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Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.
A: Literature that is alive.
Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?
A: Ashville Poetry Review comes to mind first, but I also admire what Richard Peabody has done for over thirty years with Gargoyle/Paycock Press.
Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?
A: Fiction-wise, I'm a big fan of Kathie Giorgio. She challenges herself an the reader to tell a story in a unique way. Being a poet, I have a lot of poets whose work I admire--even if I don't get to publish them. Adrain C. Louis has been a favorite for a long time. I've had the privelege to publish Jim Ferris, Stacey Waite, Randall Horton in my magazine and books and would number them among some of my favorite poets. I think the thing they have in common is their willingness to take a risk with the work; to take on subject matter that others don't in creative ways.
Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?
A: We base our selection on the quality of the work, not who wrote it, so you are likely to see a "new" authors side-by-side with well-established atuhors.
Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?
A: Buy and read a copy of something we've published.
Q: Describe the ideal submission.
A: "Ideally" a person submitting work here is as respectful of us as they expect us to be of them and reads our guidelines prior to sending anything.
Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?
A: Some people simply email a load of poems without ever reading our guidelines.
Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?
A: I like to know where they are from. I don't care about the "scorecard" or who else they've been dancing with. I only care about the quality of the work. If we like the work, we may ask about the rest.
Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?
A: I, personally, only read poetry and I generally will read at least the first page of poetry. If I don't like the style at all, I may not go any further, but usually I try to read the entire submission. I instruct those who read fiction to read the first 500-1000 words. If it doesn't grab them by then...
Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?
A: If my fiction editor approves it and the author agrees to our "Publishing Agreement" (which is basically a CYA document to make sure the author did not do anything in the submission process to violate copyright laws), we're good to go at that point.
Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?
A: We're unique here. We own a bindery and have produced books for hundreds of other publishers. When I'm not overseeing customer and author communications or answering surveys, I'm printing books, designing books and/or covers, binding books, shipping orders that arrived overnight, updating supplies, paying bills, billing customers. Every so often I get to read during the week, but I usually set weekend mornings aside for reading and selecting work.
Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?
A: Obviously, if you want to remain alive in the eyes of both readers and writers you must embrace the technology of the day. Some of what you mention doesn't apply to us since we are our own production house, but we utilize social networking and electronic submissions to the extent we see fit. Writers don't always see the other side of the equation. Sure, email submissions are easy for them. We expanded doing that for our fiction submissions just last year and our submissions quadrupled. But we already receive 300+ poetry submissions by USPS every month. If I open that up to email submissions, I would have NO time to do all the things listed in question #11 and what good is getting read/accepted if the publisher has no time to publish it?