Search for a word or phrase in this book …

Biographical note:  Chris Hamilton-Emery was born in Manchester in 1963 and studied painting and printmaking in Leeds. He is Publishing Director of Salt in Cambridge, England. Writing as Chris Emery, his work has appeared in numerous journals including The Age, Jacket, Magma, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, PN Review, Quid and The Rialto. A first full-length collection, Dr. Mephisto, was published by Arc in 2002. A pamphlet, The Cutting Room, was published by Barque in 2000. He was anthologised in New Writing 8 (Vintage, 1999). A new collection of poetry, Radio Nostalgia, is forthcoming from Arc in 2006. He lives in Great Wilbraham with his wife, three children and various other animals.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844711161
ISBN:  1844711161
Author:  Chris Hamilton-Emery
Title:  101 Ways to Make Poems Sell
Series:  Salt Guides for Readers and Writers
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CGV
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Apr-06
Extent:  156pp
Height:  228 mm
Width:  152 mm
Thickness:  9 mm
Weight:  216 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 10.99
Price:  USD 16.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  101 Ways to Make Poems Sell is an insider’s guide to the poetry business, focusing on the issues that matter: building profile, finding readers and selling books. Hamilton-Emery offers practical and hard-earned advice about the ins and outs of marketing poetry and driving sales. Whether you are a novice or an established poet, this book provides you with over a hundred tools and techniques to help sell your books, keep your publisher and build a readership around the world.

With over a decade’s experience in international publishing, working as a senior manager and consultant within blue chip companies, Hamilton-Emery offers a frank, funny and insightful tour of the world of poety publishing. Every step of the way you’re offered gems of advice, along with tips and tools you can put into practice straight away, many of them for free, and all of them geared to getting your books into the hands of the people that truly matter: your readers.

Includes step by step advice on:

• Making poetry submissions, including ‘50 dos
  and don’ts’
• Getting reviews, readings and residencies
• Collaboration, competition and contacts
• The poetry scene, power and publicity

Table of contents:

Acknowledgements
Preface
1 Making Poetry Submissions
2 Building your Profile
3 Sorting your Book
4 Selling your Book
Index

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample (488 KB)

Meet the author:

Excerpt from book:  

Why do I write?

Before considering making a poetry submission to any publisher it is important to consider what you want to contribute to a publishing relationship and precisely what you want to achieve within your writing life. This is certainly not a financial contribution, we’re not talking about vanity presses in these notes, it is a far more important contribution than just money. Understanding your intentions and efforts as a writer will, to a large extent, determine what choices are to be made and provide you with a few opportunities and very many challenges. It might surprise you to discover that being published may not be the best choice for you and your work.

There are, of course, as many reasons for writing as there are people on the planet, but understanding your desires (or compulsions) as a writer will help you to think through whether you really want to be published and whether you are prepared to work (often exhaustively) to develop a readership for your writing within a commercial context.

Very many people begin to write poetry in their adolescence and many write from experience of trauma, personal loss or as a form of spiritual or emotional growth. Some write from their first experiences of ethical and political conviction. Some from their first reading of a major poet at school; many learn through emulation. All of these are perfectly valid and rewarding pastimes without any form of publication. You may have had a substantial writing life producing poems as an extension of your emotional experience. However, this is not a test for the financial viability of your poems in a published work.

The authenticity of your feelings, their depth, novelty and sincerity, are not markers for commercial success. Many publishers will recognise the characteristics of such poetry and flinch from the memory of heart–felt writing, from young and old alike, which fails to stimulate the reader beyond calls for sympathy. Alas, sympathy does not sell books, it sells greeting cards.

Emotional excess and the unburdening of strong personal feelings can be a major impetus to writing, but this is rarely the sole basis of a successful poem. Some poets do this well, but the measure of their success lies not in the expression of their personal feelings (or their excess), but in how they have engaged the reader and transcended such conditions with new language. In this way, the commercial publication of poetry demands reciprocity and interaction with a readership. Frequently the reader is a participant in the very process of the poem, active rather than passive. You may be the best reader of your own work, but without someone else, the poem is incomplete, and without a buyer it cannot be published.

Many poets and commentators will correctly state that the writer works first for themselves; there is no doubt that this is true. But as soon as you seek to develop a readership beyond your family, friends and colleagues, you will establish for yourself a set of ambiguous responsibilities. Clarifying and articulating these responsibilities will define your writing. If you want people to pay for your poems, to give up their time and effort in order to engage with your work, then one responsibility is commercial. Why should anyone pay money to read you? More importantly, why do you think that they will? It isn’t the publisher’s job to answer such questions, it’s their job to ask them.

What does publication mean for my writing?

Being published means entering into a partnership with a publisher and commits you to the serious application of your time and talent to finding readers and marketing your work. If you are not primarily interested in helping to sell books, you do not need to approach a publisher, as they almost certainly won’t succeed in making sales on your behalf without your active participation. Of course, there are many ways to find readers, and selling books is just one of them. But for publishers who depend on books sales to fund their businesses and develop their relationships with their customers, it is of major significance. Not every book has to be a bestseller, few, if any, will be, but every book, it is hoped, will make a positive contribution to the publisher’s financial performance or the cohesion and identity of their list.

This is the commercial publisher’s risk: that their often considerable investment in money and human resources will pay dividends in profitable book sales. Where poetry is concerned, those rewards may be very meagre indeed. Most volumes of poetry sell under a thousand copies, many sell less than 300, and some do not sell at all, despite the massive efforts of all concerned.

You may infer from this that commercial publication bears no real relation to the intrinsic value of your writing. It would be folly to merely seek some form of validation through a publishing relationship. Your work may be highly–prized by the publisher as an asset, but it would be wrong to think of the publisher’s role as primarily one of defining some true value (though they may try very hard to do so for the sake of their profits). The publisher’s primary role is to market and sell books, and to use whatever means are put at their disposal to do so. Good or even great poetry which doesn’t sell will not be of much use to the publisher.

At the end of the day, true value is bestowed by a living readership, and publishers need paying customers, here and now, in order to finance their operations. On the other hand, a poet can write rewarding and committed poetry without ever being published in this way, and can, should they wish, self–publish, or indeed find their writing life fulfilled through giving readings and performances in a range of venues and cultural forums. There are many ways to practise poetry, only one of them requires a commercial publisher and that depends on your wish to develop an impersonal readership willing to pay.

Review quote:  Chris Hamilton-Emery’s list of fifty pointers [about submitting your work] deserves to be pinned up over your desk.

Richard Bell
Writing Magazine

Review quote:  His book is about the place of the poet in relation to the publisher, and how she can help herself to market and realise the full potential of her work in terms of readership. Advice on the importance of the web for marketing and author ‘presence,’ as well as creating personal networks, makes this book a ‘must’ buy for new poets.

Simon Smith
PBS Bulletin

Review quote:  Whether you’re a novice or a published poet, this book really does offer a lot of useful information. In effect it’s a self-help book for poets, providing 101 suggestions about how develop your career as a poet and sell your work. If you’re serious about selling your poems, this book is a must.

Chris Holifield
Writersservices.com