Home

Frequently Asked Questions

Submissions

ANNOUNCEMENT: WordTech Communications LLC to discontinue poetry contest structure

We have decided, effective July 16, 2004, to discontinue our contest structure and move to a policy of open submissions, without reading fees. All books published under the new policy will be published with a standard 10% royalty contract; we will no longer be offering a $1,000 prize to the contest winner, as there will not be a "winner" per se. We will retain our current structure of imprints and deadlines, so in essence each contest is being converted to an open reading period for that particular imprint. The final contest requiring reading fees will be the Word Press First Book Prize, with a July 15, 2004 deadline.

We are making this change for a number of reasons:

1. First, and most importantly, we are seeing an increasing percentage of our revenue derived from book sales. As a for-profit company, that is where our emphasis should be, and we are now at the point where we can survive on the revenue and profit generated by book sales.
2. Second, we are also seeing a declining amount of manuscripts and contest revenue. For a variety of reasons, fewer individuals seem to be entering our contests, and this in turn is making it more difficult to find good manuscripts to publish. Without a sufficient number of reading fees, it is also increasingly difficult to support the costs associated with the contest apparatus, including prize money and advertising.
3. Third, we are continuing our commitment to become "a new paradigm of poetry"--a genuinely new approach to publishing poetry. A truly open submissions process, in which no fee is charged, is an increasing rarity in contemporary poetry. We are not reducing our publishing commitments one iota--we will continue to bring out approximately 50 poetry titles per year. As such, we are now offering the strongest opportunity for publication in contemporary poetry--and the risk has now been reduced to the cost of stamps and paper.

We look forward to continuing to publish the finest poetry that we can find, and to making a contribution to contemporary American literature.

Please contact us at [email protected] with questions.

Kevin Walzer and Lori Jareo, Editors
WordTech Communications LLC

June 9, 2004

©2004 WordTech Communications, LLC

PO Box 541106, Cincinnati, OH 45254-1106 / [email protected]