Jennifer Marston's blog

We avoided it as long as we could, but finally it was time to face facts: magazines are all about advertising. As D.B. Scott puts it, magazines are in the business of renting readers to advertisers. While it would be lovely if readers were willing to pay as much as it costs to produce shiny mags showcasing even shinier wit, it just doesn’t work that way. Most magazines derive only a fraction of their revenue from subscriptions and newsstand sales. And while some are lucky enough to have endowments, grants or funding (a topic we’ll learn about later), most depend largely on advertising to fill the gap.

Kasey and I were lucky enough to have a chance to bend the ear of Doug Bennet, publisher of North Island Publishing, on this crucial subject. North Island publishes a number of trade magazines, including the-much-loved-and-now-online-only Masthead, Canada's magazine about magazines.

We only had an hour or so before the coffee shop closed, so we focused on the two big issues affecting advertising: (1) the recession, and (2) the internet. The first has led to a decline in ad sales, as companies slash their advertising budgets to survive the crunch, and the second has impacted subscription and newsstand sales, which decreases readership and narrows the audience that advertisers can reach.

Our final session in the literary stream was on publishing with Christina Palassio, Managing Editor of Coach House Books. Coach House Books is pretty special, not only because it’s one of the few publishing houses in Canada that prints its own books, but also because it’s been responsible for putting some of the best Canadian lit on bookstore shelves. And if you’re one of those people (admit it) who cracks open a book, sniffs it, and runs a finger down the page before deciding whether to buy, then you’ve probably caught yourself saying “Mmmm… Coach House” more than once.

The Coach House offices and printing facilities are in fact housed in two beautiful old coach houses on bpNichol Lane, just behind St. George Street. Although Kasey and I were, as always, steadfastly focused on the business of learning, it would not be an exaggeration to say that we were both taken by the premises. When we climbed the stairs to the second story, we each announced – independently but in near unison – “I want to live here!” Apparently this is not an uncommon response.

On August 26, six Taddle Creek authors were showcased at the Pivot reading series, which happens most Wednesdays at The Press Club. I've been to Pivot readings before, but never in an official capacity, so I was particularly excited about this one. The evening was warm, the audience was rapt, and the readers were mesmerizing. Or maybe that was the lamp behind them, which was apparently ineffective to light the pages they were reading but did create an eerie backlit effect. I suggested that Pivot invest in a headlamp for its authors. Nothing makes a poet look more serious than a good headlamp.

Magazines are not all about words. If they were, they would be pretty dull, both figuratively and literally, since they would probably not be printed on shiny paper. So Kasey and I set off to learn about the art side of the magazine world. Our first art session was with John Montgomery, Taddle Creek art guy and Associate Art Director of Toronto Life. We already knew John from our introductory Taddle Creek bowling night when he was kind enough to buy a round of beer, so this session looked promising from the outset. We were not disappointed.

Our latest program sessions were on fact checking. We had two: one with Patricia Treble, a reporter/researcher at Maclean’s magazine, and one with the editor of Taddle Creek. I learned so much in these sessions that I could not possibly recount it here. Also, I’m afraid I might make mistakes. Mistakes are everywhere.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of bloggery, I will brazenly select a few imprecisely recollected tidbits to share. I know you won't quote me anyway, since I’m not a primary source. Here goes:

• Fact checkers are responsible for checking the accuracy of all proper names and facts. This involves a lot of phone calls and locating of primary sources.

• Fact checking is mainly a magazine thing. Newspapers generally don’t use fact checkers, not only because of tight timelines, but also because they can just print a correction the next day once they’ve received the flood of angry or mocking E-mails.

• It’s not only for non-fiction. Fiction is checked, too, mainly for consistency, historical accuracy, and the spelling of real-world proper nouns. You can read more about this in a brilliant publication entitled The Taddle Creek Guidebook to Fact-Checking Fiction.

The biggest surprise to come out of this session for me was that fact checkers share much in common with lawyers, most notably: (1) a tendency to question everything, (2) expertise in CYA, (3) a talent for obfuscating when the facts can’t quite be pinned down, and (4) the ability to cross-examine constantly, without appearing to do so.

Because Taddle Creek is a literary magazine, it publishes literature. To do this, it must solicit submissions from writers. Last week, the interns had the privilege of reviewing a stack of recent submissions and discussing them with the editors over beer and nachos at Sneaky Dee’s. I learned the following things from this experience:

1. The world is full of brave people.

2. It is possible to write about absolutely anything.

3. Many, many writers are obsessed with their parents.

As part of my campaign of going to things, I volunteered for The Scream Literary Festival this year. I signed up to help with several things, including postering (this was surprisingly fun and provided some focus for my general meandering), the Chapters 11: Bankruptcy Walking Tour (any excuse to dress in costume, even if costume is mourning attire), the book-length reading by Dennis Lee (at which he read all of Civil Elegies for the first time, plus YesNo and Un), and the main stage event in High Park. All of this was good fun.

We continue to work through the Taddle Creek program, with sessions in the main stream on magazine managing with Jared Bland of The Walrus (Kasey and I met with Jared separately, since Kasey already knows everything about The Walrus and her session was therefore really a fake session), and sessions in the literary stream on submissions with the editor and with Tara Quinn of Brick magazine, and on writing with the author and Taddle Creek associate editor Andrew Daley.

My meeting with Jared was at the Walrus offices, and was my first exposure to anything approximating the kind of magazine offices depicted on television. The Walrus offices came complete with a big open room full of desks, people calling back and forth across them, good-natured jibes among co-workers, and a constant stream of interruptions on urgent matters.

Jared and I talked about how he ensures things get done. The answer is that he has systems—various lists and schedules that make good use of abbreviations and colour-coding—and that he tracks many things in his head. I would tell you more, but I wasn’t allowed to keep the schedules we looked at, because they were Top Secret. I enjoyed this session a lot, not only because I like systems, but also because I managed to direct the conversation to myself and get some good advice from Jared, and because Stacey May Fowles brought us some cherries to eat.

Switching careers can be a bit overwhelming. Each industry has its own landscape and its own vocabulary. Names of people and organizations and events are tossed around with ease by the seasoned, while we novices exhaust ourselves trying to keep up. We may appear to be casually engaged in conversation, but much of our energy is focused on memorizing names and acronyms to Google when we get home.

So when I decided to get into publishing, I knew I would have lots of catching up to do. I decided that the best way to do this by going to things.

I started by going to readings, specifically Rower’s Pub, Pivot, and the Art Bar series. Going to readings is easy: all you have to do is buy a beer and sit at the bar. Occasionally you will hear something you really like. It's also a good way to put names to faces, and occasionally to chat with an author whose work you have read and enjoyed. (Note: For the most part, I had not read the work of the authors I saw. I didn’t go up to those authors and talk to them just because they’re authors. That's silly. If you’re thinking of doing that, you should instead go to law school, where inventing a transparent excuse to talk to the instructor after class in encouraged. Also, while it is possible that some authors might like to have their egos stroked, they are also uniquely positioned to detect bullshit, since they do it constantly while editing their own work.)

Although our main job as protégés is to learn, I like to be helpful and am always looking for ways to do so. To date, the only thing I have really helped with has been the Twenty-second Taddle Creek Happening, a.k.a. the summer launch party, which was held at Jet Fuel Coffee Shop on June 12, 2009. I helped in the following ways:

• I employed my advanced X-acto-knife skills to cut out tags for the art show.

• I transported the barbeque that was used to prepare and serve free burgers.

• I sat at the door and handed people magazines or subscription cards in exchange for money. When we ran out of subscription cards, I tore up some brown paper bags, which worked just as well.

• I assisted Nathaniel G. Moore at the barbeque (this would be its whole own topic, so I will abstain), and I got Evan Munday a glass of water.

Despite the challenging nature of this work, I was also able to find the time to enjoy myself. In fact, in a moment of mild euphoria, I may have told the editor that it was the best night of my life. This won me some points until I said the same thing a few weeks later about my birthday.