Some links to suggestions from other publishers:

Check for Jennifer Bosveld's advice at Pudding House Publications. "Marketing Your Chapbooks."

WordTech Publications has some good advice at their home page:  "Marketing Tips"

We'll add more here as we come across other pages with good advcie on poetry book sales.

Why you will not earn much money through sales of your book to Amazon and to bookstores

Your publisher will, generally, print @250 copies of your chapbook and maybe up to a thousand copies of your full-length book.  Why so few?  Because experience over the years has demonstrated that only the very rare collection of poems sells more copies than that. Isn't there an economy of scale a publisher can benefit from in publishing, say, 10,000 copies of a book instead of 500?  Yes, there is.  But that economy of scale assumes that approximately 10,000 copies will be sold.  That does not happen with 99% of poetry books published.  It is, in other words, a false economy of scale.  Look at it this way:  If it costs $15,000 to print 10,000 copies of a book and $2,000 to print 1,000 copies and you sell the book for $10/copy, then:  Yes, assuming you sell 10,000 copies, the publisher and writer earn twice as much.  BUT, you are not going to sell more than 1,000 copies and the publisher loses all of the one dollar bills for the 9,000 other copies.  False economy.   If you win a Pulitzer or NBA or if you are a National Poetry Series winner, you will sell more copies of your book, but that wold make you part of the 1%.  Perhaps you are.  In that case, your publisher can always do a reprint.

So, how do I earn money from my poetry book?

Do readings!  If your book sells for $10/copy and the distributor demands a 65% discount, that means the book earns $3.50 less shipping for each copy sold.  That amount goes to your publisher and is applied to the cost of printing the book in the first place.  In the case of PGP, the poet does not start earning royalties until the cost of printing and binding the book has been paid off.  So, the whole $3.50 goes into a lockbox to pay off the costs to the publisher.  That means that 571 copies of your book (which had a print run of 500) have got to be sold before you get a royalty payment.  Read that again:  We printed 500 and will probably sell about 400 over the first year of the book's life. Over the next two years, we might sell the other copies, but probably not.  And don't forget you got some of those copies when the book was brand new and other copies were sent to reviewers.  It's obviously the publisher's fault!  Why does the publisher keep $3.50 for each copy sold?  because we keep your book in print and will need the money to reprint should you sell enough copies.

You want your book in bookstores and so do we. But visit your local bookstores and see how many contemporary books of poetry they stock?  No, you can't count Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath and Rumi as contemporary!  Realistically, they stock only a few copies of local poets who have read there and then maybe a few copies of nationally known poets.  Unless you already have a national reputation, the chances of your book being stocked at any bookstore out of your hometown(s) is practically nil.

The ONLY way beginning poets earn money from their books is to do readings away from bookstores.  Right now, at PGP and most presses, poets and other writers can purchase copies of their own books at a 40% discount.  That means, simply, that if your book sells for $10, you can make $4 on each copy you sell away from bookstores.  Sell a hundred copies, you earn $400.  Not a fortune, but something.  Sell more, you earn more.

Have your friends arrange book launch parties!!!  Go to readings in various non-bookstore venues.  If you read at Barnes & Noble they will buy the books in advance from a distributor for a 65% discount!!!  You get nothing!!!!  Except a little fleeting celebrity.   But you can have fun at a party thrown for you by one of your friends.  Or by arranging a reading at a local college or a branch of the public library or some other such place.  Become a member of your local Poetry Society!  And you get to keep $4/copy.

Start your own business through PayPal or EBay

Develop your own webpage to promote your books and your reading events.  And have a PayPal button on that page.  Go to PayPal.com and you can find out how to do this.  We do the same thing for you, but you don't get to keep the money.   We appeciate your telling people to go to the Pecan Grove Press website to order but you can, as easily, have them go to your own website to order.  The big difference is that you get more money if they use your PayPal button instead of using ours.  Don't worry about us.  We benefit whenever you sell a book because you buy them from us at your 40% discount.

A few myths in dealing with bookstores

1.  Bookstores buy books.  Well, no, they do not.  That's a huge fraud.  Bookstores take books (even bestsellers) on consignment and pretend to have bought them.   If they don't sell them, they return them to the publisher.  That means they have NOT purchased them

2.  Selling a book to a bookstore means your publisher (and thus you) have made a small profit.  No, that isn't true (see No. 1).  If you see your book in your local bookstore that means only that it's being displayed there.  Not that it was sold.  It can be back in out office a day later.

3.  Bookstores sell books.  No, most do not.  They stock books but make no real effort to sell any books other than bestsellers.  Yours just sits on a shelf trying to sell itself.  Booksellers used to sell books, but they stopped doing that a long time ago.

Most poets who are associated with colleges and universities earn money from their books in a roundabout way:  by using them to get promotions and tenure.  If you are not, you need to be creative about selling your books!

For a discussion of chapbooks, please visit On Chapbooks and Books by H. Palmer Hall.

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