Respecting Renegades: Madras Press and the Venerable Novella

Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel, the novella does not get much love from publishers, no matter the merit of the work. Sumanth Prabhaker is helping to change that with the launch of Madras Press, a non-profit publisher of individually bound short stories and novellas. Madras Press’s mix of innovation and altruism (proceeds go to charities of the writers’ choice) set it apart from other small presses. Prabhaker, who believes these “clumsy, ill-fitting stories [are] made perfect when read in the simplest possible way,” talked with me about his distribution methods, the first series (available for pre-order here, featuring work from Aimee Bender), and his mission to emphasize story over page count and quality over sales figures.

What was the impetus for Madras Press?  How long has it been in the works?

It hasn’t been in the works for very long at all, actually. I think I first thought about it in terms of a company of my own toward the end of May.  I’ve tried to move things along as quickly as possible — our first books will begin to circulate around the beginning of December, if not sooner, and the second set of books is already coming together. But the things we’re trying to accomplish with this project have been around for a little longer, mostly in the form of me complaining — about how assumed it is that books have to be available for sale at Amazon.com and Borders and Barnes & Noble, that they have to have blurbs, that they have to be a certain size and shape. These are all perfectly fine things when done deliberately in aid of the story, but it’s frustrating when they become the standard that the story has to comply with. I guess that’s a feeling I’ve had for a while.

Probably the immediate motivating factor was this series of novellas I’ve been working on for the past couple of years — I have two done so far, and two more to go. And often, as I’ve been working on them, I’ve had to resist the urge to edit them down to short story length, or to inflate them to novel length; again, not because there’s anything wrong at all with those forms, but just because they weren’t right for these stories. And it seemed a little silly to me that the prospect of publishing work between, say, thirty and two hundred pages is so perfectly hopeless; that the standards of what merits publication are so concerned with something like page count, rather than the quality of the writing, when there’s really no reason for it. It’s not like we don’t have the technology to print and sell an eighty-page booklet.

John Madera’s recent novella project brought hundreds of writers together to talk about these “little monsters.”   What is it about the novella that moves you?  What are some of your favorites?

Madera’s project has some really smart people saying really smart things about the novella as a form, the physical effect it has on readers, etc., and I’d feel bad joining their conversation because I don’t have very much to add. My interest in it has more to do with expanding the ways that readers and writers think of books, and of the publishing industry’s faculties, which in recent years have been limited by arbitrary theories about what sells and what doesn’t.

There are too many favorites to list here. Ben Marcus wrote a long story called The Father Costume, and that’s one of my favorite books. A lot of Calvino’s and Barthelme’s books could be called novellas. The Crying of Lot 49. Yoko Ogawa’s The Diving Pool, which is three novellas. There’s a great story by David Foster Wallace called “The Soul Is not a Smithy”, that may not count as a novella but it’s pretty long. Kelly Link has some wonderful ones, too.

Beyond the formal page count, I think what’s important about these stories is that they function better when read on their own, and not necessarily as a part of something. It’s unimaginable to me that you’d ever have to flip through an anthology or magazine to read “Revelation” or “The Dead”.

You have decided to skip commercial distribution, working instead with independent booksellers directly.  What have been some of the challenges associated with this tactic?

We knew that working with a place like Small Press Distribution or Consortium would bring in a lot of sales, and we may end up asking to work with them at some point, but there didn’t seem to be enough reason for us to not try it on our own, at least for now. So while the decision has made us work a little harder, it hasn’t provided challenges, in that sense. When there are too many orders for me to handle mailing them out on my lunch break, or too many books for my aunt and uncle to store in their attic, that will be a challenge.

And there are a lot of advantages to distributing the books on our own. This helps us keep the sticker price low and maximizes the amount of the donation. We’ve hidden the barcode on the inside back covers, which we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. And we’re working with some really amazing independent bookstores, who are all very motivated to keep our tiny titles from getting lost on the shelves. I really like doing business this way. I think it’s sort of weird to expect every bookstore in the world to be an appropriate venue for a book, or to expect to find every book you want in one place.

Who are some of the writers featured in the first series?

Our first series includes four titles:

The Third Elevator, a novella by Aimee Bender, author of the story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures and the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own. The Third Elevator is a fairy tale about a swan and a bluebird and the village they live in and the objects in their lives that move up and down and their attempts to sustain a family.

Bobcat, a short story by Rebecca Lee, author of the novel The City Is a Rising Tide. This one is about a dinner party, and the things its hosts and guests bring to it, both food-related and not. It’s our shortest title, but it’s many-layered — there are books within the story, people pregnant with other people, a terrine and a trifle, all carried by prose that’s precise and lyrical and often mysterious.

Sweet Tomb, a story collection by Trinie Dalton, author of the story collection Wide Eyed (part of Akashic’s Little House on the Bowery Series) and the novella A Unicorn Is Born, co-editor of an art book Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is that McSweeney’s published a few years ago, and editor of an anthology called MYTHTYM, which she wrote a lot of, too. Sweet Tomb is the story of a candy-addicted witch named Candy, who leaves the safety of her childhood gingerbread house in the forest in search of the excitement of a more urban environment. Her adventures lead her to eat meat for the first time, open a bank account, develop a crush on Death, and possibly comes to terms with her inherited lifestyle.

A Mere Pittance, a novella by me. This story is a telephone conversation between two people — a young woman stranded in India after enduring a kind of metaphysical experience, trapped beneath a piece of furniture in a strange hotel room, and her older boss and lover, at home in the US.

Is it a priority for Madras Press to publish emerging writers, or is the focus more on finding homes for established writers’ non trade-book length projects?

Our concern is for the stories. It’s a privilege to work with the authors I’m working with, and there are a lot of other writers whom I’d love to work with, but I’m also really excited to see what submissions come in through the mail. And we can’t really afford to be choosy, as our entire catalog is reliant on the generosity of our authors, who have all agreed to contribute their work for no profit.

One Story, the literary journal with a similar spirit, says their mission is to  “save the short story by publishing in a friendly format that allows readers to experience each story as a stand-alone work of art and a simple form of entertainment.” What is the mission of Madras Press?

There are a lot of smaller things on our agenda: publishing stories that may have been overlooked by other companies; printing them in a way that removes as many distractions as possible and emphasizes the story over the book’s commercial value; working with independent bookstores; and raising funds for charities. All of these came about as separate decisions as we learned more about what was required to achieve an end product worth selling, and so they’ve made kind of a mess of whatever mission we may have started out with. We create books that are maybe a little smaller and a little less about money than most other books. I don’t know if every story ought to be read in this fashion, but it’s definitely nice to have the option.

Aimee Bender reads on Saturday November 14th at Brookline Booksmith to benefit InsideOUT Writers.