Publishing Poetry

Lesson 2: Poetry Markets

Publishing Your Book

When you’ve written a large number of poems and had success publishing individual poems, you may want to publish a book of your work. There are two ways to go about this. You can seek a publisher for your book, or you can self-publish.

Book Publishers

Recommended reading:Poet Power! The Practical Poet’s Guide to Getting Published, Chapter 5

It can be difficult to find publishers for books of poetry. Small publishers and publishers that focus primarily on poetry are most likely to be interested in a book-sized collection of poems.

Collections of poetry are often published as chapbooks. Chapbooks are shorter books of poetry, generally consisting of a few dozen poems. Pages are folded and stapled together along the spine, a method of binding known as saddle-stitching. There are a number of small publishers that publish chapbooks of poetry but not full-length books.

Longer collections of poetry are generally still shorter than most other books. They may contain something like 100 poems. These books will be perfect-bound, meaning that the pages are glued along the spine to a cover and the spine is squared. This is the way books are typically bound, the type of book you are most accustomed to seeing.

It may be easier to market a collection of poems on a particular subject or of a particular style, rather than an assortment of unrelated pieces.

It is not at all uncommon for poets to assume some of the cost of publishing their own book of poetry. This is often necessary because, simply put, poetry books don’t usually make much of a profit.

Because publishers of poetry books are often small presses and do not have large budgets, it will also be necessary for a poet to actively promote their book. Some techniques for promoting your work will be discussed in Lesson Four.

Self-Publishing

Recommended reading:Poet Power! The Practical Poet’s Guide to Getting Published, Chapters 6-8

Self-publishing is common in the field of poetry. In many ways, it’s not that different from being published by an existing publisher. The poet would likely be expected to assume some of the cost anyway. The poet would need to actively promote and sell their work. Self-publishing is a valid option for poets. It may be a better option for poets than for writers of most other work.

Self-publishing is not as costly as it once was. It’s no longer necessary to print and purchase a large quantity of books, either. New technology makes self-publishing more feasible than ever. You can order as few books as you want, and reorder more at any time.

Since self-publishing requires you to spend money, and since you’ll only make money if you go out yourself and sell your book, make sure you have a good plan for promoting your work before going this route. Lesson Four will give you more information about doing that.

It is less costly to self-publish chapbooks rather than full-length books, and these are often most marketable as well. Readers are often more likely to purchase shorter, and less expensive, chapbooks of poetry rather than full-length books.

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