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Marthine Satris

@msatris.bsky.social

1.7K followers 1.9K following 1.9K posts

Bay Area words & book person. Oakland. Associate Publisher at Heyday, Calendar compiler at ORB. www.heydaybooks.com www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org

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Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · Sep 3

The Heyday Harvest, our annual gathering & biggest fundraiser of the year, is Sunday October 19th at the Freight in Berkeley. Please join our community of writers, artists, & activists to honor Alice Waters of Chez Panisse & author @alexis-madrigal.bsky.social ! heyday.salsalabs.org/harvest2025r...

Heyday Harvest 2025

RSVP to attend Heyday's 19th annual Harvest.

heyday.salsalabs.org

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 10h

Whichever entry is your favorite, either Aaron or Annie wrote it. Whiskey wrote the fillers.

Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 21h

See if you can figure out which entries in this week's calendar were written inebriated: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/oakland-revi...

Oakland Review of Books calendar of (not just) literary events, October 7 - October 12

last minute signs with children's markers

www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org

Reposted by Marthine Satris

Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 17h

At Tech Week in SF, an AI startup screens a torrented and ad-polluted copy of The Social Network, in between the most cursed trailers for the most hellish AI "films" imaginable....and ORB IS ON IT: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/initiating-t...

Initiating Tech Week

Social Networking with Zingroll, Marina Theater, Monday Night

www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 18h

The dreamiest sentence I've ever heard

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

YES. (Also, a mutual acquaintance told me we have the same birthday!! Coincidence? Impossible.)

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

Can't wait to read this

Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · Jan 8

it's official--my first book will be published by @columbiaup.bsky.social

Such a Thing as New York School: Print Culture, Publishing Communities, & American Poetry--an account of how publishing practices give material forms to American literary communities & the group labels that describe them.

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

Yeah I was like 23 then and quite pert! But have
have never stopped being fascinated by the material conditions that shape the literature we read, sometimes literally....

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

I mean, let's dream the dream and do the math, for sure. I just think the math is very hard to square with the list price of books!

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

And him saying quite firmly, no: customers don't like it when books stick out unevenly from their shelves!

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

OH MY GOD my favorite memory from interviewing publishers in Ireland was talking to Peter at Gallery Books and asking him about the consistent format of all his books and asking of like for Ciaran Carson if he'd ever go for a broader page to accommodate Ciaran's very long lines....

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

... and then you have the cost of bodies and hands to unpack the boxes from the publisher, shelve them, and then pick and rebox them to distributors.

So you have high labor and property costs, which every logistics/distribution company (cough Am*zon) is trying to cut down.

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

So the price of property, the cost of SPACE for holding physical objects is one of the big determining factors for how a distributor can function and what its margins are. As well as the cost of shipping those physical objects (booksellers just were bemoaning the cost of returns to me)...

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

(the attic was the dreamiest, dustiest space if you treasure limited edition, orphaned, decades old poetry books).

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

Yes!

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

I've been out of the lit crit game for a while though so there might be some great newer books and papers I don't know!

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 19h

I think @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social's work, while not specifically about poetry, is the most relevant (and is very very good!)

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 20h

I got curious about the distribution side of things bc when I was trying to understand systems of canonization & how poets got to be mainstream vs outsider during my PhD, I was told, it's not just publishing, it's distribution. (This was in Ireland: all the distribution was centralized in London)

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 20h

Here in the East Bay, warehouses that once did the job of holding goods were abandoned with the rise of containerization (hence: artist collectives, Ghostship, punk houses) from the 70s onward. SPD was an exception to that, AND it ran on volunteer labor AND was a nonprofit.

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 20h

Ingram (Heyday is a PGW client), incentivizes recycling over returns now. There's almost no remainders market anymore. When SPD was trying to move into Ingram, they were especially hawking POD, which Ingram is too. Because it reduces sq footage dedicated to books sitting around.

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 20h

SPD had no problem with books sitting. That was the whole point, to be able to fulfill small, uneven orders.

Compare that to the "just in time" ethos of fulfillment today which is all about reducing the sq footage dedicated to storing physical objects.

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 20h

I worked at SPD on the warehouse side for a year when I was getting started in Bay Area publishing, first as a volunteer, then as temp staff, and my reflections on it all now within the larger sphere of trade networks and logistics are probably too big for this microblogging format but I can try.

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 20h

"Chipping Sparrow" by Susan Howe, for Fanny Howe poems.com/poem/chippin...

"Left the body

Drowsd a little"

Chipping Sparrow

On the subject of assurance I should have I should have

Reposted by Marthine Satris

Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · 23h

This is a huge collapse in the book distribution business, especially following the closure of Small Press Distribution last year. Baker & Taylor--originally established in 1828--has been central to the library market for decades.

Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 23h

seems very bad www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Baker & Taylor Prepares Plan to Shut Down

At a town hall yesterday, B&T owner and CEO Aman Kochar announced that following the termination of the ReaderLink acquisition deal, he does not see a path to keep the library wholesaler in business.

www.publishersweekly.com

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 23h

Wow

Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 23h

Can we vote? Feels like an electable position and you're definitely the front runner

Reposted by Marthine Satris

Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 1d

She’s left us no choice. It’s time for Isaac Chotiner to interview Bari Weiss.