The Perils

Perils of Feminist Publishing

By Karen Rosenberg

A lot of what women write is not getting read. That's the sad story of the feminist magazine in America and its companion, the feminist book publisher.

This can't be explained away with the dismissal "there's nothing worth reading”. Adrienne Rich, Marge Piercy, Robin Morgan, Olga Broumas, and Susan Griffin appear in the pages of Chrysalis, for instance, but it has only 13,000 subscribers (including libraries) and sells about 2,500 copies in retail outlets. Calyx, Heresies, Moving Out, Country Women and Conditions feature interesting. new and established writers but reach a limited audience. Some say the little magazine is read mostly by its contributors. Hyperbole, but with some truth in it.

Lack of exposure, rather than poor quality, may be the main barrier to a larger readership. It isn't easy to compete with the conglomerates, with their much larger powers of advertising and distribution. Warner Brothers owns Ms. Magazine along with Independent News Company (a distributor) and Warner Books (for mass paperbacks). Women's Day is a subsidiary of CBS, which also has Praeger, Holt, Reinhart & Winston and Popular Library. Three hundred companies have either merged or been swallowed up in the last 20 years, according to The Passionate Perils of Publishing by Celeste West and Valerie Wheat.

But the feminist publishers go on. The early stage of mimeographed position papers and newsletters is almost history. Cheap offset technology revolutionized the business. June Arnold noted in Quest in the summer of 1976 that over 150 presses and journals exist in the feminist community.

Why all this publishing activity? Largely because of dissatisfaction with traditional commercial houses. The 1977 report published by the Women in Publishing group at the organization "9 to 5" demonstrated that women are still often paid less than their male colleagues of comparable age and experience. There may be problems in the small presses owned and operated by women, but at least not the same old problems.

Small presses take many books that trade publishers reject or wouldn't consider. But some authors come to the feminist press with manuscripts they could publish elsewhere. They may.come out of idcological solidarity, and they may be looking for a different kind of treatment. A large press generally prints 2,500 copies of a first novel. If the book doesn't make it big very quickly, the bookstores return it and it gets remaindered or even shredded. A hardback generally sits no more than six months on the retail shelf, a mass 'paperback, twelve days. The women's presses, on the other hand, tend to keep works in print until they attract readers.

If a book put out by a small press does very well, it may be reissued by a larger house. So one of the functions which the independents play is testing out the market. Famous examples include the Whole Earth Catalog and the Foxfire series, which were taken over by major publishers after they had proven popular. Others who made it into the big time are the Boston Women's Health Collective, Paula Morgan, Rod McKuen and Anais Nin. Like other small publishers, the feminist presses conduct this market research for their larger competitors for free.

Not surprisingly, many feminist enterprises are displeased with their position vis-a-vis the large commercial houses. Some have suffered severely from it. Diana Press, when it suspended publication this year after seven years in operation, explained that it couldn't compete with big New York publishers who are able to offer better advances, distribution and promotion than a small operation. Women in Distribution, which also announced its folding in . 1979, observed that many bookstores, even those owned by feminists, turn to trade publishers for their

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stock. That leaves less shelf space for small press books.

With the arrival of "women's sections" in many bookstores, the feminist shops face financial problems. When the commercial publishers and the average bookstore feel that the "women's lib fad" has died down, they can easily reduce, or even suspend, the sale of feminist works. At a meeting at Radcliffe last spring, an editor of an academic press and another from a major trade house agreed that the women's studies boom is over. One woman from the audience pointed out that some of the first dissertations in women's studies are only now being finished. Will they appear in print?

Of course, small feminist presses, which have been damaged by the present competition with large publishers, might revive if the big fish leave the field. But, before that could happen, valuable experience and capital may be lost.

Some relief might come from funds that could bolster up and stimulate the independents. But such money isn't easy to come by. Media Report to Women of May 1, 1978 commented that the Small Business Administration will not give financial assistance to enterprises involved in the "dissemination" or "propagation" of "ideas and values". This means that the feminist presses are virtually excluded from the Women-in-Business Ownership campaign of the Small Business Administration.

Grants from the nonprofit Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts have been received by various feminist journals. University facilities offset costs for some. But the

small presses and journals have been hard hit by the spiralling price of paper in the last few years. Many of the magazines in the women's movement run on volunteer labor. Some have no centralized distribution system, so that individual orders are filled by hand, at considerable cost.

Feminist presses and journals may be helped by the appearance of some guides for the uninitiated. Motheroot is a new periodical that reviews small press feminist publications. Chrysalis sometimes includes a Feminist Publishing Catalog in its issues. Guide to Women's Publishing, by Polly Joan and Andrea Chesman, is mostly for the producer (the writer and the artist who seek outlets), as is Lynne D. Shapiro's Write On, Woman! The 1979 Index/Directory of Women's Media put out by the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press is a handy reference tool. Perhaps the most readable all-around guide to the state of business is The Passionate Perils of Publishing by Celeste West and Valerie Wheat.

A Guide to Women's Publishing is available from Dustbooks in Paradise, CA for $4.95. Write On, Woman! is available from 345 W. 87th Street, NYC for $4.50. The Passionate Perils of Publishing is published by Booklegger Press in San Francisco for $5.00 and the 1979 Index/Directory of Women's Media is available at Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press, Washington, D.C.

Karen Rosenberg is a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.

-In These Times Dec. 19, 1979-Jan. 8, 1980

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Anonymous Was a Woman

By Pat O'Malley

Anonymous Was A Woman, by Mirra Bank. New York: St. Martin's Press, 128 pp. $9.95. Traditional American folk art is largely the product of anonymous women. First done as a film for PBS television, then as a book, Anonymous Was A Woman, written by Mirra Bank, gives us a deeper understanding of the lives of these unknown artists. Bank achieves this by weaving together richly colored reproductions of samplers, painting, quilts, and needle pictures by 18th and 19th Century women with accompanying journals and diaries.

The quilt, the most anonymous of women's art, was rarely dated or signed. Quilts relate the story of women's lives from beginning to end and recount their celebrations in bits of colored cloth.

Women were considered very poorly educated if

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they could not exhibit a sampler. By age six, every young girl was introduced to her needle, which would become her constant companion throughout her entire life. Although these young women were taught the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, they were told they need not exert themselvs on complicated mathematical problems: "If we could count our beaux and our skeins of yarn, it was sufficient" (Sarah Anna Emery, 1879).

Although they never considered themselves artists or their pieces of work art, these anonymous women have left behind a rich legacy. Though their lives were very limited, they have managed to survive through art. Bank quotes Aunt Jane of Kentucky (c. · 1900) who says, “I reckon everybody wants to leave somethin' behind that'll last after they're dead and gone. It don't look like it's worth while to live unless you can do that".

January, 1980/What She Wants/Page 9