FLEECED by FC2: Being an INVESTIGATION into the CONFLICTS of INTEREST and SELF-DEALING that Plague the Publisher FICTION

COLLECTIVE 2, with ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS on the Academic-Government Complex, Proper Organisational Stewardship, &c

by Tim W. Brown

Something is rotten in the State of Florida. And Illinois. And Alabama. A small experimental fiction publisher, Fiction Collective Two (FC2 for short), has in its thirty-two-year existence wriggled to the center of the academic-government complex in these states and in Washington, DC. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with seeking and obtaining public money in support of the organization, often the beneficiaries are the principals and board members of FC2.

Full disclosure: I submitted my novel, Walking Man, to FC2 in 2004. When submitting I knew the book didn't precisely fit with FC2's list; still, it was thematically quirky and formally inventive enough to stand half a chance of acceptance. The book was ultimately rejected.

When I recently contacted FC2's Executive Director, R.M. "Ralph" Berry, a creative writing professor at Florida State University, with my questions about FC2's operations, one of the first questions he asked me in his sarcastic reply was whether I had submitted my work to FC2 in the past, suggesting I were a disgruntled rejected author. Making such an accusation is the first refuge of literary scoundrels, an inversion of Dr. Johnson's formulation that patriotism is the last refuge of political scoundrels.

For the record, Walking Man was submitted to several other publishers that year. However, I don't have reservations about their ethics, and, therefore, I'm not writing an article investigating their practices. In any event, it's probably necessary to submit work to FC2 to catch a glimpse of the submissions process in action.

FC2 has been in existence for 32 years. It was founded as an “author-run” press at Brooklyn College in 1974 by Jonathan Baumbach, Peter Spielberg, Mark Mirsky, Steve Katz, and Ron Sukenick in response to the constant flow of rejections these writers received from trade publishers in their early careers. The press has published such authors as Russell Banks, Samuel Delaney, Raymond Federman, Mark Leyner, Clarence Major and Gerald Vizenor. Says one publishing industry insider who’s familiar with FC2's operations in the 1980s and 90s when it was run by Ron Sukenick and his successor as director, Curtis White: "They published a lot of good people over the years. Of course, they always made sure to publish themselves first."

The word "collective" in its name connotes the image of self-publishing hippies, and the commune model is, essentially, how the press operated until recent years, with each "member," or author it had published, having a vote on incoming manuscripts. FC2’s organizing principle changed in 1999 with the decision to replace the cumbersome, if more democratic, governing process of yore. A board of directors, advisory board and editorial board were created, and comrade Berry was named ED during the coup d’état.

FC2’s books are written by tenured radicals based in creative writing programs in universities around the U.S. Together they form a "collective," a small coterie of authors of fiction on the self-styled "cutting edge." FC2 authors fancy themselves avant garde and "transgressive" – as transgressive as you can be, I suppose, living in college towns and congregating in university classrooms. FC2 long ago left behind Brooklyn and any rude edges it ever had, and its operations are now divided among three verdant state university campuses. Collective members are extremely tribal about whom they choose to enter their club. Acolytes of über-plagiarist Kathy Acker, they exist outside her Downtown

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space/time continuum, but they sorely wish they had hung out in the East Village back in the 1980s and made the scene with her.

Yet my interest in FC2 isn't really about the content of its list – if the press considers surrealistic logorrhea to be fine literature and want to publish it, that's perfectly okay with me.

The truth is nobody has much interest in FC2's books' content, there being far less interest than I expected before my investigation. The press sells small print runs of their titles mostly to libraries. A recent grant application to the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) expressed the “hope” of selling 700 out of a total of 1,500 copies printed of each title it planned to publish in 2005-2006. Despite a few admiring critics who have reviewed their titles in a handful of mainstream and independent periodicals, there isn't much public curiosity in or commercial market for their books.

FC2’s operations and funding are extremely opaque. It was like investigating Enron when I looked into its business affairs. Early in my inquiry, I emailed Berry asking about the relationship between public funding of FC2 and regular publication of its board members. Berry responded, imperiously, “[W]e are not a division of Florida's state government, we are not subject to its ‘sunshine laws,’ and disclosure of financial information is at our discretion, as in the case of other private corporations.” Because Berry was less-than-forthcoming about FC2’s finances, I was forced to rely upon publicly available tax records and grant application information to piece together FC2’s business operations. Here are the known facts:

FC2’s “executive offices” are located at FSU. As ED Berry “is responsible for all business and promotional decisions of the FC2 non-profit publishing house, as well as for fundraising.”

The English Department's Publications Unit at Illinois State University, overseen by Tara Reeser, its Director, handles manuscript screening and other editorial duties through graduate assistantships and student internships. In other words, students who haven’t yet matriculated are making decisions about FC2’s incoming manuscripts. Berry defends this practice, saying, “To place the editorial decision-making process in the hands of authors, not sales managers, industry insiders, and inexperienced recent graduates of liberal arts colleges, was why the Fiction Collective came into existence.” I’m not certain how FC2’s method is any better than trade publishing’s, other than using cheaper labor, but at least trade publishing’s junior editors have finished school.

FC2’s "publisher" is the University of Alabama. UA’s responsibilities to FC2 include contracting with third parties for printing FC2’s books and paying for associated production costs, according to Dan Ross, Director of University of Alabama Press. UA Press publishes six FC2 titles a year under a system of what Ross calls "pay as we go" funding.

I asked Ross how this approach pays for printing FC2’s books, which lose money each time out. FC2’s Florida 2005-2006 grant application claims, "The press has been successful ... as we have been able to fund the press through our book sales." This statement is false – there is a regular shortfall between FC2’s book sale revenue and its production costs. Indeed, this statement is contradicted later in the very same document in the budget section in which FC2 expected sales of three books totaling $7,350 and printing costs totaling $10,500, not counting expenses related to shipping, distribution, marketing, or administration. FC2’s 2000-2001 grant application indicates the press expected sales of six books amounting to $22,000 and printing expenses alone to exceed $25,000. Ross answered that UA Press will probably have to lower the number of copies printed and raise the cover prices to attempt to close the funding gap.

In the period I examined, going back to 1999, FC2 received numerous federal and state arts grants. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded the press a total of $27,000 between 2001 and 2006. FC2 is regularly awarded money by the Florida DCA, and as recently as 2004 it received funding

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from the Illinois Arts Council under the Unit for Contemporary Literature’s application for that year. (More about the Unit later.)

How much public money has FC2 received in recent years? Over $300,000 according to its tax returns. FC2’s Form 990 for FY 2003-2004 (the latest information publicly available) indicates FC2 received from 1999-2003 $171,179 in grants and other contributions and $141,834 in support from government institutions, that is, FSU and ISU. FC2’s total budget in FY 2005-2006 was $127,893, a typical year for the press judging by its tax returns and grant records. Public monies accounted for $57,020 of this amount.

I should make clear that the universities and granting agencies supporting FC2 don't appear to be guilty of anything other than being played for suckers by FC2. Reeser views her school's relationship with FC2 as an educational opportunity for ISU students. Through his organization's affiliation with FC2, Ross seeks to expand UA Press' fiction offerings. Both of these are worthy goals in and of themselves. And I understand how Florida wishes FC2 to prosper in the hope it will shed a little cultural light on the often benighted Sunshine State.

Yet, with all this good will extended to FC2, look at what the press has done and witness how it has betrayed its benefactors. After Berry took the helm as ED in 1999 one of his first official acts was to preside over the organization during the publication of his book, Dictionary of Modern Anguish, in 2000. In 2001 FC2 published Cris Mazza’s novel Girl Beside Him while Mazza served on FC2’s board of directors. Although he isn't currently on any FC2 board, Jeffrey DeShell is a former board member, and he was instrumental in setting up FC2 in its current incarnation in 1999. For this he has been rewarded with publication of his forthcoming novel, The Trouble with Being Born: A Novel about My Parents.

Three authors on the current FC2 board of directors, Lance Olsen (its chairman), Kate Bernheimer and Michael Martone, have books listed under the "Current Releases" heading of FC2’s home page, Nietzsche's Kisses, The Complete Tales of Merry Gold and Michael Martone, respectively. FC2 published an earlier book of Olsen’s, Girl Imagined By Chance, in 2002, while he served on FC2’s board of directors before his elevation to chairman.

Additionally, FC2 uses public money to underwrite readings that feature, you guessed it, board members of FC2. For FY 2005-2006, FC2 applied to the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs seeking state funds amounting to $1,800, including airfare and “motel,” to send Martone, a creative writing professor at University of Alabama (FC2’s publisher, remember?), on a reading tour around Florida, accounting for nearly one-third of the year’s total travel budget of $6,700. In 2001, then board member Mazza flew down from her perch as creative writing professor at University of Illinois-Chicago to read at the Miami Book Fair on FC2’s, that is, the taxpayers’, dime. Berry sent himself on at least one excursion in 2000.

Plus don’t forget that board members are rewarded career-wise from having their books published by FC2 – in the form of tenure, promotion and other academic perquisites.

FC2 offers two methods for submitting manuscripts. General submissions are first considered at the ISU Publications Unit. After passing muster with ISU grad students and interns they are forwarded to FC2’s editorial board. Manuscripts may also be “sponsored” by a Collective member, bypassing ISU and going directly to the editorial board. This is where being a friend or colleague or fellow Associated Writing Programs conventioneer of an FC2 board member pays off: he or she can smooth the way for your manuscript’s acceptance.

“[T]he editorial board reads [manuscripts] and decides whether to publish them or not,” says Berry. Manuscripts “are not reviewed blind [sic]. This is because so many of those who submit to us have

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established reputations, and we believe that publication decisions should be made, not only by considering an isolated text, but by considering it in relation to a body of work or author's career.” Of course, it’s also a convenient way to know whether another FC2 board member has a book under consideration, giving you the power to do that person a tremendous favor by voting for it, which might someday help your future submission’s chances.

Answering questions about the high number of FC2 authors who are also board members, Berry states, “Over the last 8 years slightly fewer than 1/3 of the books we have published have been by authors who have never published a book with anyone before. Approximately 2/3 of the books we've published have been by authors who have never published with FC2 before. About 1/3 of our books are by authors we have previously published.”

Let’s look at Berry’s magical one-third fraction another way. FC2’s web site currently lists nine titles in current release. Of these, three, or one third, were written by members of the board of directors. You could take this one third, extrapolate it across time, multiply it by $300,000, and determine that every five years FC2 spends $100,000 of taxpayers' money on publication of its board members' books. This may not be a huge amount of money, but neither is it chump change.

Berry claims that controls against conflicts are built into the acceptance process. “Needless to say, no one who is submitting a [manuscript] to FC2 is allowed to be on the editorial board during the year of the submission. Our preferred procedure is to keep such an individual off of the board for a period of two years or more, but because we often have difficulty getting all of our submissions read each year, we sometimes ask someone to help out again before the two year period is up.” This “control” amounts to a revolving door policy similar to those that govern relations between the Pentagon and military contractors or the Congress and lobbying firms, and it’s just as effective in preventing corruption.

Conflicts of interest are nothing new at FC2, but rather normal operating procedure going back at least to the early 1990s under the Unit for Contemporary Literature headed by former ISU English Department chair Charles Harris, who currently serves on FC2's advisory board, along with his wife Victoria. Lance Olsen's wife, Andi, is also on the advisory board – I will leave it to someone else to investigate nepotism issues at FC2.

In its 1990s heyday, the Unit amounted to a literary junta masterminded out of Illinois State University, gathering together American Book Review, FC2, Dalkey Archive Press, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, and other publications. Harris was director of the Unit; Curtis White, also an ISU professor, was director of FC2. Former FC2 director Ron Sukenick published ABR; Sukenick also directed Black Ice books, a short-lived FC2 imprint. White reviewed for ABR, and he penned a regular column for Exquisite Corpse, Andrei Codrescu's journal, distributed by the Unit. In 1998, White was the subject of an adoring 110-page feature in the Review of Contemporary Fiction – edited and published by his colleagues at the Unit. ABR devoted most of its pages to reviews of FC2, Black Ice and Dalkey Archive titles, basically serving as a bimonthly advertising rag for Unit-supported books.

The Unit disbanded in 2005, and Harris is now retired, although he continues as Publisher of ABR. ABR's editorial offices moved from ISU to the University of Houston-Victoria earlier this year. FC2, as noted, already had fled to FSU in 1999. It recently was announced that Dalkey Archive is moving down the interstate to the University of Illinois, having been rejected by the University of Rochester to host the press owing to Dalkey's iffy finances. In short, from at least the early 1990s until 1999, when Berry took over, FC2 had, under Harris’ tutelage, for a long time been compromised by conflicts inherent in its relationship with other Unit for Contemporary Literature entities.

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It's a fact that in addition to serving an organization by bringing one's expertise to it, everybody who serves on a board has some ulterior motive. Usually he or she hopes to network with other like-minded people, and sometimes these connections can turn into a personal benefit, outside, it should be emphasized, of the organization's purview. Of course, as anyone who's served on a board knows, it's never as quid-pro-quo as this. There exists an altruistic impulse as well, and there is genuine satisfaction felt when seeing how others benefit from your experience.

While there are no hard and fast rules about board service, generally speaking, people who are invited to serve on the boards of not-for-profits are people who've achieved a certain level of success and are in a position to share their experience to further the organization's mission.

If you're invited to be a board member of FC2, the expectation should be that you've passed a certain professional pale and are beyond requiring the organization's resources to publish your book. Indeed, being on FC2's boards should involve helping others publish their books. It violates the spirit if not the letter of not-for-profit board service when the director and board members have their books published by the press while simultaneously acting as stewards of the organization.

When you're a private concern, you may, of course, publish anybody's books you wish, including your own. But at the helm of an organization that receives so much public funding and academic welfare, you're acting corruptly when publishing any book by a board member. The year isn't 1974 anymore, and the collective model – the hippie equivalent of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland producing a show out back in the barn – no longer applies when discussing an organization whose annual budget adds up to tens of thousands of dollars.

FC2's decision-making process reminds me of the 2000 presidential race when Dick Cheney was asked by Republican nominee George W. Bush to find a vice presidential candidate to share the Republican ticket with him, and Cheney ended up selecting himself after an arduous search process. Seemingly, FC2’s board and principals accept this as normal behavior, because it's been going on for fifteen-plus years. I'd hate to think that FC2's director and board consciously engage in such amoral conduct. Yet, certainly, they’re guilty of being oblivious to just how improper their operations look outside of their cloistered university environments.

"People maybe are weaker than they should be," comments a former ISU student who witnessed Harris' antics as long ago as the 1970s. Competing for whatever funding crumbs are available to non-profits like FC2 "brings out the worst in people" he concludes. And though it's impossible for me to look into the hearts of FC2's ED and its board members to determine whether they believe they're acting honestly, it's easy to understand how otherwise decent people might succumb to the temptation of spending other people's money on their personal projects when external oversight is virtually nonexistent.

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