Novelist Tim W. Brown has a bone to pick with the small independent press Fiction Collective Two, known popularly as FC2. In an online broadside published at FleecedByFC2.com late last week, Brown accuses FC2, which describes itself as “an author-run, not-for-profit publisher of artistically adventurous, non-traditional fiction,” of sponging off universities as well as state and federal grants in order to finance the publication of experimental works by the collective’s core members. Along with detailing several examples of alleged self-reward on the FC2 frontlist and recent backlist, Brown focuses on the cost to taxpayers. “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,” he observes, with the public contributing $57,020 to pay those bills.
Brown includes a response from FC2 editorial director R.M. Berry, who says, “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.” Berry adds that nobody who submits a manuscript is allowed to sit on the FC2 board that year; Brown’s data, on the other hand, indicates that more than one person has joined the board within a few years after their manuscript was accepted for publication, including the Michael Martone novel Michael Martone, an ever-expanding series of fictional “contributor’s notes” that was the summer 2006 selection of the LitBlog Co-Op, a loose band of bookbloggers who issue quarterly recommendations of what they consider underappreciated contemporary fiction. (Full disclosure: both GalleyCat co-editors were founding members of the group, long gone when that book was chosen.)
It should be noted, though, that Brown’s beef with the Unit for Contemporary Literature, a now-disbanded organization that included FC2 along with other small presses and literary journals, could be said to go back about a dozen years, when American Book Review stiffed him on a $50 freelance check. Perhaps more pertinently, Brown also acknowledges that he’s had a manuscript rejected by the Collective recently, but says that novel, Walking Man is scheduled to be the debut title from Bronx River Press in October. Then again, the BxRP domain is registered in Brown’s name, using the same contact info used to register his author website and anti-FC2 site…so there’s that to consider, as well, before deeming this situation the Foetry of 2007 just yet.