Publish or perish
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Andy Brown solves existential dilemma by churning out books
by GEORGE MADDUX
Seeing him scribble on his breakfast napkin at La Belle Province, riding the 80 or doling out for his Fairmount 7-1/2 to his Hasidic landlady, Andy Brown might look like your typical macaroni-and-cheese Mile-End dreamer. And he is, except that he publishes a whole lot of books.
Brown came here from Vancouver a decade ago ("I'm not sure why"), worked in a factory and planted trees while completing a masters in English at Concordia. But eventually Brown, now 32, started wondering what to do with his life. "When I discussed this with a friend, he described it as a conundrum and that stuck in my head."
He then launched the appropriately titled Conundrum Press and struck gold immediately with a stapled book [and accompanying audio tape] of performances, Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Taxidermy, penned by his then-roommate, Catherine Kidd.
In the four years since, Brown's living-room publishing empire has spawned 20 titles ranging from poetry to posters and he's combined quality graphics with low-cost technique. "I did 19 books before I dealt with a printer," he says. "Because the cost for the perfectly bound book would be a couple thousand bucks. These books are cheaper because I produce 100 at a time. If they sell, I produce another hundred."
Unlike other publishers, Brown's done it without Emerging Publisher Grants, since the feds will only consider funding companies that have produced at least four perfectly bound titles. Brown says he'll soon be eligible for the cash, as he expects to put out his fourth perfectly bound book later this year: Vince Tinguely and Victoria Stanton's analysis of the local spoken word scene, Impure: Re-Inventing the Word in Montreal.
And don't get him started on the policies of federal arts funding for publishers. "When they fund artists they look at the avant-garde people doing interesting things, whereas in publishing they reward you for being a good business and making money."
Among the local scribblers Brown gurgles over excitedly is Lance Blomgren, whose book Walkups is a "series of vignettes exploring the architecture of urban psychogeography in random apartments throughout Montreal." He also raves about other works he's published by such locals as Billy Mavreas, Dana Bath, Liane Keightley, Howard Chackowicz and others.
Brown's own self-published book of poetry, Machines That Speak of Distance, was recently greeted favourably, but he doesn't plan on publishing any more of his own stuff. "You're not taken seriously if you publish your own work. It's viewed as a vanity press thing." Which might make it less ironic that his upcoming novel, U&I and Sometimes Why, about a woman searching for a buried treasure, will likely be published by a Toronto-based company. Many Conundrum titles are available at The Word (469 Milton) or at Monastiraki (5478 St-Laurent).
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