Poetry

[jpb]

Im a new reader/writer on Kindle! I would just like to say that Kindle is amazing so far and I really like all the possibilities it has in store for users. But, I have a few questions to ask: I would like to know how everyone feels in regards to poetry? Im an experienced writer, but I am an inexperienced Kindle writer. I want to write poetry for people and share my feelings about the world. Is there a large demand for poetry on Kindle? Thanks, and dont mind to read my first ever Kindle poems.
                                                                                                                                  ~Sincerely,
                                                                                                                                                  Jay Berube

[soyfrank]

Poetry is a tough sell. I sell way more at book signings and readings than I do online. I've done about 40+ events this year.

[jpb]

Thanks, its great to actually hear what people on these forums have to say. Yes, poetry will be a hard sell. But, I thats what I do best for now and Im just trying to create a niche. Ill check out your books by the way, they seem interesting. Oh! Also Im wondering how you post a picture of the cover of your books here? I tried to paste pictures...is it a link?

[soyfrank]

Thanks, I appreciate it. To add the books. Go to profile and you'll see a signature box. Below you'll see "Use our Link-Maker to include Amazon links (pictures or text) in your post!" Use that to make images and links for your signature.

[flipside]

We've also published some poetry books. Not a lot of demand as far as I can see but don't let that stop you. It's not like it's a quick-seller anywhere else either after all.

[jpb]

Thanks for the help! I think it'll be interesting to see how my poetry does. Do you get notified if anyone ever buys your books?

[Ann in Arlington]

jpb -- the questions you're asking are appropriate to the Writer's Cafe. . .so I'm going to go ahead and move this thread there as you are most likely to get your questions answered that way.

[William Woodall]

I love poetry, (the old, high, classical soaked-in-truth-and-beauty type mostly) but I never expect to sell much of it.  There just isn't much demand.  I have a book of poetry out on the Kindle, and I think I might have sold five copies in two years. . . and I feel blessed to have sold even that much.  Poetry is just one of those things you do as a labor of love, mostly.  As far as sales go, I do a lot better with my novels.

If you happen to have a website, you can post some of your work there and give people a chance to taste it first before they take the plunge of buying it.  That's what I do.  I put everything on my website that I can think of that might make it an interesting place for viewers to visit. . . free poetry and short stories, commentaries on my work (people like to know the story behind the story, so to speak), interviews, pictures, reviews, all kinds of things.  If you don't have one yourself, you should think about setting one up.  There are lots of places online that do free websites.

[jpb]

Thanks for the advice! I definitly understand what your saying, but the good thing is that I write poetry because I love to do it! Anyways I'll be sure to check out your books they seem like something I'd like.

[Victoria J]

I have a couple of poetry books I've published as ebooks and I'm currently working on another poetry collection right now but like others have said, it's a tough sell. However, what I've found is that there are those that really like it and some of them have decided to read my prose/fiction work. 

[Steven R. Drennon]

I published six separate volumes of poetry for Kindle, each with 100 poems. I then combined the first three with another 150 poems for my first anthology, and the second three with yet another 150 for my second anthology. The individual volumes I sell for $.99, while the anthologies are $2.99.

What I found was that if you get on the radar of someone with any influence or reach, you will sell for a while. I had the good fortune of being "discovered" by one of Amazon's top 20 reviewers. Over the span of a couple of weeks, she found and reviewed all six of my individual volumes, and then she posted a glowing 5 star review for each. Apparently her followers decided they were worth checking out, because in the span of two weeks all six were in the top 20 in the Poetry category. Granted, there isn't much competition, and that only amounted to a couple of dozen sales overall for each book, but I was thrilled!

Since then, there hasn't been much activity. I don't do a lot to promote them, but if I did, I'd be looking for poetry review sites or web sites dedicated to poetry. If you can gain any attention from those, then you are sure to pcik up some sales. The problem, as with any book, is maintaining that level of enthusiasm and growth!

[xandy3]

I'm about to put up two small collections of poetry, myself.  I also publish a lot of it on my blog.

[jpb]

Thanks for all the advice! Ill be sure to keep writing and trying to get 'discovered'.

[Asher MacDonald]

When you format your poetry for ebook, how do you ensure your line breaks format properly? If a line is not meant to break but resizing causes it to, can you set it to indent the inadvertent break?

Line breaks are crucial in poetry. Here's an example of a poem by C.K. Williams with long lines:


Love: Beginnings

They're at that stage where so much desire streams between them, so much frank need and want,
so much absorption in the other and the self and the self-admiring entity and unity they make --
her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back so far in her laughter at his laughter
he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual in the headiness of being craved so,
she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again, touch again, cheek, lip, shoulder, brow,
every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away soaring back in flame into the sexual --
that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin, that filling of the heart,
the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting again, stamping in its stall.

That poem would be destroyed if the line breaks aren't properly noted somehow. From what I've seen poetry formats poorly on e-readers. Maybe I'm missing some tricks to make it work right?

[jpb]

Im having the same problems. Its really hard to format poetry, I hope someone on these boards has advice about that too. It would be greatly appreciated!

[Steve Silkin]

The Bishop Moves Diagonally is a poem. I have it set for free. The first two weeks it was free, it was downloaded more than 400 times. Since then, another 50.

Asher and jpb, I think the lines on that poem might even be long for a paperback format! (So, yes, a paperback probably would be set with indents to let the reader know where the 'intended' breaks are.) I don't think you can format e-reader texts for inadvertent breaks in case of readers' resizing, but maybe someone else knows how. Maybe the best way to do format something like 'Love: Beginnings' would be a space between each line?

[adanlerma]

Maybe the best way to do format something like 'Love: Beginnings' would be a space between each line?

i hope this thread still is active, i've only "very" recently got on the kindleboards, and am slowly finding threads related to my own writing and interests

i kept trying to see what steve meant by adding a space between each line, and finally got a mental picture of the longish line wrapping round, but then being separated by a line space -

and that may very well work!

most of my own work is short line, and either centered or left justified, so haven't really had much problem with line breaks; other than when i have my font size huge on the kindle (i'm 61  )

so another idea may be, before the beginning of a long line poem, to suggest to the reader if the lines don't make sense, to reduce font size or turn horizontally, or both

on apps for larger screens, i haven't had any problems at all (laptop)

so anyway, best wishes everyone 

[Steven R. Drennon]

The biggest problem with formatting poetry is that you can't control the size of the font or the display screen. I found some html code that will address this to a certain extent, and below is an example of how it works, using the poetry example from a couple of posts above.

Original Content
They're at that stage where so much desire streams between them, so much frank need and want,
so much absorption in the other and the self and the self-admiring entity and unity they make --
her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back so far in her laughter at his laughter
he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual in the headiness of being craved so,
she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again, touch again, cheek, lip, shoulder, brow,
every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away soaring back in flame into the sexual --
that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin, that filling of the heart,
the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting again, stamping in its stall.

Now with the word wrap issue:
They're at that stage where so much desire streams between them,
so much frank need and want,
so much absorption in the other and the self and the self-admiring
entity and unity they make --
her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back so far in her
laughter at his laughter
he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual in the headiness
of being craved so,
she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again, touch again,
cheek, lip, shoulder, brow,
every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away soaring
back in flame into the sexual --
that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin,
that filling of the heart,
the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting
again, stamping in its stall.


Now with a forced indentation on the word wrap:
They're at that stage where so much desire streams between them,
   so much frank need and want,
so much absorption in the other and the self and the self-admiring
   entity and unity they make --
her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back so far in her
   laughter at his laughter
he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual in the headiness
   of being craved so,
she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again, touch again,
   cheek, lip, shoulder, brow,
every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away soaring
   back in flame into the sexual --
that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin,
   that filling of the heart,
the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting
   again, stamping in its stall.

By adding the following paragraph style, I was able to indent the portion of the line that wraps:
p.poetry
{
   margin-left:5px;
   text-indent: -5px;
}

Give it a try and see if it helps! (You can adjust the pixels to meet your needs.)

[Doomed Muse]

I have a poetry chapbook up on Kindle. I used HTML to code it so that I could force paragraph breaks and page breaks.  I didn't do anything too fancy though.  It hasn't been out long, but I've sold three copies (at 5 bucks each) which is about as well as my less popular .99 short stories do, so I'm cautiously optimistic that it will sell the average of 5 copies a month that I set at the baseline for all my work.