What kind of writer do you want to be?

In my Foreword to Corvix, I went into some depth about the nature of poetry, not so much in terms of technique, but more in terms of what poetry is. I said nothing about publishing and marketing, however, and this blog post is intended to fill that gap.

What kind of writer do you want to be: the kind who is content just to share poems among friends or the kind who realises they have a gift and spends hours crafting and honing their poems? If you are the latter, you may certainly want to publish at some stage, but you may want to dip a toe in the water first and get feedback from other writers via sites like Reedsy Discovery and Quora Poem Circle. You will find plenty of editors and peer reviewers on Reedsy Discovery and other poetry forums who will honestly tell you what you need to sharpen up. 

Once you have sharpened and polished your style, however, there is the issue of publishing. I will honestly state up front that I went about things probably the wrong way round. I kept writing, for the shear joy of writing, and soon I had enough poems for a book, and, having been passed over by Faber, I decided to abandon mainstream publishers and self-publish. I got my book professionally reviewed on Kirkus Media, Reedsy Discovery and Onlinebookclub.org, and then I hired the fabulous Katie Bolin from Design for Authors (again through Reedsy Discovery) to build me an author website, which is the one you are looking at. An author website is a marketing tool: it is designed to establish not only an online presence for the author but additionally allows the dissemination of the author, the author’s books and their book reviews throughout the web through the strategic use of metadata. At this point, I should also mention the importance of adding a page with samples of one’s work. You see, it is all very well to copyright your book and sit tight waiting for someone to find it, but the chances are they won’t unless they have seen the book or sample poems live on the Internet. As Austin Kleon states in his useful book Show Your Work, conventional advertising is all very well but there is no substitute for people actually seeing your work. Put another way, one can make the most inflated claims but people will trust what they see and read.

Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work is perfect for authors marketing their book

I stated earlier that I probably went about publishing the wrong way round. So, what is the right way round? Well, if one is looking to be published, one really needs to create a name for oneself or some manner of track record instead of jumping through the stage curtains saying, “Here I am!” The reason is, that if you are going to publish, you need to have an existing audience anticipating your book. This is why most writers of poetry will publish to poetry journals or even join the Poetry Society long before they consider bringing out their first book. This is not a guarantee that your work will be published – you may need to do more work on your craft, but if and when one does have a poem published it is a confidence boost. One needs to be patient here. It can take two months before one’s poem appears in a journal (yes, it is grindingly slow). Use that time to keep writing.

When one has written enough poems for a book, it might be advisable to test the waters and hire one of Reedsy’s editors who specialises in poetry to critique your work. If one gets good feedback, then it is time to make a choice: does one look for a mainstream publisher or a small independent publisher who specialises in poetry.

From experience, few mainstream publishers specialise in poetry, the exception being Faber. Even fewer will entertain new writers and certainly no writer without a track record in journal publishing and winning an award. The prime example is Amanda Gorman who, in 2017, achieved the distinction of the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, afterward being chosen as the youngest inaugural poet in the Presidential election of 2021 with her poem The Hill We Climb. She has also founded a creative writing program for young people called One Pen One Page.  The lesson is that Amanda Gorman did not come out of nowhere; she already had a solid record of achievement before even her first book was published by Viking, not merely through writing but by raising her profile through helping young, disadvantaged writers.

The next hurdle is the matter of agents. Mainstream publishers of poetry will not accept unsolicited manuscripts but only manuscripts from an agent, an exception being Faber. How does one acquire an agent who deals in poetry? Very difficult. Because poetry is not written in industrial quantities (unlike novels) the average agent will not earn enough commission from it to justify taking it on. A further hurdle is the matter of genres. Mainstream publishers exploit niches or trends in the market, so they will not publish general poetry. Currently, the major trends in poetry are African American, feminist and LGBT, so if one’s poetry doesn’t fit one of those neat commercial categories, one doesn’t have much hope of being published mainstream. Additionally, one will likely be tied to a contract to produce at least one book a year aimed at that market, so there is a certain loss of autonomy and choice involved, especially as the publisher will own the rights to one’s work.

The alternative is to go to one of the smaller independent publishers who are often supported by the Arts Council, an example being Bloodaxe Books, based in York here in the U.K, but there are many others. Again, research these individually. Some publish generic poetry, but more will specialise in a particular genre such as feminist or dark poetry. Most will accept a manuscript without an agent but will look for a track record of journal publishing before they will accept your book.

A third option is to publish privately or through a so-called hybrid publisher who will assume the risk but also ask you to make a financial contribution. Beware, however, that if the hybrid publisher prints a run of several thousand copies and they don’t sell, you may be required to buy them back, which could be financially ruinous. Read the contract carefully.

I decided to publish privately (through an excellent and dependable company called Publishing Push) which carried the advantage of owning the rights to my work and being able to write the type of poetry I choose to write, which is whatever my inspiration comes up with, and not for a commercial niche market. The downside is that, as an independent author, I am responsible for marketing my book. Whereas mainstream publishers have marketing budgets running into the thousands, I don’t. Hence the necessity of getting my book professionally reviewed, building an author website and an author page on Amazon Author Central (and, yes, one can import professional reviews into one’s Author Central page, so they appear on one’s Amazon book page).

Publishing Push are an ethical publishing house for self-publishing authors

A further advantage of self-publishing is that my book is published as print-on-demand, which means that when anyone orders a copy, a copy is printed for that person. The downside is that print-on-demand does not carry the economies of scale that a standard print run carries. In other words, there are no volume savings. For a little-known author, however, it is the safer bet. Another plus of self-publishing, however, is that if the book’s professional reviews are positive, it can be a stepping stone to being signed up by a traditional publisher or at least getting taken on by an agent.

Finally, a word about discounts. If one self-publishes, the chances are that one’s book will be listed on all the mainstream booksellers’ web sites. For e-books, a seller discount of 35% is pretty standard, but if one wants to get the book into physical bookstores, then a trade discount of 55% is considered standard practice. It seems high but it gives booksellers a margin whereby they can reduce the price of the book and still make a healthy profit. It also allows for middle-ranking distributors to split the discount between themselves and the bookseller. For example, Waterstones buys in from Gardners Books who, in turn, will order a customer copy from the main distributor, which in my case is Ingram Spark. Gardners and Waterstones will then split the 55% discount between them. This can reduce one’s net profit per book, but if the book does well, one can make one’s money back through volume sales.

In closing, allow me to impart some advice that lies outside the realm of marketing but is probably the most important piece of advice that can be given to a writer. In this commercialised world, we measure ‘success’ by volume sales, but really this doesn’t define success. What defines success is establishing a literary reputation that will survive you, i.e. becoming a great writer of memorable books. It is not enough to be the ‘next big thing’; you need to be ‘big’ after you’ve gone. In terms of poetry, that means you may only sell a couple of hundred books in your lifetime until your work permeates the ‘literary consciousness’ and you achieve the status of ‘great modern poet’. Take, for example, T.S. Elliot whose poem The Wasteland only sold 330 copies in its first nine months, but has now become a staple of the canon, cementing Elliot’s reputation in the process. There are volume sales and there are steady sales, and steady sales over a century count for more than a passing fashion.

So, I hope this inside-look into the word of poetry publishing has been instructive and will guide prospective writers of poetry in the right direction.