Should I Publish My Poetry?

[Magik]

<div class="bbWrapper">When I was a teenager, I wrote a lot of poetry. I don&#039;t know how many poems I wrote, but I bet I have 200 scattered across 4 or 5 notebooks, maybe more. I went back and thumbed through them today. Some of this stuff I haven&#039;t read in years. A good portion of it sucks, but then, some of it would be good with editing, and then there are a few that I could let fly right now. About 60% is crap and unpublishable, 30% would be publishable with editing, and 10% of them need very little. I could probably put together an 80 page book. Poetry is what I first started writing. I experimented a lot with words and sentences. I&#039;d like to think this helped me some, but who knows. I can&#039;t be objective about such a thing.<br /> <br /> I no longer write poetry. I&#039;m working on a novel, approaching the finish line within the next few months. I really don&#039;t have a desire to write poetry either. From a sales perspective, poetry really doesn&#039;t sell very well. However, regarding the poems that are at least good, there&#039;s not a lot of work that needs to be done with these. I could probably have a book of them up for sale within a few weeks. Of course, that book won&#039;t break any records, but who knows.<br /> <br /> I could put these out there, but I worry that since I&#039;m headed in the fiction novel direction, if that would confuse a potential audience. I also worry that if people didn&#039;t like them and they got crappy reviews, if that would hurt my following.<br /> <br /> -Should I put together a book of poems and see what the market thinks?<br /> -Should I forget about them and focus only on my novels?<br /> -Should I publish these, but put them under a pen name?<br /> -Should I wait a while and then publish them once I&#039;ve got a few other titles up?<br /> <br /> I&#039;m leaning toward publishing them in some capacity. I mean, who cares? They&#039;re doing no good sitting around. I could publish them and see what happens. I all about taking action at this point. I plan on dumping a lot of writing on Amazon by years end, and this isn&#039;t out of the question.<br /> <br /> I&#039;d like your thoughts on this. If the idea is no good, feel free to say so. I&#039;d prefer to bounce this off of your other self pubs than ask anyone outside this forum. Thanks. <img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/tiphat.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":tiphat:" title="Tip Hat :tiphat:" data-shortname=":tiphat:" /></div>

 

Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member: Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)

[jon.a]

<div class="bbWrapper">Could any of it be used within your current writings?</div>

 

[Magik]

<div class="bbWrapper"><blockquote data-attributes="member: 12219" data-quote="jon.a" data-source="post: 356606" class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeBlock--expandable bbCodeBlock--quote js-expandWatch"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-title"> <a href="/community/goto/post?id=356606" class="bbCodeBlock-sourceJump" rel="nofollow" data-xf-click="attribution" data-content-selector="#post-356606">jon.a said:</a> </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-content"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandContent js-expandContent "> Could any of it be used within your current writings? </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandLink js-expandLink"><a role="button" tabindex="0">Click to expand...</a></div> </div> </blockquote><br /> If I had a character in a story who wrote poems, some of them could serve as his poems, thus the poems become a part of the story. Otherwise, I don&#039;t see a way I could incorporate them into a novel because they are too abstract for that.<br /> <br /> There are people who buy poetry books, but it&#039;s a much smaller market.</div>

 

[Silverhawk851]

<div class="bbWrapper">DO IT ! What&#039;s the worst that can happen?<br /> <br /> Better question to ask is... Do you want to die having written and expressed so much creativity only to not publish it? <br /> Why not just publish and see where it goes?<br /> <br /> Time waits for no man.</div>

 

[Cruor Vult]

<div class="bbWrapper">Not <i>everything</i> has to be about the Fastlane. Some things can be just for fun. Publish your poetry. It almost certainly will not produce much of a profit for you, but so what? It&#039;s written, and publishing costs you very little. Get it out there.</div>

 

[ChickenHawk]

<div class="bbWrapper"><blockquote data-attributes="member: 21630" data-quote="Cruor Vult" data-source="post: 356648" class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeBlock--expandable bbCodeBlock--quote js-expandWatch"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-title"> <a href="/community/goto/post?id=356648" class="bbCodeBlock-sourceJump" rel="nofollow" data-xf-click="attribution" data-content-selector="#post-356648">Cruor Vult said:</a> </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-content"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandContent js-expandContent "> Not everything has to be about the Fastlane. Some things can be just for fun. Publish your poetry. It almost certainly will not produce much of a profit for you, but so what? It&#039;s written, and publishing costs you very little. Get it out there. </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandLink js-expandLink"><a role="button" tabindex="0">Click to expand...</a></div> </div> </blockquote><br /> Yup! From what I&#039;ve read, poetry is a notoriously low-selling genre, so the odds of this being profitable are kind of slim. But publishing your poetry is on your bucket list, and you want to do it for fun or any other personal reason, go for it!</div>

 

Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member: Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)

[AubreyRose]

<div class="bbWrapper">Yeah, I&#039;d do it but I&#039;d also do it under a different pen name. You don&#039;t ever want to disappoint a fan, and even if you title it: Book of Poems (Srsly, Just Poems), you&#039;ll still get some readers who 1-star it for not being just like your other novels and you stand to lose fans. Separate pen names for separate genres.</div>

 

[Magik]

<div class="bbWrapper"><blockquote data-attributes="member: 11534" data-quote="ChickenHawk" data-source="post: 356652" class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeBlock--expandable bbCodeBlock--quote js-expandWatch"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-title"> <a href="/community/goto/post?id=356652" class="bbCodeBlock-sourceJump" rel="nofollow" data-xf-click="attribution" data-content-selector="#post-356652">ChickenHawk said:</a> </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-content"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandContent js-expandContent "> Yup! From what I&#039;ve read, poetry is a notoriously low-selling genre, so the odds of this being profitable are kind of slim. But publishing your poetry is on your bucket list, and you want to do it for fun or any other personal reason, go for it! </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandLink js-expandLink"><a role="button" tabindex="0">Click to expand...</a></div> </div> </blockquote><br /> No, it&#039;s not on a bucket list or anything. I just have a lot of it and thought that I might be able to make a little money off of it. I could enter the best one&#039;s in some contests, I thought about that, but either way, poetry won&#039;t be a major focus of mine.</div>

 

[Magik]

<div class="bbWrapper"><blockquote data-attributes="member: 19929" data-quote="AubreyRose" data-source="post: 356665" class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeBlock--expandable bbCodeBlock--quote js-expandWatch"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-title"> <a href="/community/goto/post?id=356665" class="bbCodeBlock-sourceJump" rel="nofollow" data-xf-click="attribution" data-content-selector="#post-356665">AubreyRose said:</a> </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-content"> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandContent js-expandContent "> Yeah, I&#039;d do it but I&#039;d also do it under a different pen name. You don&#039;t ever want to disappoint a fan, and even if you title it: Book of Poems (Srsly, Just Poems), you&#039;ll still get some readers who 1-star it for not being just like your other novels and you stand to lose fans. Separate pen names for separate genres. </div> <div class="bbCodeBlock-expandLink js-expandLink"><a role="button" tabindex="0">Click to expand...</a></div> </div> </blockquote><br /> If I publish it, I&#039;ll do it under a pen name, for sure. I could see how fans would be turned off, poetry is a different type of writing than fiction. Thanks for the input.</div>

 

[COSenior]

<div class="bbWrapper">That would have been my advice, publish it under a pen name. But I&#039;d like to add that your main focus should probably be finishing your novel. Don&#039;t let a distraction that isn&#039;t a passion or a money-maker derail that goal. Do the poetry book after you publish the novel, IMHO.</div>

 

[LIkeafox]

<div class="bbWrapper">One book of poetry has done really well in the past year all because of the author&#039;s brilliant use of tumblr and twitter to market herself.</div>

 

Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member: Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)

[M. Strahsberg]

<div class="bbWrapper">Have goals and believe in your works. I suggest you should finish your fiction first so that that you will have focus set on those different genres.</div>