Mar 20Liked by Mark Danowsky, Marc Alan Di Martino
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.
Mar 20Liked by Mark Danowsky, Marc Alan Di Martino
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.
Mar 21Liked by Mark Danowsky, Marc Alan Di Martino
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.
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.
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.
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!