A lesson on priorities

 Alan Swallow tells a delicious story about how he learned to sort out priorities.

He grew up in Wyoming between the world wars and learned to work at an early age. The world of goods — tempting things to buy — came to him through the Montgomery Ward catalog. 

“I would translate the dollar amounts into the number of hours of labor that I would have to put out in work to acquire the wanted possession,” he wrote. 

Swallow later founded a small press, publishing works that wouldn’t have otherwise been published. He did all the work by hand: set type, operated the 5-by-8 press, bound the pamphlets and books.

He could publish a manuscript he liked with almost no out-of-pocket expenses. But it took a lot of work. As Swallow read through manuscripts submitted by writers, he calculated the many hours of work it would take to turn the manuscript into a book.

He wanted to publish them all but couldn’t. And so he tested his critical judgment against the required labor. He said he couldn’t think of a better test.

No one gets to into the psyche of a little publisher better than Alan Swallow.

I started to say “small,” but Swallow liked the title “little publisher.” He grew up in a golden age of “little magazines.” Some of the most interesting work was published in magazines supported by a few subscribers. These readers were loyal. They argued for pieces they liked, pushed them on friends, developed a following for neglected writers. Sometimes they built audiences that interested major publishers.

Swallow wanted to do the same thing for books.

• Source: Swallow’s essay originally appeared in New Mexico Quarterly, XXXVL, 4 (Winter, 1966-1967), pp. 301-324. I found it as “Story of a Publisher” in The Publish-It-Yourself Handbook: Literary Tradition & How-To, edited by Bill Henderson, The Pushcart Press and Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980.