This writing was accepted for publication
The transformations of cc&d
Janet Kuypers
(edited and expanded from the introduction to the book “Finally, Literature for the Snotty and Elite” v1 cc&d collection book of Kuypers’ writings)
In the beginning of cc&d (June 1993) there weren’t that many contributors, so a lot of my work appeared in early issues. But even in that first year, we started getting more and more submissions, because volume 19 (April/May 1994, which translates to nearly two issues per month) was the first magazine cover with a wrap cover. We started posting internet issues in 1995 (at eworld, later aol), and we found ourselves releasing two to three issues monthly because we had so many good contributions (in 1994 we even ran the section called “Down in the Dirt” of additional poems in cc&d magazine), and volume 55 (our second anniversary issue of June 1995 as our only gatefold cover) started showing more political angles with cover art and content...
Because we saw the growing interest for magazine issues, I purchased a slew if ISBN#s from the U.S. Government and started releasing collections of writings from issues of cc&d, along with chosen additional writings from other authors that appeared in the front of each collection book (and at the beginning we decided to give the titles a similar theme as well, like "Sulphur & Sawdust” in 1995, or “Slate & Marrow” in 1996, or “Blister & Burn” in 1997), because we were already looking for ways to expand the base for cc&d’s accepted authors (even at times including translations of poems into other languages).
So by volume 75 (January 1996) we changed our format from 5.5"x8.5" to 8.5"x11", adding an expanded news section, a political news section, the occasional AIDS Watch section, a letters to the editor section, a lunchtime poll topic, and a philosophy monthly section. We even started including sections of Scars books in issues (since we had the room in the ~100+ monthly issues). But when I was leaving to travel the country for nearly a year starting in the end of 1997, I decided to produce 6 issues of cc&d released in 1998 in advance, so I wouldn’t have to worry about the production of the magazine while out of town. Those issues (12/97 v98 through 11/98 v104) contained random original clip art pages (since I had worked a the time for a trade magazine publishing company, I had access to many pages of clip art from stock companies).
But after traveling the country until the summer of 1998, I was driving to visit my parents and was almost killed while stopped at a traffic intersection. I was unconscious for 11 days, and had to relearn how to walk and talk and eat.
And in all of this time (including my travel time), submissions were being emailed to me for cc&d. As I recovered (when I lost my home at the same time I lost my car and almost lost my life), the one thing that could keep m driven and keep my mind focused was working on cc&d - in a strange way, it had become the one thing that kept me going, and gave me a purpose to speed my recovery once out of the hospital, before and after the design job I couldn’t keep during my long recovery from the accident. So because of my condition, I decided to release a book of the 1999 cc&d issues.
After the book release, I produced Internet audio issues, then web page issues only (although issues were released on the Internet via eworld.com and aol.com since 1995, this hiatus from being able to work on cc&d forced me to only release Internet issues temporarily). For the years 2001 and 2002, issues were only placed in collection books (in this collection I even allowed the design of poetry in one of the collection books, “oh.”, since it was a more innovative poem design layout); I had worked on expanding cc&d and Scars Publications, so a few issues were released as audio issues on line. Then I completed a few quarterly 8.5"x11" issues in 2003 (and it felt really good to see those issues created, versus collection books of issues only), so I then deciding to bring cc&d back to its original 5.5"x8.5" format, highlighting only poetry and short stories again.
(But in the beginning of the re-emergence of the 5.5"x8.5" format issues, a performance art section started cropping up in occasional issues, but as time has progressed, I have often made these performance art collection supplement issues/chapbooks of cc&d so that other writers could have more space in cc&d.)
Throughout this time, we even looked at different avenues for getting poetry out there, like running poetry calendars (we designed a date book in 1994 and a wall calendar in 1997, then with the advent of expanded and less-expensive printing options n the market, we started running full color wall calendars with a poem (or two) for every month, along with full bleed full-color art for the months of the year. By the end of 2005, we even released an audio CD of readings of select poems from 2005 magazine issues, set to music from Nashville musicians.
Since I had allowed the start (and set the design for, and added cover art to) of the once-supplement section of cc&d “Down in the Dirt” as it’s own magazine (and I also later took over as editor), I started running not only annual collection books, but also issue collection books (a few a year, to accommodate that much material in collection books).
But as we were designing 5.5"x8.5" saddle-stitched issues for over half a decade (the 6 years of 2004-2009), we did a lot of studying, thinking, and planning before deciding to take cc&d to the next level... But by the January 2010 issue (v204), we completely changed the format of cc&d magazine. Although it would remain 5.5"x8.5", it would be 84 pages, perfect-bound with a full bleed full color cover, printed for a separate printer. With this upgrade of the length and printing quality of these magazine issues, we had to increase the price of the issues (and often now the price change over the years has been reflective of the increased price from the printer to output these magazine issues) — but th final product is a magazine that can be left on a book shelf or a coffee table, and more importantly, can last years.
Since I also run a Chicago poetry open mic, I even look for times (usually at the beginning of months, when issues are released) to read short poems from accepted authors in current issues, and since I video record the open mics and features, I save these cc&d poem readings as youtube video clips in the Internet (web page) issues, because as I said before, I have been looking for more and more ways to let the world know about cc&d - from releasing calendars, to an audio CD, to posting video of poems readings on youtube... We even made additional releases of cc&d issues as 6"x9" ISBN# books from July 2010 through December 2011 (with April-December 2011 issues also released as books through amazon.com for U.K. and continental Europe sales as well).
Since cc&d has grown over the years, we have done everything we can to give back to the literary community that lets cc&d thrive, because without the contributions of the talented creative people that have graced the pages of cc&d over the past 20 years, we would not be able to continue to share everyone’s talents with the world. We thank you for making cc&d what has always been hard to describe because if it’s unique skeleton that holds all of us together in the world today.
