You’ve written a number of poems, sent them out to poetry journals or read them in public, and some of your poems have been published in print magazines or anthologies, or in online journals. Now it’s time to put together a book manuscript you can submit to publishers or publication contests.
Difficulty: Hard
Time Required: An hour or two a day for several days or a week
Here's How:
- Begin by typing (or printing from your computer files) all the poems you want to consider putting into your book, one to a page (unless of course, the poem is longer than a single page). This is a chance to make any small revisions you want to make to individual poems, so that you can go ahead and concentrate on the shape of the book as a whole.
- Decide how big a book you want to create — 20 to 30 pages for a typical chapbook, 50 or more for a full-length collection.
- With the length of your book in mind, sift through all the pages you have typed or printed up, and put the poems into piles that you feel belong together in some way — a series of poems on related themes, or a group of poems written using a particular form, or a chronological sequence of poems written in the voice of a single character.
- Let your piles sit at least overnight without thinking about them. Then pick up each pile and read through the poems, trying to see them as a reader and not as their author. If you know your poems well and find your eyes skipping ahead, read them out loud to yourself to make sure you take the time to listen to them.
- When you’ve read through a stack of poems, pull out any poems that no longer seem to fit in that particular pile, and put the poems you want to keep together in the order you want your readers to experience them.
- After you’ve pared down and reordered each pile of poems, let them sit again at least overnight. You can use this time to think again about the length of book you want to create. You may decide that one stack of related poems would make a good short chapbook. Or you may have a really large pile of poems that will all go together into a long collection. Or you may want to combine several of your piles as sections within a full-length book.
- After you’ve decided on the length and general shape of your book manuscript, choose a title for your book. A title may have suggested itself during your sifting and ordering of the poems, or you may want to read through them again to find one — perhaps the title of a central poem, or a phrase taken from one of the poems, or something completely different.
- Now it’s time to seek appropriate venues for submission. Use our list of poetry publishers or our links to poetry contests to identify places you want to submit your manuscript. It’s important to read the poetry books they’ve published or the previous winners of their competitions in order to decide if you want them to publish your work.
- After you have selected a publisher or a contest, make sure to reread their guidelines and follow them exactly. Print a fresh copy of your manuscript in the format requested, be sure to use the submission form if there is one, and enclose the reading fee if there is one.
- Try to let go of your manuscript after you’ve mailed it — it may take a long time for you to get a response, and obsessing over one manuscript submission will only set you up for disappointment. It never hurts, however, to keep thinking about the shape and order and title of your book, and to submit it to other contests and publishers in the meantime (so long as the people you’ve sent it to accept simultaneous submissions).
Tips:
- If you’re preparing an email or online submission, you may still want to print up the poems you’re considering -- shuffling paper pages is easier than editing a computer file.
