I don’t know what it was like to publish a book of poems in the past, though I do know that these days self-promotion is the reigning business model. And this seems true – to a greater or lesser degree – whether your publisher is big or small. Poets – perhaps all writers – are expected to do their fair share of promotion (in addition to, well, creating the work in the first place.)

A lot of people I talk to on social media think this is unfair, or at least that the publisher should bear the brunt of it. And at first glance I’d agree. What poet wouldn’t want to have all their precious time to themselves to write more poetry, instead of writing emails to bookshops and elbowing for space among social media followers and friends? This last takes arguably as much time as the writing itself, so it’s like piling a part-time job on top of a part-time job. I, for one, also have a full-time job. There just isn’t enough time in the day to do it all!

But, as Rilke said, for the sake of a single poem… You might spend your life searching for the perfect publisher who will take care of everything – and then stiff you in some other way. Or roll with it. I’ve begun creating bite-size images with lines from my poems to share on social media. It’s actually a lot of fun! Anyway, I’ll be sharing these on the blog as well. I hope they pique your interest so that when the book comes out you’ll want to read it. It’s really good – I promise!