It is impossible to sell books without promotion, and the promotion largely falls to the author. I am grateful to have landed with a publisher that is better than most at supporting authors.
Ah, a post I can relate to. That said, my 2023 chap of poems responding to Russia’s war on Ukraine (and sold a whopping 275± copies) was a joy to promote. The two keys for me were that I promoted raising $$ for a specific nonprofit serving Ukrainians stuck in war zones rather than the book. I also promoted the book in the Ukrainian local diaspora community. This was doubly rewarding because of how much poetry is revealed by Ukrainians.
I’ve not done a reading for 7 months for that chap, but your post has me no motivated to schedule a few more. That fact is that there are more folks out there who will appreciate the work — which will, in turn, help me to appreciate who I was when I wrote the poems and assembled the collection.
You have me thinking about what I will do with my collection that Terrapin is publishing this fall. I need to remember that there are folks who will feel like the poems were written just for them — that their reading will be as satisfying for them as the writing was for me.
That's wonderful, Dick - and for a great cause! In fact, the only time I managed to sell some of my books was when I did a book drive after the start of the war, and sent the proceeds to a Ukrainian writers' charity. Thanks for sharing!
This feels so true. I see a bunch of us poets gathered around a well, someone tosses a small coin and we just wait, wait to hear the plop of it hitting the water.
“A poem doesn't actually make the world a better place—not unless someone reads it.”
Putting promotion aside, poetry has never been a best seller. Even great books of poems, many of them, had very small if not almost no sales. Of those books Leaves of Grass is one. Whitman paid for its publication and made no money out of it. It is a fact that a bad book of poems has a better chance of selling copies than a great book of poems. The list of good and great poets who had to make their living doing something else like teaching rather than writing poems is large indeed.
But without some marketing or some type of promotion is almost impossible to get any notice, and the dream of selling copies comes to almost zero. Thus, for better or worse, a book of poems with no promotion or marketing behind it is book destined to accumulate eternal dust.
Your article is quite interesting and you hit on something that every young poet should be aware of, especially those starting out with big dreams.
Well, my idea is that publishers should give some support in marketing their books, and not outsource that exclusively to the authors. That seems to me an unfair burden to shoulder.
There are those publishers that do; they are called traditional. But usually they make that deal with writers who are established or have made some kind of name or reputation for themselves. Beginners and not established authors have a harder time getting those deals. Also you have to write a very good book and know where to send it.
It is impossible to sell books without promotion, and the promotion largely falls to the author. I am grateful to have landed with a publisher that is better than most at supporting authors.
We should all be so lucky, Donna!
I do feel lucky. I have had a time or two of not so lucky!!
Ah, a post I can relate to. That said, my 2023 chap of poems responding to Russia’s war on Ukraine (and sold a whopping 275± copies) was a joy to promote. The two keys for me were that I promoted raising $$ for a specific nonprofit serving Ukrainians stuck in war zones rather than the book. I also promoted the book in the Ukrainian local diaspora community. This was doubly rewarding because of how much poetry is revealed by Ukrainians.
I’ve not done a reading for 7 months for that chap, but your post has me no motivated to schedule a few more. That fact is that there are more folks out there who will appreciate the work — which will, in turn, help me to appreciate who I was when I wrote the poems and assembled the collection.
You have me thinking about what I will do with my collection that Terrapin is publishing this fall. I need to remember that there are folks who will feel like the poems were written just for them — that their reading will be as satisfying for them as the writing was for me.
That's wonderful, Dick - and for a great cause! In fact, the only time I managed to sell some of my books was when I did a book drive after the start of the war, and sent the proceeds to a Ukrainian writers' charity. Thanks for sharing!
This feels so true. I see a bunch of us poets gathered around a well, someone tosses a small coin and we just wait, wait to hear the plop of it hitting the water.
“A poem doesn't actually make the world a better place—not unless someone reads it.”
Thank you.
Thank you for reading, Rebecca!
Putting promotion aside, poetry has never been a best seller. Even great books of poems, many of them, had very small if not almost no sales. Of those books Leaves of Grass is one. Whitman paid for its publication and made no money out of it. It is a fact that a bad book of poems has a better chance of selling copies than a great book of poems. The list of good and great poets who had to make their living doing something else like teaching rather than writing poems is large indeed.
But without some marketing or some type of promotion is almost impossible to get any notice, and the dream of selling copies comes to almost zero. Thus, for better or worse, a book of poems with no promotion or marketing behind it is book destined to accumulate eternal dust.
Your article is quite interesting and you hit on something that every young poet should be aware of, especially those starting out with big dreams.
Good read!
Well, my idea is that publishers should give some support in marketing their books, and not outsource that exclusively to the authors. That seems to me an unfair burden to shoulder.
There are those publishers that do; they are called traditional. But usually they make that deal with writers who are established or have made some kind of name or reputation for themselves. Beginners and not established authors have a harder time getting those deals. Also you have to write a very good book and know where to send it.