[Andrew Frisardi]

If it's any consolation, Janice, the best remedy for a rash is a good poem. Publicized or not.

I remember reading somewhere that the Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez, or maybe it was Lorca, practically had to be forced to publish his poems. His friends had to talk him into it. But I'm sure that Hamilton-Emery is a much better poet than Hernandez or Lorca.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

If it's any consolation, Janice, the best remedy for a rash is a good poem. Publicized or not.

I remember reading somewhere that the Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez, or maybe it was Lorca, practically had to be forced to publish his poems. His friends had to talk him into it. But I'm sure that Hamilton-Emery is a much better poet than Hernandez or Lorca.

Andrew, I admit I'm quite conflicted about the economics of publishing. Chris H-E, who runs Salt Publishing, is undeniably doing good service for poets (for example, Katy Evans-Bush) by publishing their books. Publishers shouldn't have to go broke.

If there's an alternative, I'd love to know about it. Right now, Bill Knott is giving his own books away free as downloads, and also selling them on Lulu at the lowest price Lulu allows, setting his profit at zero.

I agree with Janice that a really terrific poem is the best marketing tool a poet can have.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I didn't mean to suggest that Hernandez's or Lorca's approach is the model for everyone. Just that it's one valid approach that's overlooked a lot these days. Also, there's a line somewhere between distribution and publicity--a vague line for sure, but they aren't the same thing. Poetry books in Italy, for instance, don't have blurbs on them. (On the other hand, they often have boring prefaces written by the poet's friend.) A standard--e.g., blurbs--is set and then it has to be maintained. A book without blurbs in the U.S. now would be like printing an announcement on the back of the book: This is a book by no one that amounts to nothing.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

...A book without blurbs in the U.S. now would be like printing an announcement on the back of the book: This is a book by no one that amounts to nothing.

I can think of only one counterexample: the terrific poem "Anti-blurb," which appeared alone (if I remember correctly) on the back cover of A.E. Stallings's second book Hapax.

I can't resist adding this link: Snark & Blurb: a dialogue.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Andrew, I admit I'm quite conflicted about the economics of publishing. Chris H-E, who runs Salt Publishing, is undeniably doing good service for poets (for example, Katy Evans-Bush) by publishing their books. Publishers shouldn't have to go broke.

That'll teach me me not to jump to conclusions, won't it. I didn't realize it was a publisher who wrote it, I thought it was a self-help, like those "how to write a poem" that drove me up the wall when I had to buy them for university classes. They were expensive too.

So I take it back. If I knew that the book was from the horse's mouth I would buy it. That is finding out things from the source. I hope his credentials were on the book, other Eratosphere members whom I trust have vouched for him.

So don't pay any attention to me, folks. I am always opening my mouth before I leap into a puddle.

You do remember correctly, Maryann. AE Stalling's Antiblurb adorns the back of Hapax. And I bought her books because of Eratospherians who raved about them (I am not always stoopid) and on Alicia's recommendations here, (rather a comment I snapped up as a recommendation,) I bought three books by Agha Shaid Ali and two by Natasha Trethewey and never regreted any of those purchases for a moment.

In a similar way and on the subject of getting published, in my youth, in a foreign country with no peers to connect to and very little money for subscriptions and books, I used to look at the acknowledgements page of library books I borrowed, to see where poets I admired had sent their work and then tried those magazines. I do that even now though the wide plainlands of net poetry is available to explore.

[Marcia Karp]

You've made me laugh, Ann. You're brilliant.

Marcia

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Hello, all. Well, to clarify a few things:

First, Les Murray has clearly not hired a publicist. The book in question is published by a major house with a publicity department, and (as is good practice in any professional sector) it looks as if one person has been given the account to manage. Her name is on the listing so people will know who to contact.

Les Murray is also the foremost poet in Australia and one of the top two or three poets writing in English right now (along with, say, Heaney and Walcott), so he's not to be taken as a typical example.

Re Daljit Nagra: the reason you were able to find him in a bookshop, Jan, is because he's published by Faber, and they have a big publicity department, and they threw the resources of that department at his book. He was interviewed everywhere, including a double-page spread in the Guardian with a big photograph, and that wasn't because some journalists somehow intuited that the book might exist and called him at home. No, Faber constructed a publicity campaign, based not on his poetry alone but also on his unique position as a British-Punjabi comic poet (and English teacher), and then went for it.

As to Chris H-E's book, in what way can it possibly be depressing? First of all, there is enough poetry out there, much of it at the same level of accomplishment, that editors can pick and choose. Even to get a book published it will help you if some of the editors have heard of you - or can at least place you. If they're going to pay their own money to produce your book, they need to know they stand a chance of getting some of it back.

In a small poetry press there are no blockbuster novels (and no one else has the insanely lucrative Faber backlist) to subsidise the poetry, so once the book exists someone who isn't a publicity department has to do the selling-in: to bookshops, to reviews editors, to events organisers... This may in practice have to be done at least partly (gasp) by the poet. These people will want to know: who is this writer? In what way will they attract an audience? Has anyone ever heard of them before? Do they have an audience?

The things Chris suggests in his book are all ways of building your audience and ensuring that someone outside your own little circle has heard of you. The book is remarkable, a real resource, because it gives you ideas and suggests how to do them. It's based on real work: both his in writing it, of course, and yours in doing the jobs outlined within it. That book was the reason I started Baroque in Hackney and it was hard, hard, long work - you wouldn't be able to do it if it were a cynical exercise. The value of the work goes straight to the heart of your reasons for writing in the first place, and where you place yourself in the public dialogue.

It's far from cynical, because all those things only work if you believe in them, anyway. Otherwise you become one of those bores (or boors) on Facebook who only ever talk to you to announce their book/events/classes/articles etc, and message-bomb their entire list once a week. Thwy aren;t in any public dialogue, they're just pestering. Marketing, PR, publicity, selling - it's about the customer/reader/audience. It's not about you, and that's the first mistake those people make. You need to go where your audiences are, and find out what they want, and work out how you can offer it to them. Then you have to do the work, and offer it to them in the way they want it. Nothing could be further from an ego exercise.

The art is rigorous and the marketing or promotional activity, or teaching or reviewing or editing or reading, is separate from it. And each activity must be done for its own sake, for the love.

I'm not sure what the point is in being conflicted about the economics of publishing. Everything in life costs money, editors, typesetters, webmasters, printers, distributors and booksellers included. John Clare went around 200 years ago asking people to take out subscriptions towards the publication of his first collection. I mean, unlike us, he had to ask them for money, before there was even a book! And before that people had to grovel to a private benefactor and write grovelling verses to them, to be included in the book, to raise the money.

It's also not television: no one is clamouring for your poems. You have to give them a reason to be interested. And you have to find find those people who might be open to being interested.

All these principles hold good no matter what sphere you're operating in, not just poetry. The mistake is to separate poetry out from the rest of the world, when in fact everything is part of the same thing. I work in a marketing/comms/press office in a not-for-profit and the principles are exactly the same.

A final word about Salt. Salt is one of two or three presses in the UK (along with Donut, notably) that in the past ten years have transformed the face of British poetry publishing. The model and scale are different in the USA, with all the university presses and the size of the country - but over here, Salt has achieved remarkable things and should not be viewed, for even one minute, as some sort of slow-track, self-help enterprise. They may be doing good service to authors, but that isn't their raison d'être.

As for blurbs, Tim Turnbull's book Caligula on Ice and Other Poems was published, by Donut, with no text on the jacket at all, front or back. It's doing fine as far as I'm aware. Tim also refuses to write blurbs for others. Sometimes good to buck the trend, but you have to do it right.

And FINALLY! No one has to get their poems published! The art, as I said, and the rest of it are two distinct entities.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Thanks so much Katy. I recanted my remarks about Chris H-E yesterday when I found out I had (as per usual) leapt from a cliff without my wings. Now I will also put on my itchy hairshirt and wear it until after Easter Monday. I'll even buy the book. If I'd had it, maybe I wouldn't have had to ask stupid questions (though we've all had a good time on this thread, now haven't we.

That said, I wouldn't buy it though, not sight unseen, if it hadn't got this thread's high recommendations from those I trust (that's you, KEB), because by the description, I assumed it was one of those self-help books that further standardizes the writing trade.

This long and very, very informative post from you answers a lot of my questions, most importantly the one I originally asked "What is a publicist?"

I certainly don't begrudge anyone making money from their poetry, neither poet nor publisher. I hope everyone reading this buys some poetry books in 2011. I sometimes feel I am subsidizing the whole genre.

Thank you so much for replying and Happy Easter to you and abject apologies to Chris Hamilton-Emery.

I need a steaming hot cuppa, and a printout of this to re-read while imibing it and scratching.

PS. When I bought the Nagra book, NO ONE, not the clerks at the cash register or the people in the queue had heard of it or him. In fact I had trouble even finding the poetry section, it was the big bookstore on (I think) Princes Street though there were big signs hanging from the ceiling for CRIME and MYSTERY and other gory stuff I've censored out of my memory. Even the clerks I asked directions of looked puzzled. (I'm not joking now.) Poetry was upstairs of course, in a limited space. So much for Faber's big PR campaign.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Katy Evans-Bush

John Clare went around 200 years ago asking people to take out subscriptions towards the publication of his first collection. I mean, unlike us, he had to ask them for money, before there was even a book!

Exactly! I seem to recall rumors of Pope having to grovel for subscriptions before a publisher would talk to him, and he was already well-known by then. And think of all those poems by poor Martial, complaining about life on the dole!

We've got it easy these days...

Thanks,

Bill

[R. Nemo Hill]

Pope's translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad were groundbreaking subscription enterprises. As I understand it, he was the pioneer in that regard.

Nemo