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Poetry Chapbooks: Ten Tips for Promotion

There are several ways of publishing your chapbook. You can do it yourself with a printer and a heavy duty stapler; you can submit a manuscript to a literary entitiy that publishes chapbooks; or you can try a self publishing company. It is fairly easy to get your poetry bound in a chapbook, but the real challenge is trying to promote it.

Since a poetry chapbook is usually fairly small, (between ten to fifty-something pages), distrubution of these books is not going to be a national or world wide endeavor. Many poets use their chapbooks as an introduction to their writings, but even then, a poet needs to get the word out about his/her book. With that in mind, here are ten ways to promote your poetry chapbook.

1. Contact small book stores in your local area to see if they will carry a few of your chapbooks on consignment.

2. Hold poetry readings at book stores and other literary events and keep several of your chapbooks on hand for people to purchase.

3. Create a website about the kind of writing you do and sell your chapbook on the site.

4. Submit your chapbook to contests which will allow for previously published chapbooks.

5. If you belong to a writing group, be sure to tell your fellow group mates about your recent success. Tell them how they can purchase a copy of your chapbook.

6. Send out press releases to local newspapers.

7. You can also donate your chapbooks to libraries and other organizations.

8. Create a signature at the bottom of your e-mails that points people to the URL where they can purchase a copy of your chapbook.

9. Also create signatures that have the chapbook URL at the bottom of any message your post in any forum.

10. Consider your chapbook, no matter how simple it was to publish, a true success. When you type up your bio for other writing endeavors, or for websites, be sure to say, "Author of the chapbook "name of chapbook."

Devrie Paradowski is an aviation weather forecaster and part time freelance writer. Her works have appeared in local venues, Adagio Verse Quarterly, Meeting of the Mind's Journal, Poetry Renewal Magazine, Literaryescape.com, and throughout a dozen content sites. She is also the author of the chapbook "Something In the Dirt," which can be found at http://www.lulu.com/content/108560