Copper Canyon Press received a $100,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation earlier this year with the expressed purpose of producing e-books and working to improve the quality of poetry on e-reader devices. As publishers and readers have come to know, long-line poetry presents formatting issues to e-book developers.

“e-books and poetry just don’t get along as well as e-books and prose,” wrote Craig Morgan Teicher, in Publishers Weekly back in March. “It’s those line breaks, poetry’s defining feature. Because the same e-book has to work on many different screens and devices on which readers can change the font and size of the text, it’s impossible to guarantee the line display as the poet intended.”

This past year, apps and conversion tools have provided some solutions to the problem, but now Copper Canyon, working with its distributor, Consortium, aims to develop templates that may create a better-functioning poetry book for all formats. Amelia Robertson, e-book coordinator for Copper Canyon, suggests that while eventually they’d like to have a perfect solution for all poetry e-books, until then, part of the solution “will have to be iBooks and Amazon building some more capability into their devices.”

Copper Canyon’s plan is to have 175 of its books available as e-books. By the end of 2013, they aim to have their entire backlist available. Meanwhile, other presses are exercising some caution: “I’m eager to hear what Copper Canyon is saying about any progress they are having in exploring e-book options for poetry,” said Jeff Shotts of Graywolf. “(We’re) still waiting.”

“We’re doing it upon request, but otherwise waiting for Copper Canyon to unveil its findings,” said Caroline Casey of Sarabande.

Fortunately, Copper Canyon has expressed the intention of sharing its successes.

Meanwhile, plenty of short-line poetry e-books function on e-readers—but until the solution is widely available, it’s hard for presses, small and large, to produce or sell poetry e-books with an implied disclaimer such as “Usually works fine, just don’t download anything like Whitman, Robert Hass, or C.D. Wright. Actually, generally, be advised that not all of our books do well in this format.”

Source: Publishers Weekly: Fitting Poetry to the Screen.