ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Thanks David that's a good summary.

Agree and captured in a nutshell I would be thinking that the books our poets sell at events are in a way impulse buys and nothing wrong with that but it seems rare for people to plan ahead to buy books of poetry although
For the latest novels people do just that

I do not think they are impulse buys Maureen it is just that they like what they hear and want more.


Sometimes I get a sale weeks later .

Bob

I tend to agree with Bob on this, when Teresa and I self published our book (she did excellent pencil sketches to illustrate it and I wrote the poetry) it was not a cheap exercise. We opted for a high quality production, mainly because of the drawings but as we considered that it would be probably the only thing we did and we were prepared to spend the next ten years selling it we took the punt. The first thousand copies cost us $10,000 to have printed and that was in 1991, it was a big gamble.
We had no support from any media, and as David pointed out, unless you are already famous, no one wants to know about you.
When we received the the original shipment of books we started organizing a book launch which was scheduled for about six weeks from when we got the shipment, we had to cancel because we had sold out of books!
We ordered another thousand copies which took about twelve months to sell and then I ordered another five hundred copies myself which are also gone, (But for about 10 copies.) a few were donated to charities, maybe 20, a few have been gifted, perhaps another twenty but the rest have all been purchased by the public.
Now for the few of you who have seen the book, ' 'course I'm bloody dinkum!' you will understand the quality of the drawings compared with the poetry. There would not be one poem in the book that would get a second glance from a poetry judge, while the drawings are very high quality.
The majority of the original sales were to locals around the district, most of them knew us and many of the people in the book, so that, I suppose adds another market to the list.
At the time we published the book I was doing a lot of work in outback S.A and N.S.W, I carried copies with me and the bloke I was working with was a big help. We would get in the pub after work and he would usually end up raising the issue of the book and I would bring one out, that sold a lot. When I started in the mine I showed a couple of blokes, word soon got around and I sold quite a few copies there. That was strange, selling Australian bush poetry books to Harley riding, bearded, tattooed hard rock miners! I have a mate who is a tour bus driver, he is actually featured in the book, but that is irrelevant, he carries a copy with him and uses it as a part of his tour entertainment, (he is also a reasonable singer and plays a guitar) so that puts some of the book sales in a similar category as Bob's sales.

So there we have it, my poetry is nowhere near the standard of David's writing, or indeed the published anthology of competition winners, it is self published and had virtually no media exposure (apart from a couple of articles in the local rag at the time), while the drawings are very good, I doubt that they are the stand alone selling point. I am certainly not what I would class as a salesman.....people like what they read and whether my peers consider it good or not, the punters buy it!

We did charge a reasonable margin on the production costs too by the way so we made quite a handsome profit on the project, (if we don't include our time.)

I still get the odd inquiry about the book now over twenty years later!


Good onya Bob, keep at it!

Bob's observation about people liking what they hear goes back to my point about the value of a regular audience, which Bob has to a far greater extent than most of us. And, judging by the "You do bush poetry? Oh yeah, I saw a bush poet in a caravan park in Queensland last winter...very funny bloke!" comments I get at presentations down here, many of them are Victorian grey nomads!

Congratulations on those sales, Ross…mine don’t come within a bull’s roar of that. Which, given Vic’s assertion that a good book “sells itself”, is something of a worry…for both my book and the Melbourne Books anthology. The latter was shortlisted at Tamworth last January and I took some copies with me, but couldn’t sell any. What’s going on when a book containing a collection of award-winning poems by some of the best contemporary bush poets in Australia doesn’t arouse interest at Tamworth?

David

My limited experience has shown me that unless you are performing regularly it’s hard to sell poetry books. I also think that the people who are natural sales men are more likely to be successful, but if you’re like me and seldom recite and then only at musters occasionally, then don’t give up the day job. Most of my sales have been to family, friends and fellow poets.

Like David my book also won a laureate award and all who have seen it comment on the fact that it is a nice looking book, it’s in full colour with quite a few photos mostly of the outback. But I must be honest I don’t put too much effort into trying to sell them.

Another point to consider is cost and the price you need to get to make it worthwhile, books that sells in the $8-12 range seem to sell fairly easily, but once you get up in the $20-25 range it’s much harder.

I’m sometimes shown books that were sold at caravan parks etc. and told they really liked the performance but have only read one or two of the poems in the books. Which does suggest that there is a certain amount of impulse buying involved; But hey! as long as you sell them.
Terry

Thanks David,
looking back now it was a pretty big punt, much larger that we thought at the time. I have never done any reciting to gain exposure, I guess much of it was just the fact that people could see the dusty country bloke who wrote it, as opposed to someone in street clothes sitting at an office desk. That came to light when a school teacher at Leigh Creek, (the coal mining town up in the Flinders Ranges) asked me to do a presentation at the local high school. I was working on an Aboriginal community in the ranges about fifty K's away, I knocked off a bit early and went in as I was, working togs, dusty old Akubra and working boots! The teachers gave me some feedback later on and said the main comment they got was about how I just looked like a normal bloke not a writer... seems the disguise worked .

I have a nephew who just recently had a fiction paperback released by a publisher, I was talking to him the other day and he said the book was meeting with moderate success, seems the publishers reckon sales over 500 copies is a success...guess that makes Teresa and I super stars...

Seems to me that we are getting away from the original post in that we are now discussing how to sell books rather than why publishers are no longer interested in publishing poetry. I know a lady (who is not connected to this site) who writes pretty ordinary poetry, but manages to sell ten thousand books a year. She in fact outsells Les Murray every year! However her sales are as a result of her business acumen rather than her writing ability.
Jim Haynes has had success with his three bush poetry anthologies which were published by ABC Books. They do not contain art work and rely purely on poetry. I do not know how many copies were sold but I do know they were popular.
I honestly believe that modern free verse nonsense "poetry" has killed itself and that the public, with the exception of a few, will not pay good money for what is essentially egocentric rantings.
If the Banjo were alive today and for the first time penned "There was movement at the station..." who will deny he would be just as popular?
It seems to me the publishers tied themselves to free verse poetry and it has proven to be exactly what the public do not want. If we can produce another Banjo or Henry they may change their minds about publishing poetry. It will happen, history shows that it always has.

Perhaps you've hit on something there, Vic "publishers have tied themselves to free verse poetry which is exactly what the public do not want."

Just having caught up on reading the Review article by Gregory Day that Neville started the thread with, it seems the author makes some pointed references alluring to this

as it stands, poets can seem at times like philatelists in this country: arcane, quirky and neck-deep in an obsession for whom no one seems to care.

He also makes a reference about poet Michael Farrell, who does seem to have an interesting and unique way "9 out of 10 average punters would declare unreadable". Then makes the interesting point after likening him to a couple of other poets that "an interesting difference is that he hails from the bush".

Another interesting point in the review is that the book (The Best Australian Poems 2014) has the poems grouped under subject matter, not by the Poet - subject matter has been talked about in another thread but he uses the examples "fathers, sex, climate, refugees". He also mentions a poem by Jennifer Harrison "and the fact it has absolutely nothing overtly "Australian" about it is only a sign of its beautiful assurance."

240pp - wonder how many "bush" poems are in there?

Cheers, Marty

Oh yes Vic, the cultural up-to-dates would enjoy Henry's and Banjo's verse for about five minutes until their eyes glazed over and they rushed back to their i pads, smart phones, rock videos ( every bit as self absorbed and incoherent as the most obscure abstract verse ) brain numbing " reality" TV, and "talented" personalities including the dreary posturing of neanderthal sports " stars ".

Poetry is too hard for the now generation, it requires thinking. Heaven forbid that anyone should feel the need to think about things now, all we have to do is turn on the media and we find that our thinking has all been done for us and encapsulated in pithy slogans, very easy to remember, and easy to apply because they can mean anything you want them to mean.