What's Next?
Marketing 101 For an Inexperienced Poet
I am a person who struggles with process and being in the moment. What I mean, as a writer, is: I have an idea. My brain asks me, so, what’s next? Write the poem/essay/story. Now what? Share it with my poetry workshopping group. Rewrite it. Rewrite it again. Submit it to a journal. Rinse, repeat. At no point do I stop and reflect. All I am focused on is: what’s next? Then what? Either send the poem out for years to hundreds of different poetry journals and/or contests and it gets published or send it out a few times and it gets published. The published poems collect. I have an idea. Write. Share. Revise. Share. Send out. Still, the published poems collect.
Last year when I asked myself, “what’s next?” there was a small feeling of “is this all there is?” Because I had been writing and then sending poems out for publication for about 45 years. I answered myself a little differently: what about putting on your big girl panties and assemble your published poems into a chapbook? People do that. I know poets do that—I’ve bought and read enough poetry books to be cognizant of that. But could I do that?
I could, I did. I had enough collected; I actually compiled four chapbooks. So, I sent one of them out to publishing company. And the universe gave me the response: finally—what were you waiting for? because the first place I sent the chapbook out to, they said, hey, we’d love to publish this book you’ve written. I thought it was a joke. I didn’t believe it: I kept asking my husband, “do you think this is legitimate?” We read through the contract. It was.
I think I had a dream of being a published author for so long and it was coupled with a debilitating case of insecurity and disbelief in my own talent. When I finally took small steps toward my dream and I was succeeding, all I could think was, “Is this really happening?!”
I remember being a senior in high school and graduation is approaching and I’m still thinking how can this be coming to an end? I don’t feel any more of an adult and yet I’m being thrown in to the big, wide world—is this really happening? I have to choose now? College? Stay in my job? How do I create a life I want? How does that happen? What do I do next? And so many things derailed me from what I thought I wanted and what life threw at me and I found myself in my fifties and I still felt like that teenager on the brink of having to decide about her future.
But here I am: I have a book being published this year. A real, actual book that I really, actually wrote. (What next?).
It turns out, what’s next is, as any published poet will tell you, the independent press who elected to publish you is running on a shoe-string budget and ALL the marketing will be done by you, you big girl.
I will not drag you through my entire learning curve, but I do want to share with you the bullet points of what I’m learning; because that’s what I desperately need but not what I am really finding out there. And if I can make it easier for you, that’s what I’ll do.
Don’t misunderstand--there are great blogs, Substacks, interviews, videos, and books that exist which focus on marketing, but for my panicky, scattered mind, not much information is getting through easily because I am struggling against the process. I am trying not to thwart my own progress, I swear, but old habits… My friend even generously shared a time-table of her marketing process with me, for the last book she had published, but it felt like trying to read Greek. And I’m not the best at asking for help; I’m used to having to figure everything out on my own. It’s a red flag, I know.
What I’m learning is the “new marketing” is all about creating community and not so much about relying on network connections, though that’s still part of it, and so much of the language is couched in business terms, which for me…I’m the water and it’s the oil. Blah.
So, as I muddle through this, I may be sharing key essentials with you that I learn. If you too are wondering “what’s next” on your poetry journey, if you’re wondering what it’s like to have to market a chapbook, stay tuned! If you have ideas I haven’t mentioned, don’t hesitate to tell me about them!
Overall, I think “what’s next” will involve: submitting to book festivals, creating an author profile on Goodreads and library thing, conducting a blog tour, having a virtual launch party, doing book signings and poetry readings, trying to schedule interviews in local media, creating business cards and bookmarks, contacting my local libraries, selling my book at conferences hosted by the poetry and writing societies of which I am a member, sending reviews of my book out to everyone and anyone I think will print it/carry it/revel in it, buffing up my website, and so many other things I haven’t learned about yet! (I had to do over 15 hours of intense research to figure all that out and I probably haven’t even scratched the surface!)
Wish me luck, and stay tuned!
(The pictures are from a January snowstorm we had in Williamsburg, VA—our first in over three years—so wonderful!)