It's a hard audience out there

[Neville Briggs]

There is an article in today's Australian, Review ( p17 )by Gregory Day about poetry publishing.
He makes this comment

" Present day Australia of course has many unique qualities but one of them would be that we are one of the first cultures on earth for whom poetry seems to mean not exactly nothing but something approximating diddly-squat. The proof of that is that no major commercial publisher in the country maintains a poetry list. Even Text Publishing, which in many respects champions Australian literature, prefers to avoid the poems, and this in a time-poor era perfectly suited to the brevity of the form "

hmmmmmmmmm


I should point out that poetry for Gregory Day is not bush poetry but the sort of stuff found in Black Inc's Best Australian Poems of 2014, edited by Geoff Page. Although the same difficulty, I think, applies to all forms of poetry writing.

[Ron]

Sad that there are so many philistines out there Nev!

Ron

[Stephen Whiteside]

I would definitely question the notion that our time-poor culture is perfectly suited to the brevity of poetry. I don't think that's true at all. Just because poetry is quick to read, it does not mean it is quick to appreciate. The value of poetry comes from the associated reflection during and after the reading - which our time-poor culture is very bad at accommodating. Strange that a strong supporter of poetry should make a comment so lacking in insight.

[Neville Briggs]

I think you are being a bit hard on him Stephen, I thought it was a reasonable observation.
Actually on reading this article, I thought of you, because you have been remarkably successful at publishing poetry, while our friend is lamenting the hard job of selling poetry in Australia.

The philistines are all watching the cricket Ron.

[Vic Jefferies]

I don't think the fault is the audience, but rather the poets.
What is offered up as poetry today would hardly encourage anyone to spend money on buying it.

[Neville Briggs]

I think that's an over-generalisation Vic. and the experience of several of my acquaintances with publishing bush poetry is no better than any other sort.

[Vic Jefferies]

Don't think so Neville. If the product is good enough it sells itself. I honestly believe if the Banjo and Henry were alive and writing today they would be just as popular with the public and sell well. As it is, I believe they are still the country's top selling poets.

I have seen very little produced by "modern" poets that would ever induce me to buy their books.

[Bob Pacey]

Some people want to read the classics and other want to be entertained.


to each their own but I can tell you I never thought anyone would want to read my poetry but they want them so I sell them.


Bob

[Neville Briggs]

Vic and Bob... I think that he is talking about distribution through a large publishing company for general sale in bookshops. I seem to remember that some time ago David Campbell was involved with the publishing of a bush poetry book called, I think, Award Winning Bush Poetry, this through a large publishing company.. I don't know how well that sold through the bookshops, it might be interesting to know.

[David Campbell]

That was Melbourne Books, Neville, a fairly small publisher. I edited the anthology (the 2013 edition), which contained prize-winning contributions from quite a few members of this site, and have no idea how many copies were sold. But as the publisher showed no interest in a 2014 edition and has said nothing so far about a 2015 edition, you can draw your own conclusions. How many people reading this now (apart from contributors, who received one free copy) bought the book?

Selling any sort of book these days is hard yakka, and publishers expect authors to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Which is OK if you’re a born salesman, not so good if you’re not. (Unless you’re famous, in which case you can write any old rubbish, someone will publish it, and people will buy it.)

The market for poetry is tiny, and for bush poetry it’s miniscule. From a financial point of view I barely broke even on my first book, and have only just reached that milestone with my second, even though it won Book of the Year at Tamworth in January. So I agree entirely with your comment about the difficulty of publishing bush poetry. It's no different to anything else.

It really helps to have access to a regular audience, such as at a caravan park, to keep sales moving. I advertised twice in the ABPA magazine, but the response was negligible. My best results have come through presentations to groups like Rotary and Probus, but they’re very irregular gigs and the audience is aged 50+. (A woman from a Probus group recently bought 14 copies of Riders on the Wind to give away as Christmas presents…which was a nice gift for me!) The only other outlet for rhyming verse is children’s poetry (i.e. under 15), which Stephen is tapping into.

Both of my books were, of necessity, self-published. Print-on-demand means that you can have good-quality books produced in small numbers as needed, but there are still substantial costs involved. If anyone has found a publisher who will accept a book of rhyming verse, please pass the word around. There are several small publishers who will take free verse, however, and that’s what I’ll probably try next.

Cheers
David