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Do you know of a publisher for poetry? Got any advice?

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Chris OConnor

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Do you know of a publisher for poetry? Got any advice?

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I've got a family member that has been writing poetry for years and she is now considering trying to get some of it published. Do you have any suggestions or advice? Does she just send a sample to a publisher? I know a lot of emerging authors use CreateSpace for publishing their own books. Do any of you have experience with getting poetry published? I'd sure appreciate the help. :)
LeonStevens
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Re: Do you know of a publisher for poetry? Got any advice?

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I just self-published my poetry book. I took a lot of research (and some money) but it was fairly painless. I would be happy to answer any questions, bearing in mind that I'm no expert, but she can learn from my mistakes.

Email me if you want.

Leon
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Re: Do you know of a publisher for poetry? Got any advice?

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I didn't see this when it was originally posted. I hope she achieved what she wanted.

The link below might be of help to her:

https://duotrope.com/

I use that site to submit short stories to magazines. I think there's a 30-day free trial period, then after that it's $50 per year.

I used Duotrope 4-5 years ago to place a couple dozen stories, and recently I signed up again to place some more. You can pick your genre, length, submission type (electronic or print), publication type (electronic or print), whether simultaneous submissions are accepted, and so on. Once the parameters are set the engine generates a list of magazines. You can click through to their websites to read their guidelines and so on. It's a good system.

There's a poetry section that I've never used, but many of the magazines I sub to also accept poetry. I think Duotrope lists 7-8000 magazines in its database, and I think that hundreds are devoted exclusively to poetry.

So that's the way to go, IMO, if she's seeking magazine publication. Response times are lengthy so it takes patience. Thick skin too, since rejection is the norm. I'm getting a lot of rejections now from leftist rags because, you know, they can't handle the truth. She would need to know a bit about formatting a Word document, converting to pdf and such things.

Duotrope has added literary agents (hundreds from the looks of it) since I was last there. I haven't checked out that section yet but I expect some of them handle poetry. She might look at that. An agent would be able to sub her book to publishers. Actually, most publishers don't WANT manuscripts unless they come from an agent.

If she doesn't find an agent or publisher, she could self publish. That's what I do. CreateSpace is the free way. It's affiliated with Amazon. You work up your interior file and your cover file, make sure everything is submitted properly, then activate the book. It becomes available for sale on a print on demand (POD) basis. Fully automated, no backlog of unpurchased copies. When somebody buys a copy, the factory spits one out and mails it. That's for print books. For Kindle books you can just convert your Word document to html and submit that, along with a cover. Robots take care of the rest.

She could hire people to do the print work but it's pricey. I do mine myself and all I pay is $30 per book for the ISBNs. Each book has a distinct library number, and it's a good idea to buy your own rather than let Amazon issue you one of their "free" ones. When they do that they are technically the registrar, so technically the book isn't yours. Or so they could argue in court. It's worth $30 to insure the book is yours and only yours. You buy ISBNs through Bowker or MyIdentifiers.

Hope this helps. If nothing else she might want to poke around Duotrope for free for a month. It's pretty interesting. I'd be glad to answer any questions.
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