Money, money, money
Money makes the world go around, they say. The love of it is the root of all evil, according to the Bible, although George Bernard Shaw was convinced that it was truer to say that “lack of money is the root of all evil”.
We want to affirm, up front, that we at Dithering Chaps are not in this for the money - we are passionate about poetry and believe that it provides so many benefits - increasing our understanding of others, forging connections, allowing the expression of subtle, deep feelings and thoughts in a way that ordinary language cannot. In short, while prose can be words in their best order, our credo is that poetry delivers the best words in the best order.
However, we also have to acknowledge that we live in a commercial world. There are costs involved in our business - for example, apart from the printing costs, we have to pay to use this website’s domain and then find the money for further charges to allow us to update it - before we see any income from sales.
So how do we get enough £s to publish? We put our heads together and came up with a business model which involves a small charge for submitting work to us. Given sufficient submissions, we will be able to fund the publication of our chosen poet from this source. We wanted to be totally transparent about this, because we know there are unscrupulous companies out there who will take the money and run. We won’t. We promise that, when we will choose our favourite poet from the submissions we receive, they will be published without further cost to them.
In order to get some feedback on this approach, our lead editor, Gena, posted to a Facebook group for women writers, editors, agents and publishers. The comments they made were so helpful and varied from, “This is a very common model for small publishers who want to specialise in poetry” to “I wouldn’t pay to submit my work because I can self-publish”.
The self-publishing approach (also described as the vanity press) is one that some people prefer and we are not seeking to criticise anyone who wants to take that route to publication. However, we believe that being chosen to be published, being given constructive advice by a supportive editor and having all the stress of dealing with printers taken away by the publisher gives the poet a more pleasant and satisfying experience.
Coincidentally, in parallel with Gena testing the water for our business model, our most recently published poet, Simon Bowden, posted the following on Facebook:
I want to give a shout out for my publishers, Dithering Chaps. Although I didn’t think their cheery flowering meadow emblem was ideal for luring people into the dark alleyways of my book, Gifts of the Dark, they are a dream team. They cut down an anarchic bundle of 80 poems to a well-structured 30 odd – that second pair of eyes that none of us can do without.
I would urge any of my friends, that have two pennies to rub together, to order my book direct from
rather than approaching me for a cut price copy. We need our indie publishers to carry out their largely unpaid and unselfish work, if new fish are ever to stick their heads above the surface of the crowded pond. And also Dithering is a great creative virtue.
As we said, we aren’t in this for the money. We’re in it for that.