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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #19 |
Does this mean that the Nanopress approach is unworkable? Hardly. Indeed, it is a brilliant idea that, in my humble opinion, calls for far more ambitious use. Let's view such a project as a commercial poet would. To begin with, the key issue isn't the marketing aspect; that can be easily tweaked. Rather, the focal question is:
"Aside from the length and level of the authority's commitment, how is this different from the normal blurbing model?"
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| Ezra Pound |
How does one come up with "a good manuscript" and "a credible editor"? Actually, that's the relatively easy part for the experienced poet. Go to Eratosphere, Gazebo or Poetry Free-For-All and participate for a few years. You might even write down some of the positive things critics will say, quoting them later either in the book or in promoting it. During this process you will meet many prospective editors. Send out private messages until you snag one.
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #35 |
Aim high!
Footnotes:
¹ - We cannot change this problem until we acknowledge it.
² - Alas, there are no Ezra Pounds today. Those with the chops rarely have much pull. That is, of the dozen or so experts I could recommend as editors only one would have much influence with publishers, high profile reviewers or awards committee panels. That, alone, speaks volumes on the state of the art.
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Very interesting, but where is your evidence for 'people don't read poetry'? Do you mean 'people don't BUY poetry'? There is a clear difference, which I'm sure you can see.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the issue of sales, bearing in mind that we're talking about the non-academic consumption of English language poetry written in the last 50 years as opposed to our experience in 1913, before songs on the radio replaced poetry.
ReplyDeleteFew poetry books sell more than 200 copies, mostly to friends and relatives [and students trying to learn how to write poetry that lacks audience appeal, I suppose]. Compare this to Robert Service making $500,000 from one poem. Poetry has disappeared from the non-literary media almost entirely. A rare exception is the New York Times, which published 446 poems in 1946, 13 in 2013. Many major publishers won't bother with poetry titles because they don't sell. True, readers and buyers aren't one and the same, but if publishers, whose business is judging their readership, felt that WRITTEN poetry were making a comeback we'd see it in their sales and publication mix. Ain't happening yet.
Next, the issue of listeners: No one is playing to packed houses at Carnegie Hall. A world famous poet MIGHT get 50 people at the AWP, barely that at any other reading EXCEPT, perhaps, a university packed with students more interested in the buzz than the poetry. Slams? Open Mics? Usually more participants than audience members (most of whom are friends or relatives of the performers). So far, then, no one is buying poetry and no one is listening to it live. That leaves the Internet: mostly, ezines and YouTube, often cited on social media.
No poem has gone viral on YouTube yet. That leaves ezines. These tend not to show their hit counts anymore--itself, a discouraging sign--but when they did I rarely, if ever, saw more than 1000 visitors to an individual poem, many if not most of which may be bots, spiders or looky lus (no stats are kept on visit durations). This in an anglophone population of 2,000,000,000, rising sharply.
When was the last time you saw two non-poets discussing a contemporary poem they'd read? In 1913, that would be an everyday occurrence (given that it appeared in every daily of that era). Today, with all of our advances in telecommunication, including the one you're reading right now? Not so much.
Here is the most telling factoid, though: ignoring Dr. Seuss nursery rhymes, not one in 50 North Americans can recite a single poem written in the last 50 years.
The numbers I've seen show that, while production is skyrocketing, there is, as yet, no significant population buying, reading, hearing, quoting, performing or memorizing contemporary poetry. AS YET. We here at Commercial Poetry are trying to change that.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary, Cspalding?
Good to hear from you, by the way.
-o-