Hypertext Magazine asked Ben Tanzer, author of UPSTATE, “Why re-release a book that the world has already had the chance to buy and read?“
By Ben Tanzer
Good question. The simple answer is that the original publisher of UPSTATE, first released as The New York Stories, is now defunct, and though the collection is out in the world, it’s also not, with no real distribution, or anyone to care about it beside me. The more involved answer is about me and my relationship to not only this book, but writing, work, my connection to the world and feeling alive, especially as a creative. Let me pause here for some quick backstory: The New York Stories was a compilation of three shorter collections of intertwined stories – “Repetition” Patterns (2008), “So Different Now” (2011) and “After the Flood” (2015) – which are further intertwined from collection to collection.
The New York Stories was released in 2015 when I was riding a sort of professional and authorial high in terms of cool work and publishing opportunities, as well as a semblance of balance between both. In 2016 however I lost my long-time job and my subsequent efforts to land something similar, or at least interesting, did not pan out.
Further, the release of the book that followed The New York Stories, an essay collection titled Be Cool, was poorly executed and a novel of mine that had been moving toward publication was pulled when the publisher decided to no longer publish fiction, and I suddenly didn’t feel at all certain how I should do anything anymore, because everything that had once worked no longer seemed to be working. And so, at the end of 2017, I decided to build a business comprised of my side hustles, or at least a lifestyle focused on the kind of work I wanted to do. I kept writing, but I stopped pitching, doing readings or even accepting invitations to submit work, all things I had been doing practically nonstop since at least 2007, to focus on making this lifestyle business thing work. Which felt fine for the next year or so. Until it didn’t. Because in the same way I had started writing in 1998 when I felt happy with my work and marriage, but otherwise incomplete and out of sorts, I now felt out of balance. I needed to write with purpose. I wanted to be engaged with fellow creatives. And I started to wonder about how I should get back in. Then The New York Stories lost its publisher (as did Be Cool right after that, so do let me know if you’re interested in giving it a new home) and I thought that won’t do. I also saw re-releasing it as a way to open doors.
Enter the quite fab Tortoise Books. They had already re-released some books by authors I admire and I reached out to Tortoise publisher Jerry Brennan. He was interested. But not just in re-releasing the work, but refreshing it as well. A new edit. A new cover. New energy. All of it. Which is what I wanted and needed. I wasn’t counting on a pandemic to overlap with this work, but having the refresh to focus on as the months passed was a gift. I was fully absorbed in the writing life again when I really needed to add some purpose, structure and creativity to my day. Now UPSTATE is back out in the world and I am too, as much as one can be while quarantined. I had been shut-down. Happy enough, pushing, finding work and clients, paying bills, regaining some control of my briefly out of control life, but not doing so many of the things that make me feel most alive. So, why re-release a book that the world has already had the chance to buy and read? Because I wanted to be part of that world in the ways that provide me with joy, hope and the idea that anything is possible. You know, the simple stuff.
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Ben Tanzer is an Emmy-award winning coach, creative strategist, podcaster, writer, teacher and social worker who has been helping nonprofits, publishers, authors, small business and career changers tell their stories for 20 plus years. He is the author of the newly re-released and refreshed short story collection UPSTATE and several award-winning books, including the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space: A Father’s Journey There and Back Again and Be Cool – a memoir (sort of). He is also a lover of all things book, taco, Gin and street art.
