Does anyone know where I could find a publisher for my poetry book?
October 11th, 2009
Posted by: admin
I just finshed my first poetry book. I need a publisher…
By: Tyler Heartagram J
By: Tyler Heartagram J
October 14th, 2009 at 00:23
Your best bet is one of the more reputable POD firms.
There isn’t really a consumer market for poetry. So you need to buy about fifty books at a time and sell them yourself at your readings. There won’t be a traditional publisher willing to put out the money until you are already well known, and even then it’s not likely you’ll get traditionally published.
October 14th, 2009 at 02:46
I hate to be the one to say this to you, but will find it is next to impossible to publish poetry. The odds of someone making a living as a poet are astronomical - worse than astronomical. Poetry is Just not a big seller anymore. And friends aren’t necessarily the best judges of what should and shouldn’t be published.
Prove it to yourself. Go to the biggest bookstore you know and ask to see the poetry section. After you dust the books off, count them. There won’t be many and most of them will be from established and old poets.
Now go to the New Fiction section and see how many books are there. About 50 times as many as poetry. Because they SELL.
Stores cost money to rent. A bookstore has to ration its selling space accordingly to what they can sell to meet their overhead. They simply cannot devote a lot of square footage to books they aren’t going to sell rapidly.
A high body count Dean Koontz thriller sells. Poetry doesn’t.
As for selling poems to magazines, let me explain it this way. Recently the Poet Laureate of the United States sold a five line poem to a magazine. He got a check for 25 dollars - 5 dollars per line. If that is all the Poet Laureate can get, how much do you think you could get? The answer is probably nothing. They would be published free. The best you could probably do would be a free copy of the magazine with your poem in it. Not much, is it?
If you want to self publish, you need to understand Uncle Jim’s Law “The money should flow TOWARD the author, not away from him.” In the case of Lulu and other self publishers, the money flows AWAY from the author and at a rather large clip. It will cost and cost and cost you. You will pay and pay and still your books will not be for sale on shelves in any bookstore in America. Unless you pay for an ISBN number, they won’t even be for sale on Amazon. And now, Amazon says they are removing all BUY buttons from books that aren’t self published by their subsidiary BookSource. They will only carry your book for sale if you pay them 29.99 annual fee, plus 55 % of your cover price, plus you have to purchase the books yourself from your own self publisher and mail them at your expense to Amazon so they will stock them. That will put most self published books in the red REAL fast. Especially if the average sales for a self published book is 100 copies - or roughly 2/3 of your family and friends. You will lose money big time.
And the question is, without paying for publicity and promotion, how is anybody going to know the book is out there to buy it? Nobody actually surfs Amazon looking for interesting books. You can’t. There are millions there.
I know that is not the answer you want to hear, but that is the cold, hard truth. Poetry is not a big seller. No major publishers are reading poetry so no agents are interested. They won’t bother with something they can’t sell. Sorry, but true, and a visit to your local bookstore will prove it to you. Pax-C
Just to prove it to you - Random House - the largest publisher in America currently has ZERO poetry books in their line. Harper Collins - the #2 publisher has 368. About 85% of those poets are deceased and about 10% are celebrities. Not much chance for a new poet to get published by them.
NO Do NOT go to Poetry.com. It is the biggest scam in the publishing world. EVERY poem is selected a semi finalist and placed in a book called Immortal Verses - as long as you pay the 49.95 for a copy. After that you will be told you are a finalist and invited to attend their convention at YOUR expense. There you will sit around and listen to a lot of really bad poetry and at a cheesy chicken dinner banquet, you will be presented with a 2 dollar trophy making you one of the Poets of the Year. Do NOT give them a penny! Check with the Writers Beware sites before you send anything to anyone. Absolute Write Water Cooler’s Bewares and Background Checks is one. Preditors and Editors is another. Both clearly state that Poetry.com is NOT RECOMMENDED. The reason you sometimes see posts like the one below is they send people called “sock puppets” to post at sites like this - saying how great the service is and luring young authors into the scam. DO NOT listen to them. It is a known scam.
Pax-C
EDIT == Amelia - there isn’t an agent in NYC who represents poets. Check in Writers Market. Poetry does not pay bills.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:14
POD will kill your credibility as an author. Find a reputable agent who will sell your ms. to an actual publisher.
January 16th, 2010 at 00:33
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