05/07/2023
>>>Poetry Publishing Can anyone help with where to find a current, applicable list of poetry journals online that accept new poetry from poets who are not currently teaching at a University or college? It seems most refuse to even consider poetry regardless of quality, unless you already teach at a University or have already been published by a University-affiliated publisher.
First off I am not a poet, so I don't know if any of this will apply to you or not. If it helps you, great, if it doesn't, well, maybe it'll help someone else reading this thread instead?
I am a short story writer, and a lot of the same magazines who accept short stories, also accept poems, which is why I'm hoping this info will be useful for you.
I would suggest too, considering writing enough poems to make a collection, and self-publishing it as a book of your collected poems on Amazon, as this seems to be a better road to take long term. However, I am aware that poem collections, like short story collections, are very difficult to sell, so this is not always the best option for everyone and may or may not be a good option for you.
Personally, I found that switching from writing one-shots for magazines to now self-publishing on Amazon and GunRoad and DriveThruRPG instead, was a better move for me personally, as I can now write-publish; write-publish; write-publish; write-publish; putting out way more content, spending far more time writing.
Previously, I would write a thing, then spend weeks/months querying that thing, then write another thing and spend weeks/months querying that one, and that's all well and good, but at best I could maybe hope for only 10 or 12 stories published each year, and that was BEST case scenario. Chances were high of me querying for months and getting only 1 or 2 things published each year. Which 1 or 2 things a year is great if those things are novels, but not good at all if those things are short stories or poems.
By switching to self-publishing, I completely cut out the time spent querying, meaning now I can publish a new short story every week or so (I end up publishing a new short about every 10 days), something I simply could not do when querying magazines.
Now, if you want the "prestige" of saying "I was published by such and such magazine" well, then self-publishing on Amazon is not going to be an option you'll enjoy. And self publishing does come with stigmas, because a lot of people will say: "Oh, you self published? So you aren't any good then? Couldn't get it published huh?" And that's another reason you might not want to self publish. PLUS, when you self publish you have to do everything yourself: editing, formatting, cover art, marketing; that all falls on you to either do it on your own or dish out money to hire someone to do it for you, if you want to produce a professional product that readers will actually want to pay money for. So, that would be yet another reason why to not self-publish.
I was traditionally published for a lot of years, before I switched to self publishing, so I studied how my traditionally published products were formatted and matched my self pubbed stuff to look the same, so formatting was not difficult for me. Editing was very difficult though. For that I spent five years taking every single English, writing, grammar, creative writing, literature, course at every local college (which included Harvard, as it is a local college only a 45 min drive for me, and weirdly seeing Harvard listed on my credits always gets everyone in a twist, People start acting REALLY freaky-deaky bizarre as soon as they find out you got Harvard in your college credits, because I guess it's a famous college that is hard to get into or something, but I never knew that because it's just a local college I can walk to, and EVERY college in America has "community students'' who are NOT enrolled in a degree program aka people who just walk into the college and say: "I want to take this one class, here's the cash, where do I buy the books?" and you do not have to take and pre-requisites or pass any tests in order to do this, so you can take ANY class at ANY college and you do not have to be enrolled in a degree or take any qualifying tests, and I'm always surprised how few people know this is a thing they can do.) But, anyways, I took every writing related class from every college that was within a 2 hour driving distance of me, and I spent five years doing it. I had no degree enrollment as I was signed up for each class as a paid cash up front community student who was taking classes for personal enrichment, instead of being a degree student who had to take tons of pre qualifying tests and prerequisites. Meaning I did not have to take any useless math or science classes or electives or s**t, and I was able to focus 100% of my studies on improving my grammar, and I wasn't locked in to any one college, so I could take 1 class on Monday at college A and another class on Tuesday at college B, a different class on Wednesday at college C, and so on. I took 5 classes each semester, including summers, for five years, and amassed enough credits for FOUR PH.Ds should I ever enroll as a degree student and take the prerequisites, however, as I never went to school and never learned math or science, and I can not count or do money or read clocks or calendars, I am unable to enroll as a degree student. I have Kannar's Syndrome aka REAL and ACTUAL Autism aka Idiot Savant Syndrome, not to be confused with Aspergers or Autism Spectrum Disorders, Aspergers is NOT Autism even though it gets called "high functioning Autism" and Autism itself is NOT an ASD as the definition of an Autism Spectrum Disorder is "a disease with 3 or more of the same symptoms as Autism, but is not Autism". Kannar's Syndrome aka REAL and ACTUAL Autism aka Idiot Savant Syndrome is one of the rarest diseases in the world, with fewer than one hundred and twenty thousand people being diagnosed with it since the 1940s. Aspergers aka High Functioning Autism on the other hand affects 1 in 3 people. If you are unfamiliar with Kannar's Syndrome aka REAL and ACTUAL Autism aka Idiot Savant Syndrome, go watch the movie RainMan, THAT is the type of Autism I have which is why I can take hundreds of writing related college classes but am unable to enroll in a degree program due to not being able to do anything NOT related to typing. If you have never seen the movie RainMan then you likely will have no clue what real and actual Autism is like as it is so rare, that most people don't even know it exists and instead think of Asperger's when they hear the word Autism, even though Aspergers is not medically related to real and actual Autism in any way, shape, or form.
I point this out, because people are often unable to repeat what I do, because very few writers are able to edit their own writing, which makes self-publishing a difficult task unless you are hiring an editor. I do not hire an editor, because I took 5 writing classes each semester for 5 years at more than a dozen colleges in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, a thing I did with the express goal of learning how to edit my own writing so that I would not have to hire an outside editor.
If you plan to self publish, you WILL need to learn pristine editing skills, becoming exceptionally well versed in college level grammar rules, otherwise you will need to hire an outside editor.
While you can do what millions of others do, and mad dash slap unedited crap on Amazon, you will end up not selling anything making self publishing a waste of your time. Editing your work is NOT an option if you want to succeed in self publishing, and that is going to require college classes if you edit it yourself, or paying money for a professional editor instead. I opted for college classes so I could edit it myself, most people opt for hiring an editor instead.
Also, I would recommend asking a more detailed question over here r/selfpublish as, almost everyone there has published on Amazon or is planning to, and there are several users there whom have published poetry and could give advice specific to poem books, so you'll likely get more responses. And as you are looking to traditionally publish poems r/pubtips might be able to help. I think there are a few subs which help poets to get published, but I don't remember their names. Again, I'm not a poet so I can't help with that directly. I am a short story writer and publishing poems is similar to publishing short stories.
When I am publishing short stories in magazines, my method of finding magazines to submit to, was to drive to my local brick and mortar bookstores and then buy one of each of every short story literary magazine they had on the shelf, take them home, read them all, buy a mail subscription to every one that seemed it might be a good match for my stories.
I aim for ones that have monthly issues, because that gives me a chance of being published 12 times a year *(if a magazine likes your work, they WILL request you to submit something for each issue)*. I NEVER submit to a magazine until after I have received no fewer than twelve issues of their magazine in the mail, and I have read every story in every issue. This gives me a very good working knowledge of exact what the magazine is looking for, and it allows me to custom tailor my stories to fit what the magazine wants. boosting my chances of getting published.
After that I type up, print out, and mail, via the post office, actually stamped letter in an envelope, the submission to the editor of the magazine. **I NEVER deal with a magazine that ONLY accepts email submissions; due to the fact that I do not use email, so I am not even able to contact them.** Also it is my experience that most (magazine) editors PREFER to deal with actual paper submissions, they often say so, stating outright that things like *"I got to be honest here, I accepted your story because it was the only physical printed up manuscript on my desk and I just was too tired to look at my email"*
*Note: I have NEVER, nor will I, ever submitted to a digital web magazine. I deal with physical print magazines only.* Due to having Autism I am unable to do many things, email is one of those things. I also can not do things like phones, as that requires verbal speaking with my mouth, which is another thing I can not do. My disability preventing me for being able to do things like email, would seem at first to limit my options, however, it seems the reverse it true, as editors are always saying they like the fact that I have enough manners to deal with them on a one on one hand written letter personal level instead of crap shooting hundreds of copy pasted emails out to every editor at once. So, my inability to use email, seems to have contributed to my higher than average success rate in getting traditionally published.
So, I would suggest doing that: avoiding email and online submissions, instead using snail mail paper submissions. And, finding printed on paper real and actual magazines via your local bookstores instead of digital webzines.
Why?
Well, because, last I knew, fewer than 13% of literary magazines even had a website, let alone a digital edition of their magazine, and more than 80% of all literary magazines are **LOCAL SMALL PRESS** meaning they ONLY sell their magazin to local physical bookstores that are under 50 miles from the magazine headquarters. Meaning MOST of your options to publish in a magazine, can ONLY be found by you walking into your local mom and pop bookstore and buying physical print magazines.
Between 1978 and 2014 I have traditionally published more than 2,000 - yes two thousand - short stories using exactly the method I just described. Never once have I ever used email or submitted to a digital magazine.
In 2010 I started self-publishing on Amazon, and in 2014 I switched completely to self-publishing as it cuts out the querying aspect and gives me more time to do more writing. While I have tried more than a dozen different self-publishing platforms, for me personally I found Amazon, GumRoad, and DriveThruRPG to be the best ones for me. LuLu also makes the top five list for me. All of these are good for short stories and I have poet friends who find them good for poems. And before they went out of business Squidoo was number 1 and Smashwords was number 2, but Squidoo went out of business in 2013 and SmashWords went out of business just a few weeks ago in February 2023.
I have published a lot on Amazon but never poetry. Poem books are a whole different ball game than novels, novellas, or short stories, which I have published. I know nothing of the poetry field, or how to format it or market it. I know the formatting is quite different then how stories are formatted, but I'm not certain of the differences. Like how poems are usually centered only on the middle of a page whereas a story will go all the way to the edges. I don't know how you do that sort of formatting and I think it might require either using some specific software program or hiring a person to do the formatting for you. But, that's the sort of specific question you'd need to ask, "How do you format poetry for publication?" or some such question.
However, one of my best friends is a poet (Megan Grumbling) who got to do the President's inaugural poem (I forget which president; one of the Bush's I think) due to her being, at the time, the Poet Laureate of the State of Maine. This happened before I met her and I knew her for several years before I found out she had done thi; she did not mention it often, so most of her personal friend circle did not know this about her.
But, I met her in college, and she introduced me to the "art district" of Portland Maine... which I knew from being a painter, as I sell my canvas works in Portland, however, I was unaware that there was this massive poet and chapbook writer subculture in the Portland Arts District.
But she was a friend from college who writes poetry and does it as a part time job. Her full time job is being an adjunct poetry teacher at a community college. I took one of her classes to see what she taught, and over the course of the semester she went through what it was like for her to write poetry as a job.
And, this is what I was thinking might be helpful to you:
What she did was she submitted poems to poetry anthologies run by various little magazines (print magazines, not online or digital) and having local copy/print shops print up staple bound cards took cover chapbooks, which she takes with her to poetry nights at local bars, and sells to people there (with permission of the bar) after she does live readings. She said she has tried publishing on Amazon but got almost no sales at all. She said the bulk of her sales came from locals at bars, buying her books from her after live shows/readings.
For her, her goal WAS to make being a poet her full time job, and essentially she had succeeded in doing so, however most of her money came not from writing and selling poems, but rather instead from teaching her poetry courses at the college.
During one day in her class, she brought in copies of all her published books, so we could see exactly how much a poet has to write in order to make enough money from poems. It was a LOT. She had well over a hundred poetry collection books, paperback chapbooks printed up by local print shops, and each book had 30 to 50 poems in it. Each book was 25 to 75 pages long. And when she went to the poetry nights at bars, which she did 3 nights per week, she would take with her 10 to 15 copies each of no fewer than a dozen of her collections, taking with her around 150 physical books to sell, and would sell most, if not all of them. Meaning she was selling on average around 300 to 400 copies of her poem collections each week. She sells the books for $15, cash only, and I had since bought 2 of them, just to see what kind of stuff she wrote. But that means, she makes around $4k to $6k a week selling her poems, however more than a third of that goes into the printing costs of her books to sell the following week.
However she is the only poet I have ever meet who is able to live off her poetry, (and I have known several hundred poets, I live in the Greater Portland area of The Greater Boston area, where hundreds of poets and short story authors hang out, swap chapbooks, and I hang out with them) and according to her, it's pretty impossible to make money off poetry sales online, via places like Amazon. And all of the local poets I have talked to agree that Amazon and every other online publishing site is pretty s**tty for gaining sales with poetry. But they also all agreed that if you want to actually sell poetry, you need to be heavily active in the offline poetry reading community, doing weekly readings at bars on poetry nights and selling physical chapbooks to drunks in said bars.
Like I said, I am not someone who reads or writes poetry, so I know nothing about it from first hand personal experience and I only know the information I just shared from being told it by local poets who swear it works for them. I am however a short story writer who deals predominantly with local printed chap books and offline sales and THIS is the bulk of my income. So I do know that what she is saying works, because I do the exact same thing, selling physical printed chap book short stories at local carnivals, state fairs, craft fairs, festivals, and conventions, something I have been doing since the 1970s, and only recently stopped doing because the covid pandemic shut down most large events. I can expect to sell several HUNDRED copies of my paperback chapbooks EACH WEEK at local events. And since 1978, I have sold more than TEN MILLION copies of my books, with the bulk of those sales going to tourists on the beach at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I have permits to sell my books out of the trunk of my car.
So when she was telling me about how she makes way more sales via chapbooks to local offline tourists from the Portland cruise ships who head to the underground (physically underground, under the sidewalks below Portland's city streets) poetry bars, I was just nodding my head and going "Yep, that makes sense, because I get far more local sales of my chapbook short stories in much the same way".
I will point out that the bars in Portland, Maine are frequented by Stephen King himself, and having him as a very, very, very local celebrity does contribute to why so many writers and poets flock to Portland bars and do poetry nights and buy each other's books, mostly in some vain hope of running into Stephen King, which almost never happens (because he moved to Florida in 1991 and it's actually his grandkids NOT him who live in Bangor), but happens often enough that these bars draw huge crowds, hundreds of wannabe poets and writers, who get drunk and buy each other's books… soooo… if you don't live in the Greater Portland area (which includes Bangor) of Maine, where there is an abnormally high concentration of writers hanging out in large groups, then, this offline method of selling chapbooks at bars, might not work, as it does seem to be a very specific to this region of Maine phenomenon.
According to the poets I have talked to, nearly 100% of their sales are to other poets, with it just being a community of poets buying poetry collections from each other, as a way to support each other… and… it appears that the mainstream general public is not the people buying the poem books, but rather that it is just poets selling to other poets. Again, this is similar to my own experiences with short stories.
So, near as I can tell, selling poetry on Amazon or anywhere else online, is almost impossible, though Amazon is far better then other places, but, also, it seems that selling offline only works if you happen to live in some sort of art district where abnormally large groups of poets hang out and buy each other's work. And you probably shouldn't expect the general public to buy your poem books.
In any case, from what every poet I've talked to says, submitting to magazines is usually a waste of time if you are looking to do this as a career, and it's better to focus on offline chapbook collection sales instead.
So, yeah, I don't know if this is actually helpful to you or not. I don't know what places to look for to submit poems to, and this info here is just about the only thing I know at all about poetry.
Hopefully something here helps you out. Good luck with your project!
Sorry, I couldn't be more help.
