Publish Your Poetry Book (Without Getting Scammed)

Recently, I received an email from a local writer, asking for advice on how to publish a book of poems. I’ve never read her poetry, so I could only give general advice, and since I get this kind of question a lot, I thought I’d post my reply here.

Publishing a book of poetry can be a long and arduous process, so be patient and don’t give up! Poetry publishing in the U.S. is not extremely lucrative for publishers or for the poet, so it is hard to find a publisher who is willing to take on an unknown or little-known author. But there are are ways. There is a lot of competition and it can take awhile to get noticed. Here are a few ideas and resources that might help.

Before publishing a book, most poets publish in magazines. That gets your name out there and helps develop a readership. Publishers also look for evidence that other editors have approved of your writing when they evaluate your work (at least if the work isn’t submitted anonymously, which is sometimes a requirement). So seek out good literary magazines and send the individual poems to them before you start shopping the book manuscript around. Once poems are published in a book, they usually can’t be republished in a magazine, but poems published in a magazine often end up in a book. So you want magazine publication for a good number of your poems before they are accepted in a book.

Poets & Writers is one of the best resources for information on poetry magazines. I’ve also found that Lit Line, New Pages, and The Poetry Resource Page have good indexes of literary magazines with links to the magazine’s websites. Research many of them, read what they have online, and subscribe to some. This will help you get a sense of what is being published and where it is published. In a small way, you’ll also be supporting the industry you want to be a part of.

But you may already be doing this. Another thing to do that will help you know whether your writing is publishable (yet), is to join a writing group. If you have friends who read your writing now, that is great. If those friends also publish, even better. If you want to go to the next level, then consider attending a summer workshop or other writing seminar (or taking a class or going to an MFA program). There are many opportunities for week or month-long writer’s seminars or colonies. The sites I mentioned will have lists of these opportunities. Though it’s not required that you earn an MFA or go through a seminar to publish, it can be an invaluable experience, where you learn more about your craft, but also learn about the publishing process and make new writer friends, possibly even network.

Finally, to actually publishing your book. Many first poetry books these days are published through a contest. The entry fee helps fund the publication costs, and the reputation of the contest helps guarantee an audience for the published book. It’s nice to be able to say you won a prize (though frankly, publishing a book is prize enough for many of us!).

Just beware about the prizes that are out there. There are many legitimate ones and many scams. A legitimate first book prize will usually have an entry fee that is anywhere from $10 – $50 ($25 seems to be about the norm, though, so I’d look carefully at a much more expensive one). It will pay a prize and publish your book — often you get some copies as part of your prize. Many will publish more than just the first-place manuscript. You will enter with your whole book manuscript, and you often get a copy of the winning book or a subscription to a literary magazine along with your entry fee. A legitimate first book prize will also usually announce the name of the judge, and will follow guidelines aimed at keeping the judging legit (no friends or former students may submit, for instance). The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses has a code of ethics for contests. if a contest follows this, that is a very good sign.

Contests with no entry fee are often scams (the costs pile up later). Some are notorious for accepting anything sent to them, no matter how ridiculous (and people have tried to get rejected). There is no fee, but you are expected to purchase an expensive anthology, then flattered and offered an expensive conference and other perks that come at a price. If you’re not familiar with the source of the contest, do some searching to find out if it is legit before you send them your work.

You can also query publishers directly. You should know a lot about the publisher before you do this, though. Read their books to know whether your work is likely to be a good fit for their readers. If you feel you’re ready to go this route, then read their submission guidelines to be sure they will take ‘over the transom’ submissions. Usually you would send a sample from your manuscript, about 10 pages, along with a cover letter. If they’re interested, they’ll get back to you. If they aren’t, you’ll likely get a polite form letter. Don’t feel bad, though. Any press that will accept unsolicited manuscripts likely receives hundreds of query letters. Agents generally won’t work with an unpublished poet, either. Which is why contests are the first avenue for many writers.

Note that there are chapbook contests (for manuscripts of 24-48 pages, as a general rule), first book contests (48+ pages, though more than 80 is probably getting too long), and open book contests (open to any poet and not any poet who hasn’t published a book). There may be some other types of contest guidelines, but those are the most frequent. Obviously your chances are better in a first book competition, though that doesn’t mean you might not win an open competition. It’s all up to the judge, especially when the entries are anonymous, as they often are.

So how can you win a contest or get a publisher to notice your book? The obvious response would be to write really good poems! That may not always be enough, however. It is also important to craft a good book. The order of poems and structure of the book is integral to its success. Revising and polishing poems between submissions and reordering and rethinking the thematic structure of the book can lead to a stronger manuscript. Don’t just print them in the order that you wrote them, in other words. Look for recurring themes, emotions, ideas. Consider a structure that ties these together. Be willing to cut the poems (even published poems) that don’t fit the book — maybe they’ll make it into your next one!

As you read books of poetry, look for patterns the poet may have used to order the manuscript. Though it may not be obvious, I used a seasonal pattern in Time Capsules. Think about possible models or read about the process of composing a book. Though I haven’t read it, a good friend, poet Anna Leahy, has recommended Ordering the Storm by Susan Grimm for its thoughts on moving from manuscript to finished book. You might enjoy Anna’s conversation with three other poets about their first book experience, published on Bookslut.

Publishing a book can be a long, drawn-out process. If approached with the right attitude, it can be rewarding and not just frustrating. But it will be frustrating, more than likely, so do have a support group of friends who write and encourage each other. There is nothing better for your self-esteem when the rejections come back (and they will) than knowing that there are people you respect who respect your writing. If you don’t have a group like this yet, then seek one out. Good luck!

Write about place

I have often given my creative writing students the journal assignment to write about a place they remember from when they were 8-13 years old. This seems to work well, since we all have someplace we used to go that holds a lot of memories. The combination of memory and description can be evocative, charging the language and the imagery with emotion.

This time, since we were out with a snow/ice day and because I felt like trying something a little different, I changed the assignment a little. I still asked students to write about a place, but I made it any place they have an emotional attachment to: where you had your first date or your first anything, really, or a place that you visited frequently. I suppose it could be a place that your parents went to and then took you to. I asked them to write without naming the emotion, but trying to evoke the emotion through the language and images they choose. I want to have them do some work together in groups to begin turning these paragraphs into poems about the place, though I won’t mind if the poems then get revised back into a story at some later date.

Historical Markers

Columbus, MS, Marker
Here’s a writing exercise I haven’t given to any of my classes (yet), mostly because I’m not sure when they’ll be driving.

Stop at a historical marker. It may be one you pass on a regular basis without sopping or one that you see on a trip. Read the marker and look around you. Note at least four interesting words from the text of the marker and at least four interesting things in your field of vision. These words do not have to go together, and the more you find, the more you’ll have to draw on. Once you’ve made your lists (either while you’re still at the marker or later) begin a text (poem, story, essay, etc.) by combining words from the marker with the descriptions of things or motions or colors, etc., that you saw. Ideally you will be combining something of the past with something of the present.

The point of the exercise is not to write about the subject of the historical marker, though that might happen, but to allow both the present and the history of a place into your writing to provide greater depth. That’s why it’s best to actually be there. If you don’t have your notebook with you, take a picture of the marker. Nonetheless, having been there will give you memories and impressions of the place that a picture someone else has taken of a marker won’t provide. You know the sounds and the temperature of that place on the day you saw it. You know where you had just been and where you were going, who you were with or who you were going to see, and a million other things about the experience that give it an emotional depth for you, which you can mine in your writing.

This is an exercise that I have done, though a little less formally than I’ve described it here. A couple summers ago, my family and I were traveling around the midwest and saw markers indicating we were on a continental divide. This led to a poem or two, as I contemplated the idea of a watershed, that just a slight rise (not the mountain chain we usually think of) can mark the difference between water flowing north or south, east or west (or northeast/southwest, etc.). Subtle variations in our landscape have a dramatic effect, when all the results pool into Lake Michigan or Superior, for instance. Taoists call this principle of water seeking the downward path of least resistance wu wei and recognize its power.

Thinking of the world in those terms, human interactions on the surface of the planet seem insignificant, as my son’s science homework reminded me today. He was studying the earth’s mantle and core, and learned that the radius of the earth is approximately 4,000 miles (give or take a few for mountains or deep ocean trenches, wrinkles in the peel of the apple, as the homework assignment described it). What are we in this perspective? Spores of mold migrating around on the skin of a great, big, round potato?

(Barb Johnson’s discussion of pomme de terre, the French term for potato (as opposed to the Cajun patate reminded me that the potato is a more appropriate ‘earth apple’ — the Dutch have the same dichotomy aardappel in standard Dutch patat in dialect).

Morning Walk in Snow

This morning was a rare snowy day in Columbus, Mississippi, and Zinneke and I took our usual walk along the Riverwalk. On the way, all was quiet. Not many vehicles on the street, and only a few pedestrians. Some of our friends were down near the river, sledding with kayaks. Once we got to the main Riverwalk, we were on our own with only footprints and animal tracks. Snow on all the fields and the branches of the trees, slush in all the lower areas of the path, though the bridge over a small creek had a couple of inches of soft, white snow on it. Time seemed to practically stand still. The only sound, it seemed, was the crunch of my shoes and the dog’s paws in the snow. Walking back into town, was walking back into real life. A few more people out and a couple of dogs on the street. The snow lasted all day, along with a little of the glow of a quiet morning walk.

New Year’s (blog) Resolution

Early this New Year’s morning, I had a dream of teaching a creative writing class in an apartment. All my students showed up gradually, starting at 1:00 a.m., since the class time hadn’t been announced. I had them all do calisthenics to warm up and dreamt up several ideas for class. I probably won’t make all my creative writing students do stretches before class next semester, but this dream did lead me to make up a resolution for the blog this year — write more (obviously) and include more writing exercises. So here is a first one…

Take a Hike

Go for a walk of at least 10 minutes. Don’t avoid the weather (though it’s all right to use an umbrella, raincoat, parka, sunscreen, etc.) On your walk consider an idea for writing. The idea does not have to come from the walk, though it may. You might start out with an idea in mind or look for one during your walk. Let the experience of the walk influence your thinking. Allow the weather to influence the mood or a random event (traffic, animal sighting, encounter with a person, etc.) to enter the scene you are working on. Either bring a small notebook with you and write down your ideas at one or more stopping points in the walk or immediately upon returning from the walk, sit down and work at least 15 minutes on a draft.

This kind of exercise goes back at least as far as Wordsworth’s idea of emotion recollected in tranquility. Goethe was also well known for taking long walks when writing, and Wallace Stevens said he composed most of his poems while walking to and from the office in Hartford Connecticut. Many poets have credited the rhythm of walking with the cadence in their poems, and it is often a good idea to introduce reality through random elements in a creative work.

Comfort Food: Pumpkin Bread

Everyone has their own ideas about comfort food. I know I certainly have my old stand-by’s, dishes that I gravitate to when I need that little something extra. Often those are the foods of our childhood, but now and then we find new ones. Risotto is one of our faves for its rich, creamy texture, though it takes lots of stirring before it’s done.

Today, though, Aidan and I made what may become another of those special dishes: pumpkin bread. The recipe was fairly easy — a lot like zucchini bread or banana bread, but with pumpkin we had baked a few days ago (in a pan with an inch or so of water in the bottom). It was a big pumpkin, so we’ve made pumpkin risotto, pumpkin pasta, soup with pumpkin, etc. The bread is one of those true comfort foods, though, and that’s probably because of the spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove (or alspice, but we were out).

The recipe comes from one of my favorite websites: Pick Your Own. I’ve gone here to find local u-pick orchards and to find recipes for anything you can pick in one. They usually have good ideas, and their pumpkin bread recipe, though basic, is great (they even tell you how to cook a pumpkin and what kind to select — we ignored most of that advice because we had already bought the pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern that never got carved, and I had already baked it the way I had heard to do it before).

I did alter the recipe, based on experience and the comments on their site. A couple people mentioned using apple sauce, and I remembered that in any carrot cake, quick bread, etc. recipe, you can usually substitute 1/2 the oil with the same amount of apple sauce. It’s a great way to make a low-fat recipe out of something fairly decadent, and it works great. I also cut the sugar, though not as much as some people did. I used 2 cups instead of the 3 that the recipe calls for or the 1.5 that many people used. (I kept some more sugar because the pumpkin we started with wasn’t too sweet to begin with, and we wanted to give one of the loaves away.)

You don’t even have to eat it to enjoy this bread. Just the aroma is enough, though once you’ve had a whiff of it, you won’t be able to not eat any! It’s less decadent than pumkin pie, and is easier to put together, but the taste is almost as good. So next time I have some pumpkin around (canned will work, too) and am in the need of a little extra warmth in my life, I know just what to make.

Happy Holidays….

A few thoughts on eBooks

A student in one of my classes has started bringing a funny little book to class — her Kindle. She loves it, and I can see the allure (especially given the weight of most students’ backpacks), but we’ve come across a problem. Her Kindle editions don’t include the original page numbers! So how can she cite her source?

If I had known before she bought her device, I might have recommended against the Kindle, and not just because the name sounds too much like my own (and makes no sense — though the iPad name has been criticized as well). I would have recommended an iPad because it does so much more than a Kindle and because I’m an Apple fan, though I do like the e-Ink screen on the Kindle.

Page numbers are the biggest issue, though, when reading books in an academic setting. They are a feature that should be possible to turn on or off, in my opinion, depending on how and why you want to read. When searching for a solution, I came across a GoodReads post that suggested book clubs might want page numbers so everyone can know if they are on the ‘same page.’

That search led me to what may be the solution (or a partial solution) for Kindle owners. The eBook format by ePub does include original page numbers. It is the format used by Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the iPad, and several other e-Readers. Naturally, the Kindle doesn’t support it, but there may be a work around.

Fortunately there is an ebook management program called Calibre The software is open source and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it will convert your ePub eBook file to the MOBI format that the Kindle will read.

I haven’t tried this, but here is how I assume it should work. If you want to read a book for academic purposes (or to have page numbers that correspond to an original print version), BUY the ebook in ePub format or another format that has original page numbers. Keep a copy of that formatted file on your computer. You can use Calibre to read it as a reference for when you need the page numbers. Convert the file to a copy in MOBI format and sync this with your Kindle. Now you can read the book anywhere on the device of your choice (the one you own) and still have access to page numbers.

If you haven’t bought the ePub version of the book, then I recommend you either do that, buy a cheap used copy in print, or borrow someone’s print copy when you are ready to look up the page numbers. This will be painful, but it’s what you need to do in order to properly cite the page in a paper. (On an exam, I may allow references to chapters, though that is only useful when the chapters are relatively short.)

If you don’t own a Kindle, then I would recommend against it for use in college or any other setting where knowing what page you are on would be useful. Look into other readers like the iPad, the Nook, etc. that do give you access to the original page numbers (not the page of the book when you’ve formatted it for viewing on your screen — some formats will give you this number based on the words that fit on a screen as formatted, not based on the original page number from another physical edition of the book).

If you like the Kindle best as a reader, then you should look into ways to access the page numbers from a standard edition and then purchase a ebook formatted with that information so you can access it somehow — even if you read it on the Kindle or other device that doesn’t support page numbers. I will agree that finding the page number on an electronic format of the book is probably easier than locating it in the physical book (which is why I want the true page number in your papers!) because you can search for the quoted passage.

For better or worse, eBooks will likely become a part of academic life more and more in the near future. Dealing with the issues of citation is something we will have to do. It may be that someday eBooks will be so ubiquitous that we don’t need to reference pages anymore, but for now when the printed book is the standard format, it still is a necessary requirement. So before you buy your eBook reader or at least before you buy your next eBook file, look into the format and whether it has all the information you need, like page numbers, especially if you need to use the book for a class.

Depending on where you buy your eBook file, though, there may be DRM (Digital Rights Management) software that keeps you from converting the file to another format or from playing it on another type of player. I haven’t tried this or researched it enough yet to know for sure. Do look into that before you spend money on an eBook or a reader. If I learn more, I may post a follow-up here.

Finding Myself

One of the joys and pains of authorship is finding yourself in print. Of course, it is a joy when you have slaved over a manuscript and seen it through to publication. Nothing compares to the moment a new book comes out or a poem appears in a magazine.

But is it vain or is it just necessary to occasionally search for yourself? I mean when you get that itch to Google your name. Is it a bad thing? Today’s experience tells me it is necessary, and this isn’t the first time this has happened to me… The good news is, I found myself. I just didn’t know where I had gone.
On a happy note, Google Books came up with a reference to my translation of a poem by Paul Snoek that is quoted in A Literary History of the Low Countries. You’ve got to love that. Not only does it help promote Paul Snoek, whose collected poems I spent many years with and would still like to publish more of in translation, but it is a scholarly use of my book Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus. Now who could complain about that?

It was a little more unsettling, though, to find two of my translations of poems by Luke Gruuwez and Charles Ducal on a blog that I didn’t know about. On the one hand, I’m honored to have been included. On the other hand, this is use of copyrighted material without my permission. Now, since I wouldn’t expect to be paid for a blog publication, and these are not translations of poems that I am actively trying to publish elsewhere, I simply wrote the publisher of the blog to request that they ask for permission before they make an further use of these or other translations of mine. I thanked them for considering my work, and suggested some other poets whose work I have translated, so perhaps something good will come of it after all. And it is nice to see my name in print (or pixels) and be recognized as a translator.

Still, it does give you pause. If you are a writer and you have published work, it may not be vain to Google yourself. It is probably a habit we all need to get into, if for no other reason than the protection of our copyright. Of course, in this case, I’m more concerned that there was a publication that I didn’t know about than with any loss of value. However, if I were trying to publish these poems in a magazine, then publication online might make that impossible. An author or translator needs to be informed when his or her work is being used (unless it is fair use, such as quoting a passage).

I’ve heard horror stories of poets who have found their work plagiarized — published under someone else’s name. Maybe we should all Google more than just our names. So the next time you ask me if I Google myself, don’t be surprised if I answer: “Yes, as often as possible!”

It Could Have Been Music

As I turn from grading exams and essays back to getting ready for this year’s Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, coming up in less than two weeks, I am thinking about this year’s theme. It could have been a musical theme, at least judging by our poets.

Shirlette Ammons’ book includes an extended play CD with music from her group Mosadi, which has played with bands like the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Known as a stellar performer, Shirlette is bound to give a great reading on Friday morning.

Mitchell L. H. Douglas has dedicated his first book of poems to the legacy of soul legend Donny Hathaway. His book Colling Board is formatted like an old LP record with two sides and alternate takes of poems that retell events of Hathaway’s life from different perspectives.

Sean Hill also uses musical call and response in his rendition of life in the twentieth century African American community in Milledgeville, Georgia. And Beth Ann Fennelly has been influenced by blues and rock and roll, according to a critic writing for Booklist.

Front Row Happiness

My internal geek is happy. I finally found the solution I’ve been looking for, and it’s been right there all along — an overlooked piece of Apple software, Front Row. (Click on the icon to see what Apple has to say about it.)

When we first bought the Mini, I knew it came with FR, but didn’t really give a hoot. After all, FR is primarily billed as a way to run iTunes or watch Apple’s iTunes video, using a remote control. Big deal, right? We use Netflix for streaming movies and don’t want or need a lot more. Internet video (Kim and Aidan are enjoying ESPN3 which we get through ATT DSL service, since they watch Alabama football), and we watch some movie trailers or youTube videos now and then. None of that works with Front Row (or at least it won’t work without some tweaking).

But what we do have that I was looking for a better solution for viewing are personal videos — lots of them. Aidan takes fiddle lessons, and we record every song as a short video clip. I had been making VCDs of them, but this took many steps, lots of time, lots of disk space, and quite a few CDs and DVDs to store them on. I was running out of both time and disks and really wanted to use the computer to play them, as long as it’s connected to a TV. Makes sense, right?

It worked, but it was ugly and challenging to use QuickTime to view the video. We had to open individual files by clicking on them, and this brought up the biggest limitation of connecting the Mini to a TV as the monitor — the type on screen, when viewed from the distance of the couch (optimal for watching movies) is too small. We’ve worked around this for web browsing, but using the Finder to do much is a pain. Certainly, I didn’t want to click through the Finder to get to each movie, then expand it to full screen mode, and finally play each song.

So I was looking for a viewer like iTunes to help me organize my content, and I couldn’t find much of anything for a Mac that would work. That usually means one of two things — I want to do something few other people are interested in OR Apple has already invented it. I tried a few programs that might work: iTunes wouldn’t play our video format, so I would have had to convert every file (one step I was trying to avoid). QuickTime won’t browse a folder. iPhoto might have worked, but seemed counterintuitive to me, and I wasn’t sure about formats.

Then I happened to see Front Row and realized I might give it a try. As it turns out, it will play any movie (in a QuickTime format, I suppose) in your Movies folder, as well as playing online content from iTunes or content in your iTunes library. Better yet, it recognizes folders within the Movies folder, so I can organize movies by date or by groups of lessons, keeping the newest ones on top, but allowing us to go back and review older songs and find them quickly. If I want, I can put subfolders within each main folder to hold different versions (we tape slow versions, and some versions of the difficult fingerings, as well as a couple of different versions that his teacher plays on different days or with variations to the melody, but after awhile Aidan doesn’t need all these slower versions, since he’s learned the song).

The best features are that the interface is simple and intuitive. We can use an Apple Remote or the keyboard, and we just use arrow keys and enter to go from directory to directory or from song to song and choose what we want. It’s easy to get out of when we’re done. The text is big enough to read (white on a black background, so it’s very visible), since it’s designed to be used with a TV as the monitor. And finally, the movies play at full screen automatically.

Front Row would work well for any kind of personal video — home movies or whatever. I’ve seen people who use it to play their DVD libraries that they’ve ripped to the hard drive (something I don’t imagine we’ll ever do). I need to look into using it to play Netflix, but I don’t think that’s available yet. I have heard that Boxee does something similar, but haven’t tried it out yet. For now, I’m happy to play with Front Row for awhile and organize our personal video files for easy viewing.

Since Front Row is so simple to use, and it won’t take me long to organize the songs into folders, maybe I’ll have time to actually learn a few of the songs Aidan can play!