Evening all… Just a short update on the pamphlet sales
I’ve now sold 150 copies
And given away about 40 for reviews or to family
And swapped about 10 with other pamphleteers – I suppose I should count them as sales officially, but I decided not to as there was no money changing hands!
I found out in the last week or so that I got on to the Poetry Business Writing School. There are 14 of us, and we meet every other month for the next 18 months. Our first task was to nominate three books for the reading list and then Peter and Ann picked one of our three books. One of the books that I nominated that is now on the reading list is Nikola Madzirov’s ‘Remnants Of Another Age’ which is quite simply, the most exciting poetry book I’ve read all year.
Our first meeting is on September 8th, which I’m really looking forward to. I’m also looking forward to picking up my third set of a hundred books – I’ve decided to take a small suitcase to put them in so I don’t have to kill myself lugging them from Sheffield to Barrow on a rucksack.
At the Holland House course last week, Jan Fortune, the editor of Cinnamon Press came to do a talk about poetry and publishing. She also read some of her own rather beautiful poetry, which I will definately be buying when it comes out – I think she said it should be happening next year.
I asked her some questions about sales of first collections – so I know it will be slightly different for pamphlets, but she said 200 copies would be considered good and 600 would be amazing.
So in my target driven way, have just decided (i.e this minute) to go for selling 600 copies of my pamphlet by myself. I’m not taking into account what my publisher sells – as I can’t really keep track of that – but I do want to keep track of how much I can sell.
Why do I want to sell 600? I think I want to prove to myself that poetry can sell. I like the feeling of getting money in exchange for poetry. I think it seems like an achievable target to aim for. I strongly believe that as poets, we should be getting out and promoting our work, and not just relying on the publisher to sell it. I enjoy doing readings – although I’m not good at the hard sell – I tend to wait for people to come and buy it rather than chasing them round the room telling them how it will change their lives.
Saying that, if anybody would like a pamphlet to read – and lets face it, it’s going to keep raining, so it’s a good idea to be reading, please email me your address etc and post me out a fiver and I’ll send you one. Alternatively if you’d like a copy for review, let me know and I’ll send you one for free!
would love one for review,it was the title – If We Could Speak Like Wolves- that brought me here from the fermoy poetry fest site!
Hi Niamh
I would be happy to send you a copy for review. If you could email me with your address I’ll get one posted to you – if you could let me know where the review would appear that would be great! My email address is kimmoore30@hotmail.com
Cheers
Kim