The Chapbook Then and Now
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The term chapbook originally referred to small publications of only a few pages that contained songs, poems, political treatises, folk stories, religious tracts, and all manner of short texts. The need for a cheap way to publish and distribute arose because actual books were so expensive to print, produce, and buy, that most people could not afford books. The chapbooks of the 16th and 17th century were cheap to produce, cheap to buy, and could be produced quickly with a minimum of equipment. One other aspect of the early chapbooks is that sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, the content being printed was borrowed without permission. Sometimes the author did not even get the courtesy of having his name attached to the writing. It gets a lot cheaper to publish something if you can avoid having to pay the writer for their work.
The early chapbooks were marketed like this: printers sold their chapbooks to itinerant peddlers known at that time as " chapmen. " [You can see where the name came from now, can’t you.] The chapmen then went around selling these short books to consumers. In general, chapbooks were inexpensive publications designed for the poorer literate classes. Most chapbooks were printed on larger pages that could be cut and folded and collated to create little booklets, of 8, or 16, or 24 pages. There were other low cost printed material available to the literate poor: the Broadside was a text printed on one side of a ledger size sheet of paper. The slip-poems were poems printed on long strips of paper cut from a larger sheet. Actually, the slip-poems were printed several times on a ledger sheet of paper, the paper was cut, and with the pressing of a single page the printer would have several copies to sell.
Today we find ourselves in a similar situation. The cost of publishing a book is so great, and there are so many writers seeking publication that the chances of anyone getting a book published falls somewhere between fairly slim and no way in hell . Add to this the fact that the economy is bad, books are expensive, and fewer and fewer people are avid readers, and you get the picture. The conditions of the writing/publishing world today are such that the need for an expanded use of the chapbook is greater than ever.
With desktop publishing software and home printers, plus the low cost of dry paper [Xerox like] copies makes it very easy for poets and short story writers to produce chapbooks of their work. For $25 you can make a dozen or two chapbooks, you can then go to a coffee shop poetry reading , and have copies of your chapbook to sell after reading your work. It is very easy for you to make chapbook copies and frequently go to readings and you'll be able to sell the chapbooks for enough to break even on the cost of printing. Buy keeping the price of the chapbooks low you are also getting your work and your name out there . Sometimes major publishing houses will become aware of your work because a chapbook falls into the right hands .
Recently I went on line and found a signed copy of a chapbooks by Ted Kooser selling for $96. The chapbook is becoming an art form unto itself. I know of one poet and artist who makes art books of her poetry and each copy sells for $40 to $60 each. If you write, especially if you write poems, short stories or short essays, this is something you should consider using to promulgate your work. You will find that if you have chapbooks at your public readings there will be a demand for the chapbooks.
Article submitted Saturday, May 23, 2009 & read 288 times.
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