So, it is with some sadness I point you to the “Farewell Issue” of Endicott Studio’s Journal of Mythic Arts. I was honored to be asked for some poems for this final issue, and am going to mourn this journal – a combination of scholarly essays on fairy tales and mythic archetypes, smart fiction, and imaginitive poetry.
http://www.endicott-studio.com/jMA08Farewell/index.html
This is a frighteningly accurate portrayal of how difficult it is to sell poetry books, even for a hard-working poet (and thanks to Ron Silliman for the link:)
http://criticalmiscellany.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/selling-your-book/
But you may want to substitute “blogs” for discussion boards.
The two places where my experiences diverged with any signifigance from the one written about there were:
1. I was lucky enough to have my poems read by Garrison Keillor, on a national radio show, besides being on the local public radio show. Any national media attention is going to really help poetry book sales, so I am grateful to the people that make that happen on a regular basis.
2. My university reading experiences were almost uniformly much better than the one described in the essay, mainly due to the hard work of the faculty who asked me to come out in promoting my reading, more enthusiastic-than-usual poetry students, and probably the good will of said students for said faculty, who were all very well-liked. Due to that, I am much more likely to be excited by a chance to read and come talk at a university – I’ve had very good experiences so far!
But it is a reminder that no matter how hard we poets work, the sad fact is many more people want to buy fiction, non-fiction, and anything else rather than poetry books. Even our fellow poets.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
Felicity
v. depressing stuff about the state of trying to sell poetry. Obviously something extreme is in order.
Someone needs to pitch “America’s Next Top Poet” to the studios.
jeannine
Yes, something along the genre of “So You Think You Can Write…”
Or perhaps “Project Poetry.”
Karen J. Weyant
I hear that a lot — that poets don’t buy poetry books, and I have always found that a bit odd because I do buy poetry books — in fact, poetry books make up the biggest part of my collection!!! But I’ve always said that in some ways, I’m more of a reader than a writer.
jeannine
Dear Karen,
I know you do – I do too! and a lot of the peeps who read this blog probably do as well. I think the majority, however, do not.
I must be hauling ten boxes of poetry books around with me on my moves – that’s got to prove some kind of dedication, right? 🙂
Radish King
I wish I could make my editor rich. i doubt that will happen. And I never expected to get rich playing the poetry game. What pleases me is selling one or two books at a time and hearing later from the readers that they loved them. Maybe I have lower expectations, but that’s where the big bang lies for me.
jeannine
Dear R,
That is pretty much my happy-dance moment also.
But the essay is a good reminder of how difficult it is to promote a book of poetry, even if you have the will and the time.
Radish King
I don’t think any of us middlin’ poets expect to sell the amount of books Billy Collins sells. The selling business is sweat and supporting each other and doing what needs to be done, certainly, but that’s the best we can expect. Some people are lucky and can make it a full time business. Others sit at home filing their nails waiting for someone else to make them famous. Good luck. Most of us just scumble along as best we can. I think it’s a non-issue that hasn’t changed much over the years.
jeannine
I thought I’d post my Dad’s hilarious responses to this essay, a tongue-in-cheek suggestion list for selling poetry!
Now there are ways to sell your books. Here are some ideas.
1. Become leader of some country and make your book mandatory reading for
all citizens. This worked with Mao and His Little Red Book.
2. Start a religion and make your books required reading for all your
converts. This worked pretty well with the Bible and even with L. Ron
Hubbard.
3. Include your poetry in a vital user manual for a computer system and
imbed the instructions necessary to run the computer in your poems as hints.
Actually some of the .Net books seem to be written like this already.
4. Invent a new game or cross word puzzle in which the answers are fill in
the blanks from your poetry. You have the target audience, females, and the
theme, superheroes. This worked quite well for Rubic with his cube and with
suduko.
5. Become a political activist and write the manifesto in poetry like Karl
Marx.
6. Talk to Post or Kellogg’s and get them to put your poetry on ceral boxes.
This might require winning several gold medals at the Olympics first.
7. Embed your poetry in comics, songs, fortune cookies or some other treat
like Jorge Cham: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
8. Start a web site in which people can post their poetry, charge a fee and
slip you poetry in as advertising. This sure worked well for http://www.youtube.com
. I bet you would be surprised at how popular such a site would become.
So see there are ways but you have to be creative.
The other way is to be a teacher and slowly but surely your fame will grow 🙂