The Evolution of Spunc - guest post by Louise Swinn [26.11.2010]

The Small Press Network is how we (now we’re a bit grown-up) refer to what was affectionately coined SPUNC – the small press underground networking community. It originated from “spunk”, meaning “pluck, courage, spirit”. Vim. Chutzpah. Why underground? Because what we do with our small presses often feels subversive. We shuffle paradigms, and we’re in love with all of the books, magazines, ebooks and journals we publish.

It was May 2006 and I was having a drink with Tom Doig, the then editor of Voiceworks, Express Media’s magazine for and by under-25’s, in a little bar called Rue Bebelons. We got around to talking about – wouldn’t it be great if all of us smaller outfits shared a bit of our knowledge: printing contacts, launch venue information. If we kept each other in the loop about upcoming events then we’d stop scheduling them for the same night. We could share information about upcoming grants, festivals, ads, review spaces. We weren’t on the lists that you get on once you’re established, and oftentimes we just didn’t know where to find the information we needed.

By that stage, Sleepers had been going for three years. When we started publishing our Almanacs there was no Wet Ink, Harvest, Is Not, Griffith Review, The Lifted Brow, Cutwater, Kill Your Darlings, Torpedo, or many of the other exciting journals that have come, and sometimes gone, in the meantime. HQ mag, with its excellent short story competition, was in its final throes; Spinach7 was doing its admirable thing. We knew there was a space in that publishing garage but we’d have to move a few things around in order to create it, so like a toddler on an overcrowded bench, we had shuffled our bum around a bit and found a spot to call our own. But it was still hard being heard in that din. Big publishers, with all their know-how, with their staff and their marketing arms, and the sheer numbers of books they produce, they are a loud and authoritative voice, and we were still very much trying to find our own at Sleepers.

So when Tom and I talked about getting together some kind of group, it started to sound like a great idea. A few weeks later, after emailing the small presses we knew, the first Spunc meeting took place. The people who got involved straightaway were Melbourne people we knew or had heard of: Black Pepper, Total Cardboard, Going Down Swinging, Is Not, Page Seventeen, Overland, Cardigan Press, Voiceworks, Sleepers, Cardigan Comics, Ilura Press, Wet Ink, New Leaf Media, Vulgar Press. Meetings were sometimes as frequent as weekly and an enormous number of hours were put in while we tried to work out what we all wanted. We argued until we found common ground, and in these arguments we learned respect for each other.

Most of these people are still involved but SPUNC is now a national organisation. Our initial goals – developed over long evenings, often at Dante’s in Fitzroy, were to network and support each other’s efforts, to improve the small press sector’s engagement with the broader public, to facilitate programs that would contribute to developing the sector, and to represent members’ needs to government and other organisations. We had started off hazy and it was getting clearer what we wanted and needed – but it was never going to be easy trying to work out the disparate needs of such a varied and colourful bunch of people and presses.

It’s more than four years later and SPUNC has not just an office but an office in Australia’s literary hub, the Wheeler Centre, three minutes from Rue Bebelons. What this means is that Spunc members, of whom there are now more than eighty presses, can come in and meet with Spunc staff (two part-timers) and can organise meetings in a central location. Spunc board meetings now have a venue – we don’t have to sit in the corner of the only dive that’s open. We have a board, we have funding. We have a president, who sits on the Book Industry Strategy Group – so we have representation. We have a place to gather all week, and a genuine concern for each other’s books and presses. We have a website, where we post our events and find out about each other’s, and where we can sell our books. We get advertising deals that have been brokered by Spunc and then designed and submitted by Spunc. We have professional development seminars, and Christmas drinks. We aren’t sure what the digital future holds, but it sure is nice to know we have other people to be unsure with.

More than anything else – we have community. We are no longer an incongruent bunch of voices trying to make things work. It’s hard in small publishing – for a multitude of reasons it can be almost too hard – but there’s nothing quite like knowing you are part of something bigger to keep you going. The publishers with Spunc produce some of the best writing and the best literary products that you can find anywhere. When you take into account the way many of these publishers operate – after-hours, without offices, in addition to the day job, around families, outside of funding parameters, unheard of, esoteric, heavily in debt, and with one person at the helm – that’s no small feat. Happy Christmas Spunc, and here’s to many more years!

Louise Swinn is the editorial director of Sleepers, and sits on the board of SPUNC.

This piece was originally posted at Spike: Meanjin blog and has been reproduced with permission.

www.sleeperspublishing.com
www.spunc.com.au

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