Creative industries in Washtenaw County add hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy. In the weeks and months to come, host Deb Polich, the President and CEO of Creative Washtenaw, explores the myriad of contributors that make up the creative sector in Washtenaw County.
ABOUT MICHELLE DOTTER:
Michelle Dotter is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Dzanc Books, a nonprofit press devoted to championing innovative and brilliant literary fiction. Since starting her career with noted San Francisco publishing house MacAdam/Cage, she has worked with New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award honorees, Shirley Jackson and Lambda Literary Award winners, and some damn fine other people, too. She lives in Colorado with her wife.
RESOURCES:
Interview with an Indie Press: Dzanc Books
TRANSCRIPTION:
Deb Polich: This is 89 one WEMU's creative:impact. I'm Deb Polich, president and CEO of Creative Washtenaw and your host. Are you ready to be introduced to another creative Washtenaw County business that helps make this--our community--one of the most vibrant in Michigan? Bookmaking--that is producing books, not making bets--has been an important business in Washtenaw County since the turn of the last century. Edward Brothers and Cushing Malloy and others come to mind. Book publishing, typically a for profit venture, has always been connected. In 2006 two Ann Arborites, Steve Gillis and Dan Wickett, started a nonprofit publishing company, Dzanc Books, to advance creative writing and promote literary readership. Michelle Dotter is the publisher and editor of Dzanc Books. Michelle, welcome to the show!
Michelle Dotter: Deb, thanks so much for having me!
Deb Polich: So, hey, would you do me the favor of telling me and of the listeners of creative:impact kind of the elevator story about Dzanc Books.
Michelle Dotter: Absolutely. It's a little before my time. I was actually still in college at that point. But the short version is that two people who are passionate about literature, Dan Wickett and Steve Gillis, got together and decided to put a lot of that time, money, and love into bringing out some fantastic books and enriching the Ann Arbor community. And I really can't overstate that we would not be able to exist without that love and without Steve's, in particular, continued support.
Deb Polich: And you yourself. Your career started at Macadam Cage in San Francisco, and you've worked with New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners and National Book Award winners. The literary elite might ask why a publishing house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, considered to be, by many, a flyover state.
Michelle Dotter: Well, you know, I took this job for two reasons: one, because a good friend worked here, and. Two, because I was broke. And I needed to pay the rent.
Deb Polich: That's always a good reason.
Michelle Dotter: And it took me a while to really understand what I had stumbled on, which was a nonprofit press that is devoted to putting out brilliant works of literature because they're brilliant and not necessarily because they're commercial. And it's a rare thing in this industry. And to be a part of it has been the honor of a lifetime.
Deb Polich: And, you know, I had a chance to look through the list of Dzanc authors. It's long. It's impressive. But I wondered. Is there a profile of authors or a genre of books that best fits the publisher?
Michelle Dotter: That is such a great question because we do a wide variety of things: a lot of novels, a lot of short story collections. We're just getting back into doing some poetry, and we do a little nonfiction here and there. And our books really run the gamut. Some of them are just very well-written books. Some of them are more like a newspaper that somebody cut apart with a rusty pair of scissors and then glued to a magnetic poetry set. And, somehow, they make perfect sense. And they read brilliantly. So, it wanders all over the field. But to me, I think what unites the list is these are books that don't want to be movies.
Deb Polich: Okay. That's interesting.
Michelle Dotter: You know, one of our authors said that once, and I loved it because it speaks to me of how vital language is to these books. It's not just a medium for conveying the story. It's a part of what we're here to do and dig into. And I just love that experience.
Deb Polich: And how do authors find you or really how is a manuscript shopped around? And then, how do you select it for publishing? What's that business like?
Michelle Dotter: Great question. Yeah, we're one of the presses that still takes unsolicited, unagented manuscripts, which is so important to me. Agencies can be great for helping authors get their careers off the ground, but sometimes they have to be kind of limited to focusing on commercial manuscripts. So, some of my favorite books that are published are from people who could not get an agent, and I just take that as a badge of honor, you know? So, we're publishing those folks who might be overlooked otherwise. We run contests, and we take general submissions. And our contests are open now if anybody's at that stage where they're looking for a publisher.
Deb Polich: That's awesome. And that information will be up on our up on our website. 89 one WEMU's creative:impact continues with Michelle Dotter, publisher and editor-in-chief of Dzanc Books in Ann Arbor. So, what's the benefit of just being a nonprofit versus a for-profit?
Michelle Dotter: Honestly, it's critical to everything that we're able to do. Because we're a nonprofit, most of our support comes from grants, from donations, and from some of our long-time donors. And it means that we can take a chance on books that aren't necessarily going to pay out. And I think that is so vital to what independent presses and nonprofit presses can do and what they contribute to the literary community--bringing out these books that are new or different, but do something no one's ever seen before, to break the form of a novel into brand new ways, and so many incredible authors have come out of that process. So, it's the heart and soul of everything.
Deb Polich: You know, I had Alison Watson from the Michigan Arts and Culture Council--MACC--on the show recently. And, you know, that's a funding agency for organizations like yours and mine. And we talked about the impact of COVID on our state's arts and creative industry. First of all, what was it like for your field and being here in Michigan?
Michelle Dotter: It was such a weird time. For presses, a lot of us, book sales go up. Dzanc did as well. But the cost of producing books went up by so much. It really just wiped out any increase in profits for us. But production went up by almost 70%, and that really hasn't come down. It's money that comes out of doing events and helping our authors spread the word about their books. And that's what really hurts about that kind of increase.
Deb Polich: Yeah. And you have to get the word out, so that impacts the red. You know, Dzanc is one of the grantees to be awarded a MACC Arts Recovery grant. Those were just announced in February. And congratulations on receiving $31,000-plus for recovery! Do you know yet how you're going to use those funds or how it's going to help you out?
Michelle Dotter: One thing that I'm hoping we're going to be able to do is put a good amount of it into publicity for some of our upcoming books. We have amazing books coming out, but kind of, as you alluded to, if nobody knows about them, they don't get read. So, I'm hoping that we'll be able to support our authors in terms of publicity better than we have been in the last couple years. And then, beyond that, a lot of it will probably go into paying the amazing artists and authors who work on these books. And that's really our passion. We like to put whatever money we get in our pocket, turn it around, and give it back to graphic designers and photographers, tattoo artists, some of the amazing people who've worked on our covers, and then to the authors themselves.
Deb Polich: So, you know, publishing in the world of books and how we consume books have changed greatly since those companies like Edward Brothers were established here a century or so ago. How do you see the publishing world and the reading world going forward?
Michelle Dotter: It's a very strange time for publishing.
Deb Polich: Okay.
Michelle Dotter: Five years ago, I thought I knew where we were going. We've kind of taken a left turn. A lot of the biggest presses are kind of combining or trying to combine, like Penguin, Random House and Simon and Schuster. And a lot of times when that happens, what you see is prices cutting editorial staff and then continuing to publish more and more commercial books. And it leads to a whole lot of great books being ignored by the biggest presses. And I'm hoping what that means is an opportunity for readers who are interested in books that are perhaps more rigorous or more unusual to find all the great small, independent presses out here. They're doing cool things, and they expand the ways that they read.
Deb Polich: So, I have to ask this question. Do you have that novel--that book in your desk drawer--that someday you're going to publish?
Michelle Dotter: That's a great question. I was a creative writing major. It's really hard to write when you also publish, because you're sort of in editor mode all the time. I'm very hard on myself when I write. You know, I read brilliant books all day, and then I try to sit down and write. And I think, "Are you really going to start a book that way? That's not the way the great American novel begins." So, at this point, I mostly write just for fun, stories that I share with my wife, and take most of my publishing pleasure from just working with her. She's actually an author as well.
Deb Polich: So, what suggestions would you give to authors, whether here in Washtenaw County, the Ann Arbor area and others if they are thinking about that book they have in their desk or in their mind that they want to put together?
Michelle Dotter: I would say go for it. First of all, I mean, everything that we get to do, all of this beautiful effort, everything that we create begins with that impulse, right, with someone else's brilliance, with this story that someone else wants to share. I would want to tell aspiring writers that it is a very difficult time to get published. So, if you're getting a lot of no's right now, it's not you. It's the industry. It is just in pure upheaval. So, take a little heart.
Deb Polich: But does self-publishing help in those ways?
Michelle Dotter: It can. Self-publishing is pretty flooded as a field.
Deb Polich: Okay.
Michelle Dotter: At this point, it's difficult to break out, so it can, depending on the book. But it's a very different process. I think the most important piece is just write the story that you yourself are passionate about, because you're going to be with it a long time. Make sure you love it enough to go through all the ups and downs.
Deb Polich: Right. Okay. Well, thank you so much for giving us an insight. And we'll have information on our website how people can get in touch with Dzanc Books here in the Ann Arbor area. And thanks so much for being on the show!
Michelle Dotter: Thanks so much for having me!
Deb Polich: Michelle Dotter, publisher and editor in chief of Dzanc Books in Ann Arbor, has been my guest. Find out more about her and Dzanc Books at wemu.org. You've been listening to creative:impact. I'm Deb Polich, president and CEO of Creative Washtenaw and your host. Mat Hopson is our producer. Please join us every Tuesday to meet the people who make Washtenaw creative. This is 89 one WEMU FM Ypsilanti. Public radio from Eastern Michigan University.
If you'd like to a guest on creative:impact, email Deb Polich at deb.polich@creativewashtenaw.org.
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