This semester I have been taking Small Press Publishing and Editing. It is by far the best class I have yet to take in my college career. Instead of listening to lectures, my class has been operating as a small press to publish two student chapbooks. A chapbook is a small booklet that could be a single story or a collection of writing. They are usually produced in limited quantities with limited budgets and resources. Chapbooks are great for anyone who is looking to self-publish or share underground/experimental writing.
At the beginning of the semester, we created our own submission guidelines and advertised a call for submissions for any students on campus to send us their prose or poetry. In the weeks leading up to the deadline, we created a logo, assigned each person’s individual role, and built a website using Wix. My professor also shared presentations with us on topics like graphic design elements used in designing covers and the history of small presses. We also went over definitions of terms used in the publishing industry and computer software like InDesign that is used to design text layout.
Once we read all of the submissions and selected one prose and one poetry chapbook to publish, our class split into teams to work on copyediting, layout design and cover design. We also published 3 runner-up submissions on our website.
On November 30th, we hosted our chapbook launch party in the Lore Degenstein Art Gallery. Hope Martin and Amy Jarvis, the authors of our two chapbooks, read 3 pieces each. I got to introduce our website and the 3 runner-ups whose chapbooks we published online. We were only given a $30 budget for refreshments but there was plenty of cheese, crackers, and fruit to go around! Approximately 50 people came to our launch, including several professors from the English department.