In a world where the success of a writer is measured by the number and impact of books they’ve written, getting to write and publish a poetry book could mark a turning point that will get your poems off your notepad into the shelves of readers across the world.
No, I’m not kidding. As an upcoming writer, getting my poetry accepted for publication in a collection of poems by new African poets was one of the most important milestones that cemented my writing journey, some years ago.
The fact that this acceptance came in after a number of rejections made it even more significant as this gave me even more reasons to continue writing poetry.
I know that you may feel discouraged about publishing your poems because most publishers do not care about poetry as much as much as other genres, but there are options you can use to get your poems published and distributed to readers across the world, free.
In this tutorial, I’ll be sharing with you the steps you can take to put together your own poetry book, publish and promote it from scratch, regardless of your poetry genre or location, in the following paragraphs.
Create your Book Goal
Table of Contents
The first step to Publish a poetry book starts with defining your goal. Find out, what really do you want to achieve with this book?
It is important you define your goal because it sets the tone for your book. Gets you to easily put together purposefully, a poetry book that will meet that goal.
So before getting started, as part of your goals, you want to decide if your book is going to target a specific poetry genre or its going to be a collection of poetry written by you.
Also, this is the stage you’ll decide if you’re planning to target a poetry book, a collection, commentary on other popular works or a collection of work targeted at a particular region, audience etc.
Doing this gets you to set the tone for your work, select or write poems that will fit in with your goals and of course ideas for other aspects like the cover design and even preferred online publishing platforms.
Also, defining your goal from the outset will give you a decent data to measure the success of your work, when it’s all done.
Usually, some of the most common goals for most poets are to: get their poems into a book that can be read, grow their brand as a poet, reach a larger audience, make money etc.
Your goals can be anything like publishing as far as publishing a poetry book is concerned.
It can be pushing an agenda, promoting a cause, getting other poets heard etc.
Whatever it is, the most important thing is for you to identify this goal so it can guide your writing and publishing journey.
Create a Title & Theme
Now that you have identified your goal, its time to create a title and theme for your work.
As you journey to publish a poetry book, you want to find a theme or topic that meets your goals as set out in step one.
The most crucial part of this step is finding a central theme. Your title can always come up at anytime during the writing process.
As soon as you’re able to find a central theme for your work, it gets even easier to put together, poetry pieces that will be consistent with that theme.
If you’ve already had your poems all written down, the best way to work out this step is to review all necessary poems and find a central theme that resonates with all your poems.
With this, you can tweak your existing poems to fit in with the central theme.
If its entirely a new poem you intend to Publish, setting a central theme guides you on the kind of poems you can come up with.
Group Your Idea Into Chapters
Your chapter titles are crucial because your poetry book is going to be a collection of themes, sub themes and topics.
To get the best out of this, divide your book sections into sub themes that come together to make up the whole body of work. This could be done before or after you have put together your poems.
If you have pre-written poems, all you want to do is to identify your themes first then get closely related poems or poems under the same sub theme together. And then put them under a single chapter or sub theme.
Where you’re writing from scratch, you just want to create a balance at this point by choosing a single sub theme for each chapter in a way that works for you.
As you set out to Publish a poetry book that sells, you want to give your poems interesting chapter titles that captures the need of the audience for poetry works in that theme or subject matter.
Write or Edit your Poems
This is the part of your poetry writing journey where you put together your writings.
It’s possible you’ve already written out your poems. If that’s the case, at this point, you want to sort each of the poems and then edit each of them.
Remember, your goal is to get your poem to meet the central theme of your book as well as the theme under the chapter title you wish to publish it.
Where you’re yet to write the poems, this is where you get started with your writing.
Usually it may take a longer time if you’re just getting to start writing the poems. But, with your goals and themes all set out in step one and two above, you now have some good clues to get started easily.
Using your writing goals will guide you as you write and get set to Publish a Poetry book. It will get you to maintain a uniform theme, sub themes and all necessary nuances that will work for you.
Review & Revise
After writing a poetry book, you want to leave it for a day or two then come back to review and revise your book to be sure it meets with your expected outcomes.
Normally, you don’t necessarily have to be the primary editor of your work. You can hire others to do that for you
But, there are different kinds of editing needed for a book before it can finally get published.
For example, there’s the editing that demands you go through your book to ensure that the content is consistent with your goals.
Outside this, there’s the other form of editing that’s needed to ensure the grammatical and every other aspects of your work is fit for public consumption.
Usually, I prefer you do the first part of editing yourself. This will be easier for you as you can easily pick up every single part that will make your book meet with your expectations, compared to an outsider.
The second part can be given out to an external editor if you have the means.
In a nutshell, while planning to Publish a Poetry book, be sure you have your book all edited to meet with your publishing needs before you put it out there.
Layout & Formatting
The layout of your work is another important aspects of your writing and publishing journey that has to be properly put in place.
You want to set the interior layout of your book to meet up with the requirements based on the publishing platform you want to Publish on.
For example, if you’re publishing a poetry book on Amazon, you have the options to publish either eBook, Paperback or both.
Where you choose to Publish both, you will format the interior of each draft to meet with the needs of your preferred publishing options.
This is very important if you plan to give your audience a good read. Also, you may not be allowed to publish a poetry book on platforms like Amazon if your interior formatting falls short of their requirements.
Here’s a guide to write and format the interior of your book for Amazon.
Design your Book Cover
Your book cover is a key aspect of your work that might make or break your book. You want to pay premium attention to this aspect of your work.
Outside choosing and designing a book cover that meets the central theme of your work, you need a cover your audience can connect with.
Since this is a creative work, you have options to use any creative means to come up with a stunning book cover however, this infinite creative options can also leave you without clues.
To make it easier for you, check out other poetry books in that niche or with a theme closer to yours.
Find out their cover designs and see ways you can use this to inspire your own designs.
As much as possible, while writing and getting set to publish a poetry book, be sure you’re not copying other authors. Make your work stand out.
Choose a Publishing Platform
Publishing a poetry book is a great way to leave a legacy of your thoughts and words for people all around the world, even after you’re gone.
Unfortunately unlike most other big budget books, poetry books gets far less budgetary allocation from most big traditional publishers.
For this reasons, most poets opt for self publishing options, using either online publishing platforms or other offline self publishing options.
As someone planning to Publish a Poetry book that will be read from people around the world, one of your best options is to use a platform that can allow such access.
And if this is your goal, one of the best platforms to get started with this is to Publish your poetry book on Amazon.
Here’s a complete guide to Publish your book on amazon here.
Publish & Promote
Now that you’ve chosen your publishing platform, its time to Publish and promote your work.
To get the best out of this, you need to start promoting your work even before it goes live.
If for any reason you were not able to do that, you must start the promotion immediately as soon as it goes live especially if you’re publishing on Amazon.
You need this to work out so well because without getting a decent sales in the first few days your book goes live, the book might not get as much visibility for the work.
So you have to marshal your marketing strategy and get to work promoting your poetry book as soon as it gets published.
Here’s a guide on How to Promote your book on Amazon.
Final Words
Regardless of your status or experience as a poet, you deserve to be heard. And your works read. You deserve a legacy that is beyond a scrap book of poetry.
And using the steps above, you can write and publish a poetry book that gets read around the world, irrespective of your current location.
As professional Amazon publishing experts, we can also publish your books on Amazon or get you started on your Amazon publishing journey from your laptop to getting it on Amazon best seller list if you reach out to us here.
And of course you must known that while you’re not alone on this journey, it is your duty alone, to get your words out there for readers and leave a legacy behind.
Now, its your turn. What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to publishing a poetry book on Amazon? Drop your comments below.
No responses yet