Random book titles for cold weather

Tramp in Flames
Windmills in Flames
Great Fires
The Burning Perch
Dad, the Donkey's on Fire
A Furnace
Hot Like Fire
Pale Fire
Fire to Fire

Chair

Martin Ejector seat

Useful.

But look, it's a museum piece. It's bolted to the floor.

perms

Why isn't it simple? Why can't I just write a straight sheaf of addresses off the stack, and bung the same things into each envelope? Indeed, why do I have to write the addresses by hand - surely any competent organisation would have them on the computer?

Um. I do have them on the computer.
But.

Well. There are contributors. They get first crack of the whip. With a light heart, I start sending mags out to the valiant souls who make it happen. I am glad to, and very grateful to them. And to you, with your sparky poems, and to you and your lightsome reviews.

Then there are the contributors who are also subscribers (less than a handful) - and subscribers are our lifeblood - and they get an extra copy, which is a different postal rate. Then there is the contributor who is also a subscriber whose sub is up for renewal, who gets a reminder because I am hardnosed like that. Then there are the contributors who live abroad, and you have to queue up to get it weighed, and does the scrawled comps slip mean that it no longer counts as 'printed matter'?

And indeed, there are the contributors who are subscribers whose subs lapsed with the last issue, but whom (for obvious reasons) I don't want to let go, so I have a special letter to send to them.

And the impecunious contributors who are also subscribers who prefer not to have a second copy of the mag but to roll over their sub to the next issue. I don't like to think about what this tells me about how they value this particular issue.

And then there are the subscribers, the vast majority of course, who fit into none of those categories. Including those whose subs are due, and those whose subs have lapsed. And those in each category who live abroad.

There are 16 permutations...

And then there are the inserts. Do I send them willy nilly to everyone, including the subscriber who asked me to include them, and who probably has inserts up the ying-yang? And to those abroad? (Well, not if it tips it into a different price band.) Do I send Soundblast Performance Poetry flyers to Mrs Trellis of North Wales?

Is it even worth my time wondering about such things?

E J Thribb writes

So hello then 2008.
What will you bring? I can hardly wait
As Greenland doffs its ice-cap to the sea.

the cost of selling

I go to one of the bookshops with a rather late batch of the magazine and a delivery note. It is late, and I am apologetic, so instead of just leaving the package at the information desk, I go in search of D, who is responsible for the poetry section. He's a poet himself, and we have published poems of his occasionally. We gossip about what's about, what people are buying. Cat Haiku, obviously. It's an opportunity for me to riffle through what he has new in stock ... There are magazines I haven't seen for a long time, such as The Journal (formerly ~ of Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry). He starts telling me about new books in; we get to talking about the Costa list, the TS Eliot list, which he regards as "predictable". We agree that John Burnside might have been included. He shows me Moya Cannon, Kenji Miyazawa. I buy half a dozen magazines I don't actually subscribe to (though I should) and when my purchases are totted up, they are over £50. D isn't even on commission.

China blue

Collected the magazines from the printers today. The blue I'd hoped to be indigo is paler and bluer, more like a china blue. Not what I intended, but it looks all right. It's very hard to guess how it's going to turn out from the swatch. The printers can't do a sample, because it means inking up specially and the cost would be silly.

Accept what you can't change, eh?

The poems still please me, and that's the most important thing.