Nora Robertson

Publishing in the last decade has become a much less vertical cultural space. It’s like the difference between NY, which has tall skyscrapers with penthouse offices at the top, and suburbia, where the hotspots are more spread out and equal. Because of the internet, it’s more possible as an outsider to get attention, to talk with whoever in the world is interested in having the same kinds of conversations. The challenge is to cut through the noise to find the people you want to talk with.  PageTurn’s Future of Publishing performative lecture event last Wednesday aimed to take on how publishing is evolving in this new cultural sprawl, something the talks in part addressed. A small crowd of mostly Portland literary folks drank wine in the tall boxy white space of the Cleaners and watched a lineup of seven-minute powerpoint presentations by Dark Horse Comic’s Aaron Colter, Publishing Studio’s Matthew Stadler, Wordstock director Greg Netzer, and IPRC director Justin Hocking, and others.

I did really like the quick powerpoint format. I thought it gave us a way in as an audience that was fun and let us have a more direct experience of what they were talking about without becoming somehow a business presentation. Stadler for example did some process documentation with photographs of the POD press the studio makes books on one at a time. Slices of images of the gray-green machine, the perfect-bound glue, the manila folders used for covers, and a book discussion over dinner gave me a visceral sense of the kinds of “convivial spaces” Stadler was discussing (see photos above), the importance of the conversations publishing can instigate. Publishing Studio not only sets up live forums for conversations but also is responsive to reader demand because its “jank editions” are POD. The books aren’t fancy-looking, but the authors are part of a group of writers/artists like Whitney curator Lawrence Rinder and photographer Shawn Records, basically combining DIY with the ability of the internet to find people interested in the same conversation.

PageTurn on the Future of Publishing: Matthew Stadler from Nora Robertson on Vimeo.

Talking with Hocking and Netzer at the break, one thing that stood out was that many of the projects being discussed had a DIY or small-scale element. This is the kind of thing that Portland does really well, and the adaptability of that to the internet makes me more optimistic about what kind of opportunities might be available living here. Powell’s buyer/Future Tense publisher/writer Kevin Sampsell pointed out to me in a recent interview for the New Oregon Interview Series that small-town Oregon had very little access to underground culture before the rise in the 90’s of mail-order zines (which was due to another open-source technology, the copier). The difference these days is that that part of the cultural scene has mostly gone online to all those good, small webjournals out there, and they’re easy to find from anywhere. “You can work as a writer mostly through the computer these days,” he told me.

This seems to depend a lot on how well you build a community around your project. Dark Horse Comics is a great example of a publisher that has done just fine nationally while based in Milwaukie, Oregon. In his presentation in the video below, Colter seemed to be saying, very succinctly and with great visuals btw, that you must build an audience, and that audience is going to be hooked by authentic connection to something they care about. Even if you are selling merchandise, the interactivity and community of the site becomes part of the branding. The audience/customer wants to find the conversation they want to be in. The advantage of this for publishing is that it makes it possible to do publishing from anywhere.

PageTurn on the Future of Publishing: Aaron Colter from Nora Robertson on Vimeo.

However, the promise of the internet has always been haunted by the question of how anyone is going to make a living with so much content being given away for free. And like Colter points out, it is necessary to give things away free regularly which you feel you ought to be paid for because that is how you drive traffic to your site. One thing that may change the game in a very similar way to the mp3 in the music industry is the kindle and its cousins. The kindle was the logo of the event but somehow, which the organizer himself pointed out, was never addressed in any of the talks. A lot of these small-scale community projects which are often free or near-free have been done well in Portland in analog, offline versions for a long time, and it results in some pretty unique voices but has not been sustainable for making a middle-class income as an artist for the most part. Or you could say as Anne Adams did in her review of the new IFC/SNL show Portlandia for Portland Monthly, it has been sustainable but not bountiful. It remains to be seen whether the online version can do better.

To see a little more of the publishing landscape in Portland, catch the latest Publication Fair tomorrow the 19th being hosted by Publication Studio. Dozens of Portland publishing projects including Plazm, Tin House, Reading Frenzy, Dill Pickle Club, Cooley Gallery publications, OCAC book arts, the IPRC, Ooligan Press, and others. 11- 8 PM, The Cleaners at the Ace Hotel, SW Stark & 10th, FREE.