Dreaming of New Things…Presses, Bookstores, and a next book

I’ll admit, with all the health challenges in the last few years, it hasn’t been easy to adjust my personality (driven, accomplishment-oriented, and extroverted) to fit my new limitations and expectations. I went from working a 90-hour-a-week job at a tech company to taking a couple of years to get my MFA and then spent the next few years working part-time – adjunct teaching, running workshops, editing manuscripts, and writing freelance all while trying to manage the health stuff, write some poems, sell some books, do readings. Oh, and on a more limited budget (thanks, recession!) Now I’m ready to dream bigger – suddenly, with this new diagnosis, I feel like – why not do the things now that I’ve always wanted?

My ultimate dream would be running a small press and a bookstore. I know bookstores seem hopelessly out of date but I predict that cozy, focused independents will make a comeback after everything has gone all-Amazon-and-Walmart, and that’s exactly the kind of place I’d like to run. Maybe get a cup of coffee, buy a pillow or a throw, see a reading or even a cooking demonstration – you know, a place that might help a neighborhood feel like more of a community. I can see going out and getting a small business loan to do that someday. And the press – that’s probably in the nearer future for me, now. I’m looking around and thinking of people I’d like to work with, the money I’d have to put in. Would I do my own e-books, or farm that out? Would I need to hire a book designer? Would I do regular press runs or POD or some combination? (probably the latter.) Would I go after a good distributor – or would I need to wait on a step like that? Would I be an open submission press or run a contest? (probably the former.) Would I be non-profit or not? (Probably not – I hate paperwork.) But I’m finally tinkering with near-term ideas rather than five-years-in-the-future. And after working as my city’s Poet Laureate for the last year and a half, it would be nice to feel like I was a giving back to the community, but in a different way.

As you may have guessed from some things I’ve been saying, my fourth book is looking closer and closer to becoming a real thing. (Thanks for your help with the author photos – I’ve narrowed it down to two!) I’m thinking of how to work smarter this time around, how to give the book the support it needs in the right places. What strategies worked in the past and what didn’t? How do I make a maximum splash with minimal obnoxious factor and cost? I’m trying to think more like a publisher, and less like a hapless, dreamy poet these days, in terms of books…So, do any of you have advice on this? Any thoughts on any of these dreams? Am I nuts?