Poetry Publishing - Will You Be an Author With 500 Books Slowly Getting Moldy in Your Garage

… or Will 100,000 Readers Be Clamoring For More?

Ah, poetry publishing and books ! It used to be a world of savvy experts sipping martinis with their highbrow editors while fighting off autograph seekers.

These days it’s a dog-eat-dog world of POD self-publishing printers, scrambling, bleary-eyed, editors, book publicists who charge an arm and a leg, and authors who are dying to get on Oprah but have no clue what to do first.

Publishing ain’t what it used to be.

FACT: Today all successful authors acknowledge one simple truth. To sell books, you must promote the book yourself.

No … your publisher isn’t going to do it for you NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY.

And unless you got one big honking advance, publicists are generally out of the question.

And if you’re self-publishing … well, you already know the success of your book is entirely up to you.

FACT: Formerly Wealthy Publishers Can No Longer Afford to Promote You

Here’s the deal: a major publisher puts out 40-60 titles per season. Most promotion departments run lean with only a handful of fresh-out-of college promo assistants. So each newbie has anywhere from 10-20 books to promote, including the big titles that basically pay for all the other books in the house. (Welcome to publishing post-9-11!)

That means your book is going to get squat in terms of promo support.

And if you’re going with a small press, they’ve probably already told you you’ll be doing your own publicity.

How do we know? Between us we’ve published four books with major publishers in the last ten years, some of which had six figure deals. And we STILL didn’t get any promotion attention beyond the ritual sending of review copies with no follow up.

Frustrating? You bet!

Depressing! Not at all. Because it’s entirely possible to build a bestseller yourself.

PROOF: Suzanne Falter-Barns has successfully sold more than 90,000 copies of her books, scored all kinds of national media, learned at the knee of several top book publicists and arranged two 15-city book tours herself. (Recently SELF Magazine named one of her books ‘one of 9 best of the best self help books in print’.)