lydamorehouse | Re: Thoughts (Reply)

From:

>>Wow, actual, countable income from poetry. That's awesome. <<

Most poetry markets don't pay at all; most of the rest pay $5/poem or less. There's a good smattering of magazines that pay $10-20, but beyond that, very little. If I remember right, the most I got paid for a poem from a conventional market was $200; I sold a couple to a very fine hunting magazine that always put a poem on the back page, excellent stuff. Since I write a ton of poetry, I had no trouble sending out batches of stuff and making a countable amount of money. But it was a lot of work shuffling shit around and it didn't pay well. I did get a couple of poetry books published, though.

Then I started crowdfunding. At first, it didn't bring in much, but it grew. My readers started asking for repeats of favorite characters and settings. It really grew. The Poetry Fishbowl just turned 11 and is now my single biggest writing project. This week I'm running my Holiday Poetry sale, so there's a ton of new stuff going up. If you want things in sequence, check the Serial Poetry page.

>> I know a couple of part-time poets, so I know that it's around the least-paid writing, only above graffiti.<<

I just never accepted "there's no money in poetry" or "people don't like poetry" as barriers. People will read it if you put it where they're looking and make it about something that matters to them. There's money in anything if you can find an unmet need and meet it.

The coolest thing about crowdfunding is that it lets people ask for what they want and get it. They don't have to wait for some editor to like it first. So I write a lot of niche stuff. I have several whole series that exist because one person supported them vigorously with prompts and/or donations and eventually other folks caught on.

I've seen a few other people do crowdfunded poetry too. In my observation, it's a lot more efficient at making money than slogging through all those damn magazines.