The other day, I started contacting known publishing houses to publish One out of Six of my Poetry book in Print Length Edition. I already knew that hybrid or self-publishing via publisher is not that difficult, as you just need to invest partly or fully, and the number of copies you desired would be published, & then either alone, or with the help of distributor, you can take your book into the shelves of book stores. But the real deal is with the traditional publishing, in which you’re not spending a penny, and the publisher takes the entire initiative. So, I started calling/writing emails in the last couple of months for traditional publishing. It was honestly fun discovering the truth about poetries. And technically, the logic given by several publishers was indeed correct & acceptable w.r.t. poetries.
Now, some said that, as no one reads poetries these days, thus there’re hardly few publishers who’re into publishing poetries (true). Some replied that they only publish classical poetries and not contemporary ones as that would at least sell as a prescribed subject course module in schools and colleges. Some said, you need to buy back certain number of books so that the publisher can at least recover the cost of publishing, as poetries aren’t sellable material in the market (true). Some outrightly refused as they publish only few famous poets. Some asked, how many poetry books I purchase in a month, and to be honest, they were correct in asking me, as I myself don’t buy much of poetry books. The last book I bought was of Harold Bloom’s The Best Poems, thus, how can I expect my book to be sold enough that recovers at least the cost of publishing for the publisher. Some asked me why am I even writing poetries & why I’ve even written SIX print length books equaled content? One gentleman commended me for keeping poetries alive. Some asked to approach PR / Higher References. So technically, it was a dead end, and I’m just awaiting for couple of more responses, and I’m sure their answers too would be negative for the above reasons. And honestly, they’re technically and logically correct as even they’re running businesses, not charities. And I won’t be sending further emails for traditional publishing, nor would be interested for hybrid or self-publishing mode.
But, whatever said & done, I congratulated myself, sang MGMT’s song, All I need is a great big congratulations; as at least I kept a dying subject alive with my 400+ poetries & 7+ Epic (long) poetic tales. 😊
PS: Look at the herein below pic wherein only a single shelf is assigned for Poetry section in one of the most famous book store. That tells the whole story.
