reveal the unlikely but beautiful marriage of art and commerce that makes publishing so distinct. Our projects aren’t just simulations. Everything we produce on behalf of the magazine and imprint has to be of the highest quality, meticulously edited and designed. Lookout’s books and promotional materials have to compete in the marketplace with those produced by professionals at houses with far greater resources.
Having worked exceedingly hard over the years to help UNCW’s Publishing Laboratory and its imprints achieve success, I expect that same level of commitment from everyone who works for us. I want to inspire students to carry into the world beyond our hallways their appreciation for intelligent editing and imaginative design, an unflagging belief that books enlarge our sympathies. To that end, I focus on shared discovery and grant them enough autonomy to ignite their sense of leadership and responsibility, allowing them to make mistakes—though, of course, I’m always guiding their steps. From the earliest days of the Publishing Laboratory, students helped shepherd the beautiful regional books we brought out, but since the establishment of Lookout, I’ve watched their level of investment and proficiencies increase exponentially. By acknowledging their talents and passions, I hope that my students learn to recognize in themselves the power they have to shape literature.
I want to inspire students to carry into the world beyond our hallways their appreciation for intelligent editing and imaginative design, an unflagging belief that books enlarge our sympathies.
Whether they go on to publishing careers or not, their apprenticeship will serve them well. After all, by teaching them to craft stories around our titles, we’re empowering them to pitch their own ideas, to compel investors and clients, and thus succeed in any field. Those who eventually publish their own writing will be better informed and more engaged authors, respectful of the resources publishers invest in their books. I counsel the aspiring publishers in my classes to find a niche that isn’t being filled and claim it. If they don’t like the books available to them, they can employ the skills they’ve learned to publish the manuscripts and champion the authors they believe in, eventually even to start their own presses. Poets House founder Stanley Kunitz said on many occasions that when he did not find the community he needed, he felt compelled to make it. It’s what the best houses do, I think, and what I pledged in co-founding Lookout: to create a haven for books that matter, and to build meaningful conversation around them.
The initiatives my students have breathed life into, and the ones still to come, are the Pub Lab’s legacy as much as Lookout, Ecotone, and the authors we’ve launched. They serve as proof that our teaching-press model fosters the innovation that will sustain independent publishing. One Pub Lab alumnus, the intrepid Sumanth Prabhaker, established Madras, through which he publishes novellas in a beautiful square format and distributes the proceeds to nonprofit organizations chosen by Madras’ authors. Corinne Manning founded the James Franco Review, an online magazine that garnered national notice with its first issue for encouraging editors to read submissions blindly and to “allow room for what isn’t supposed to happen, characters you don’t always get to see” in an effort to increase the visibility of underrepresented artists and narratives. Meg Reid, now the director of Hub City Press in South Carolina, led an anti-censorship campaign to bring attention to the state legislature’s censure of two university common-read selections with LGBTQ themes—one of which, Out Loud, Hub City published. (Hundreds of writers and booksellers took to social media in the spring of 2014 wearing neon, I’M SPEAKING OUT! T-shirts that the press created.) Jamie Mortara publishes poems submitted by voicemail, and Anna Sutton co-founded The Porch, a Nashville-based community organization that connects writers through classes and events.
As proud as I am of the foundational coursework we’ve implemented at UNCW, I know that my best teaching happens by apprenticeship, when I model passion and creativity in my work as a publisher. Even before my students can fully appreciate the considerations and conversations that lead to acquisitions and rewarding editorial relationships, much less the financial risk and reward, I let them in on my research and decision making—when we’re successful and when we lose a manuscript to another house, when a clever publicity campaign results in widespread media attention and when, despite our best efforts, a deserving book doesn’t reach the audience it deserves. Through the choices we make at Lookout, they learn to be resourceful and imaginative, to problem-solve.
My best teaching happens by apprenticeship, when I model passion and creativity in my work as a publisher. Even before my students can fully appreciate the considerations and conversations that lead to acquisitions and rewarding editorial relationships, much less the financial risk and reward, I let them in on my research and decision making. . . . Through the choices we make at Lookout, they learn to be resourceful and imaginative, to problem-solve.
Every year, our students join us at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference to help promote our authors and staff our book-fair table. They witness the excitement and exhaustion that accompany the digital uploads of grant proposals and issues of Ecotone. They arrive eager to wield red pens and leave our program with an appreciation for penciled queries, knowing that the best solution is almost always the one the author arrives at herself. They see us deep in InDesign files, setting one letter next to another so the words will seem to lift off the page, honoring the white space that carries the silence around poems. They hear us go to bat, sometimes vociferously, for writers we love, and I hope they lean in closest when I sing about books from other presses with all the charm and fervor I would one of my own.
Perhaps it’s fitting that we came of age in a defunct science lab. Our students will have to solve the industry’s next challenges, to translate the power of the book digitally and satisfy the proclivities of readers who increasingly engage through handheld devices. The tumult makes it an extraordinarily exciting time to enter the profession. Like the late Stanley Colbert, who founded the Pub Lab to demystify the publishing process and challenge the old paradigm, our students will further innovate to close the gaps between author, publisher, and reader. Though I wasn’t around for that first year when the Lab consisted of two salvaged computers in the custodian’s storeroom, I know very well the audacity it takes to see a publishing house in a closet, and the resilience required to carve out a place for it in the larger literary conversation. It’s what—more than anything—I hope to pass along to my students.
Excerpted from “The Overnight Success of Lookout Books,” published in Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century (Milkweed Editions, 2015). © Emily Louise Smith All rights reserved.