Publishing Rights

The small press becomes, with each passing minute, more and more of a global theatre. It has always been so, yes, as long as the world has gotten smaller, but things have sped considerably in the last hundred years, and especially in the last two decades. With the widespread access to the internet and the Established Name factor (if you don’t have one, you’re more likely to search out smaller, more hidden magazines, and especially those far from the mainstream, well-funded American literary mags), the ability to publish in the small press has broadened and intensified at the same time. No longer does a struggling poet or writer need to seek out rare and priveleged information on small magazines that aren’t near. If you have a screen and a modem, you’re eye to eye with thousands of possible avenues. With online access, you can find a magazine that fits your mode in a variety of countries, from Finland to Russia, Austria to Chile, to your next-door neighbor who plays editor to a lit-blog while sitting on the couch in his underwear. More publications across the various seas have established rapport with one another, and the world, as a publishing place, has become smaller, while your chances to print, larger.

All of these publishing opportunities are ripe and looking for good work. You might have some of it, and if you do, you may already know how your copyright on the material works. I won’t bother giving a summary of copyright law or meddle with giving you a definition, as it abounds on the internet. I’ll provide a link, if you want to look up copyright:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

The meat of this post is on the subject of publishing rights, how they transfer, and what they mean. Rights, as some know and others suspect, do not refer to contract or ownership (in most cases). Rights refer to usage and license. Ever read an End User License Agreement on software you’ve installed on your computer? Even the blog service this is posted to has one. The EULA is a contract stating what you can and can’t do, what is and isn’t liable to the service, and is a lot of ass-covering on the corporate level. Some people think that rights negotiation is similar, in that you’re establishing the rules, covering your bases, and signing away the work. This is not the generally the case. Rights and their permissions are binding, as with a contract, but much simpler, and very basic. When someone requires any of the various rights to your work, they’re only asking for specific usages. They’re asking to do a specific thing with your writing, and that one thing only. Any further uses they might want will fall into other rights. The rights in question are just agreed upon fashions for them to use your work. Rights are not the same as payment, or contracts, or orders. The rights are generally on both of your sides, so they work as an effective intermediary between some of the confusing things that can happen between sending work out, and getting galleys back, or retiring a piece outright.

There are a great many rights that can be negotiated, though most publications will keep it simple and ask one or two of the more simple and understandable rights. Some longer strings of rights (First Exclusive French translation rights with International Exclusive French and Spanish Geographic Rights) are rare as hell in the small press, and it’s likely you won’t have to deal with anything like them.

I’ve compiled a list of some various, more common rights and what they mean, how they work. This should give you a better idea of what is really happening when a publication prints your work in a specific way, or asks for certain rights. I’ve chosen to stick with the more common (and a few rarities) rights transferred in the small press, and kept my hands out of others (No, you’re not going to see music rights here, even though some aspects of spoken word tracks can qualify under these, and I’m going nowhere near movie rights and other corporate forms of rights negotiation, because they don’t apply).





Electronic Rights vs. Print Rights:

The internet changed everything. We all know it. It seems almost silly to point it out. With the internet came the vast sweeping world of electronic rights (Oh, these existed before, certainly, but the internet brought them into the mainstream, everyday speech of editors who chose to work online). Some publishers differentiate between Electronic Rights and what they call Online Rights, or Internet Rights. For instance, they believe that issuing your poem as an electronic document on a CD to be electronic rights, but posting your work on their webpage would be Internet or Online rights. I don’t know if this is of legal concurrence, and I don’t think they know either. The general term is Electronic Rights.

First Rights: This is the most common right you’ll grant, as a writer, in the small press. Relegated to the FIRST time a distinct piece of writing is published in any accepted format. This includes letters to the editor, magazines, websites, blogs, even your own personal site. Writing a poem on a cinder block and throwing it through an editor’s window, however, is not an accepted form of publication, so that poem would be free to offer elsewhere for First Rights, still. You can grant this right once, and once only. After First Rights have been used or granted, even by yourself, you can never grant them again. Any subsequent printing will be a reprint.

1. First Electronic Rights: Same as above, but distinctive in the manner of electronic print. A publication asking for this is a publication asking to print the poem online or in an electronic format (In a CD issue, a .PDF file, .CBZ, etc...) for the first time. If it’s been printed elswhere online, no dice. Again, you can grant this right once in a piece’s lifetime. It is possible to grant a publication First Electronic Rights, and then later grant First Print Rights to an alternate magazine, provided these specific rights are in transfer. If you’ve transfered the more basic First Rights, with no specification, you’re on shaky ground trying to resubmit it as a First publishing in an alternate venue.

2. First Print Rights: These are First Rights with a specification toward print, and not electronic mediums. We’re talking paper and ink. Well, I once received a magazine made of plastic, but same basic idea. If you print someone’s poetry in blood on sandpaper and publish it in the public arena, that’s still Print, baby.


Exclusive Rights (sometimes referred to as Exclusivity): This involves exclusivity to print. Basically, exclusive rights indicate that a publication can print your work, but for a given length of time, rather than a single first, or one-time printing. The difference is that time is the measure, not simply the act of printing. In order to send your work on to other outlets, if you’ve sold or granted a publication Exclusivity, you will have to wait until the timeframe and conditions of the printing have expired. Most magazines will state in their guidelines this length of time if they ask for Exclusive Rights. In order to grant Exclusivity, the piece in question can not appear elsewhere in the time period agreed upon. If your work is already posted at your website, and you wish to grant Exclusivity for one of those posted works to a magazine, you’ll have to remove the work in question from your site during the interim. If you were to leave it up, it wouldn’t be very exclusive, would it?

Non-Exclusive Rights: The right to print your work, though still allowing you to submit the work elsewhere for reprint. This can be augmented for the electronic medium, as can most rights, and would then be Non-Exclusive Electronic Rights. Obviously, you can not grant exclusivity to another magazine if you have already granted Non-Exclusive rights elsewhere. Exclusivity means it isn’t anywhere else. It’s exclusive.

Perpetual Rights (sometimes referred to as Perpetual Access, and Perpetuity): The right to store your work in an archive or public place for viewing on an ongoing basis. Ever click on ‘Archives’ at the website of a magazine? Perpetual Rights have been negotiated, whether the artists or editors knew it or not. If the magazine in question is using a blog, or something similar, there will most likely be a dated archive, so Perpetual Rights are in play there. There is a more specific form of Perpetual Rights that deals exclusively with archiving, called Archive Rights.

Archive Rights: The right to archive your work. Distinguishable from Perpetual Rights in that they are specific to archival, while Perpetual Rights grant that the work can be exhibited in full view, not just stored in an archive. Most internet publishing that results the publicly viewable storage of work falls into Archive Rights, owing that works published on the internet are considered publicly available, but not generally public domain. The broader Perpetual Rights transfer is utilised more for work that is in the public domain. Your work on microfiche in a filing cabinet is an archived work, but your work in a book at the library, available to the public, is a work in which Perpetual Rights are attached.

One-Time Rights: The second most common right in the small press, and the vehicle for reprints. One-Time Rights, when granted, mean that the publication in question can print your work once, and once only, and you’re work is still free to use however you want. You can reprint the work as much as you desire, and submit it as many times as you prefer, all at once even (provided the magazines you’re submitting to allow simultaneous submission or previously published material). If you plan on using a piece of writing more than once in the same medium, look for publications that are fine with this right.

Reprint Rights: If granted, these indicate that a publisher can print your work for the second time in the work’s illustrious public existence, or even the 487th time, whichever you’re up to. The difference between Reprint Rights and One-Time Rights is slim, and they are often used in place of one another in the small press.

Regional Rights: Somewhat self-explanatory. The right to print in a given region. This right is distinctively for Print Rights, never Electronic, because the internet is an open-ended, global arena. It has no specific region, per se.

Anthology Rights: The right to place your work in anthology of other works. Usually these rights are transferred for ‘Year in Review’ type books, or ‘Best of’ collections, but can also refer to any other kind of collected anthology.

Geographic Rights: The right to print in a specifically defined geographic location, for a given time, exclusively. Can be the same as Regional Rights, but Geographic Rights are usually reserved for very broad areas, I.E. a country or province. For instance, a magazine asking Geographic Rights for Wisconsin is asking that they be the only publication in Wisconsin, for a given time, to have the work in question available for print. Unless otherwise stated, you could still conceivably submit elsewhere outside of the geographic area outlined, provided you haven’t transfered other pertinent rights, as well.

Translation Rights / Language Rights: Refers to the right to print a translated work, or a version of the work in a specific language. If you translate a poem from a famous Inuit writer into Mauritanian Creole, you can publish it as a translation, under the transfer of these rights. These were created to help diferentiate who owns what work. You, in the abovementioned example, didn’t write the Inuit poem. You translated someone else’s work, therefore you can’t transfer writes based on the original, only your language translation of it. Some magazines demand that, if you submit a translation, you provide the original as well as the permission of the original’s copyright holder.

Excerpt Rights: Needs little explanation. The right to excerpt from something you’ve written. A line from one of your poems that has a ‘famous quote’ kind of feel, maybe stuck under the masthead of a magazine... that’s Excerpt Rights in play. Excerpt Rights in the poetry small press are more common with interviews, in which a magazine not connected with an interview you’ve done, wants to reprint several of your responses. If you wanted to take a paragraph of this post and publish it in an essay on rights transfer, you’d be asking me for Excerpt Rights.

Work for Hire Rights: A little trickier. Employed to write material, or by comission, without the protection of copyright. This transfers the copyright ITSELF to the publisher, and they don’t need to mention your name ever. They can do whatever they please to or with it, and easily state that someone else wrote it, if they desire. You were just the human word processor, and nothing more.

All Rights: Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! This is exactly what it sounds like. Similar to Work for Hire Rights, All Rights mean you sell the work, forever and in all ways. The difference is that most Work for Hire Rights are negotiated before the writing takes place, as with some freelance work and on occasion, columnists, whereas All Rights are usually transferred for already written pieces. You wrote it, you sent it, they like it, they want it... forever. It doesn’t belong to you anymore. Whatever the publication wants to do with your work, if they’ve been granted All Rights, is their decision. You have no say at all in it. They don’t have to attribute it to you, and they can even say they wrote it. They have All Rights.


While there are other rights available for transfer if the need arises, these are the most common I’ve seen (in truth, I’ve never met anyone that asked Work for Hire or All Rights). All of these rights can be a little confusing at first, especially considering some of them can double as others under certain circumstances, but it’s good knowledge to know what usages a magazine or anthology is asking you for in the fine print. If you’d like a more in-depth study of these and other rights, a simple Google search will get you huge amounts of information.

So, in closing, it's beneficial to study your rights and learn what transferring them means. While most magazines will simply state the rights they want, and that your submitting is an act of agreeing to it, the rights transferred are seldom anything problematic to you, unless you're trying to buck the system in some way. If anything, having some information under your belt on the rights that concern your published work will make you feel a touch more professional, and that’s never bad, is it?

Rescinsion

There are thorns in everyone’s side in the publishing world. If you send an editor something they don’t need, that’s a bit of a thorn. If an editor rejects you repeatedly, that’s a thorn. If an editor prints you, but fouls up your format or creates typographical errors when inputting your poem into print, that’s a thorn in your side. Between (and including) your pen touching a sheet of paper and a reader perusing your lines in a magazine or book, there is a keen harmony of things that can, at any point, go wrong. These are common, to be expected, and in some cases, necessary. There is one particular thorn I want to touch down on, a purposeful one that is generally known as ‘rescinsion’.

A definition is in order:

Verb: Rescind ri’sind

1. Annul by recalling.
2. Take back

Synonyms: annul, countermand, lift, overturn, repeal, revoke

Similar, but not to be confused with:

Noun: Rescission ri’si-shun

1. (Law) the act of rescinding; the cancellation of a contract and the return of the parties to the positions they would have had if the contract had not been made.

This, in publishing with the small press, is the simple act of taking your work back from an editor. Why would this be necessary? There are many reasons, but with this post, we’re going to focus on the three most common: Tardiness, simultaneous submission, and offense.


TARDINESS

When you submit a handful of poems to a magazine or other such publication, you are giving notice that your poems are available, and that if the editor so likes, they can be printed with the editor’s publication. Most magazines state in their guidelines that submitting work to them is an act of admission that you own the rights to the work you’re submitting, and that you are the creator of them. Many magazines will also state that the work cannot be previously published, nor simultaneously submitted, though some will allow these properties exist with your works and the rights to print therein.

If you send your work, following guidelines, the remainder of the publishing experience with that submission is a matter of waiting, followed by a brief climax, usually in the form of a letter or email stating they will or will not be published. This wait is a thorn in your side, yes, but necessary. Most publications have systems of print and reading submissions that differ from others, and the manner in which an editor and staff may go through this process can change the timespan in which you can expect a response from them. Clerical errors can come into play, or it’s possible they never received your work.

This calls into question the timeframe in which you can expect your response. Most magazines will state their average reply time in their guidelines, usually with a line similar to “We respond in 2-4 months” or another time allotment. What happens, however, if you don’t hear from them in that time? Do you contact them (and risk annoying them, or possibly severing any good tie you might have developed with the publication), wait longer, give up and move on? It depends. As a basic rule, I give a publication four additional months past their maximum stated response time. I don’t let them know I’m doing this, as patience isn’t the sort of thing you should brag about. You either have it or you don’t. After the four months pass, if I still haven’t received any contact with the publication, I send a letter or email, depending on the type of publication and whether they’ve made their email addresses available. This letter tries to establish contact, but does state how long it’s been, and that I’d like an update. I also states that if they don’t at least acknowledge they have the poems within a few more weeks, to consider the poems rescinded from their publication. This is a clear statement of intent, and is more than generous. If I STILL don’t hear from them in the few further weeks my notice gives them, the poems are rescinded (via that notice, which told them what to expect if irresponse continued). I am now free to send them elsewhere, or retire them, whichever I decide is best. It may sound like a rude practice, but if a publication gives a response time of 2 weeks, and 5 months go by, it should be brought to their attention, along with the fact that you’re now thinking of going elsewhere.

There’s a good possibility (and I know this from many experiences rescinding work from a variety of publications) that the magazine in question will have no record of your submission. This is the most common response (beyond no response at all) that I have received. Blame your email service, or the postman, or chaos theory, or even the staff of the magazine, but things went awry and there’s nothing you or they can do about it. Try again or move on. Before rescinding, it’s a wise idea to try and establish some communication with the publication in question. An email every now and then can go a long way in solving a dilemma, but if it doesn’t, rescinsion is your final act of closure.

An example:

“My review is grand and timeless. Over the years, I have printed some of the greatest names in all of Eternia. Running this magazine, however, isn’t nearly as satisfying as I first thought. I need to take a rest and ignore all these submissions for awhile. I’ll just let them accrue and send one of my henchmen to wade through them later.”

“Man, what is the freakin’ deal with The Grayskull Quarterly? Their guidelines gave a response time of two months, max. It’s been eight long months and I haven’t heard anything. Did they get my work? Did they hate it and use it as toilet paper? Did they accept my poems and never tell me? I’m sending an email to inquire, because this is lame.”

“Henchman! You’ve made a gigantic mess of these submissions. They’re everywhere! And our office is such a pig-sty that I’m not even getting to half the emails coming in. People are beginning to rescind their work because of it. Gah, you're a horrible intern! Let’s just throw everything out and start over. Anything we missed will just go away, or iron itself out. Mwa ha.”

“Remember kids, when you run into an obstinate or clerically challenged publication, it’s best to move on and leave it behind you. A well-worded and apologetic rescinsion is a great way to ditch a magazine until it figures out what’s going on. You can always try again another time.”

That’s why rescinsion is needed for tardy editors and staff. There comes a point where your patience wears out, or you simply realize how ridiculous it is that a year has gone by without so much as a word on your three short poems. Now, on to the second reason for rescinsion that we’re covering in this post: Offense.


OFFENSE

I once had an editor at a well-regarded magazine call me on the phone, very long distance, to rewrite a poem I had submitted to the magazine. He didn’t want me to just rewrite it, he wanted to go over the entire poem, word by word with me, offering changes, telling me my work was odd, confusing, and rife with problems. A good portion of the lecture he gave me was based on how the simplest and most obvious words were the best place to start when writing a poem (I probably don’t need to mention that, aside from editing the literary magazine, he was also an english professor). I was quite green when this happened, having only been publishing about a month, and so went along. The sheer oddity of the situation made me let it go on. The conversation rattled on into the realm of downright horror for me. He accused me in the nicest ways of being a dolt and ignoring my readers, of abusing the language and, talent aside, writing in a bizarre fashion. He also stated that he couldn't understand why he liked my poem at all, he just somehow did, and a lot. It was obnoxious. I didn’t know that an editor would do this sort of thing. Did he call every other writer he thought about publishing and lecture them, as well? Shocking, right?

In the end, after two hours (no exaggeration) of telling me he would finally print the poem that I wrote (at that point, he’d written near half of it), we went our separate ways. Since that day, I have always fantasized of going back and telling this man what I would now, which isn’t entirely pleasant.

Rescinding your work from an editor due to offense needs little explanation. If you submit to a publication and the editor or staff decide to rewrite your poem or writing to an extent you won’t tolerate, you rescind the poem. I recently had to rescind from a rather nice publication because of a series of offensive events that began to bog down any trace of respect I had for the publication. They accepted my work, then forgot to print it, then the poetry editor wouldn’t answer my emails, then, when I finally got in touch with the chief editor, I was given an apology and a promise to print in a certain issue. The issue came and went and still, nothing. I contacted again, and was referred to a new poetry editor, who apologized again, and then asked me to make changes to the poem they had accepted two years prior. It was too much. The problem was even worse for me due to my inability to hound people. I’m really not the sort to do it, but had to, and I disliked the scenario much. I rescinded in a cordial way, but will never submit to them again.

Offense is a different beast to various people. Seeing that an editor has rewritten my bio bugs me, but not to the point I need stir up any trouble. However, if you have a carefully constructed work and you’ve placed each word with focus (as you should), having it stepped all over might make you angry enough to rescind. Whether a publication has stepped out of line is wholly up to you, and your level of tolerance. Whether you rescind due to this is also your decision. I advise you tread light. Rescind only when you have to.


Simultaneous Submission

When people use simultaneous submission in their publishing mode, they will often have to contact the editors of various magazines to take back poems that have been accepted elsewhere. My view on simultaneous submission is negative, but if you use it, be prepared to give prospective editors troublesome news with regularity. Taking a poem back, no matter the purpose, is an act of rescinsion.

***

In closing, rescinsion is a useful and, in certain cases, vital procedure. It can be overused, as well as abused. A good tenet when dealing with a troublesome editor or publication is tolerance, but if the trouble evolves into something you’re not willing to navigate, rescinsion is a final outcome that you can control.

While it is best to use patience and understanding with someone holding your work, there are times when you may need to break-it-off and start over. When in doubt, don’t rescind. I’ve sent rescinsions that turned into acceptances of my work, rescinsions that angered editors, and still others that brought heavy and sincere apologies. All of these made me feel like an ass. With rescinsion, keeping a bridge intact bears more couth than burning it, and if you decide you must rescind, use tact and a little diplomacy. It goes much farther than ranting in a letter to someone that doesn’t know you, and more than likely, didn’t know or believe there was a problem.

Simultaneous Submission

Author’s note: This post is designed with poetry submission in mind, though some aspects of it may apply to other forms of writing, especially short stories and the such. Certainly the role of simultaneous submission changes considerably when you’re submitting something as large and time-consuming as a novel or book manuscript, and my opinion of simultaneous submission changes in relation to these circumstances. So, read on and take it as you want, but for the purpose of this article, we’re generally talking poetry and short works.

*********

Through the thousands of magazine guidelines available online and in print, there is strong mention of a process called ‘simultaneous submission’. Some magazines call this multiple submission (though the term ‘multiple submission’ is occasionally also used to describe submitting more than once to a magazine within its given reading period). Simultaneous submission is the act of offering your writing to more than one publisher or editor at the same time. It allows you to send what you consider to be valuable work to several places at once, thus garnering a higher chance of a positive response, or at least, rejections more quickly, giving you more of an idea of what the troubled work needs. This can be a blessing to the poet who has wide aspirations, or not much work, or who has a specifically themed piece that might be used well in several outlets where a submission window is a factor.

The benefit of using simultaneous or multiple submission, for the writer, is unarguable: It increases his/her chance of being published in a very direct, marketed way. Unfortunately, this act can be damaging to some editors, especially when a counted on piece from a submission is retracted close to a deadline, or at all, for that matter.

Let’s run through the process with an example and see where it gets us...

Flagella Garner has aspirations to be a published poet, and she believes she has three good poems to send out. They're entitled: "I Went Wild on Spring Break", "Spring Break Series #2: Pregnancy Test", and "I Think He Told Me His Name was 'Road Bird', But the Song Lyrics on the Napkin He Hid in My Glove Box were Signed 'Shawn'".

Now, Flagella has decided to send these three poems out to the magazine, Youthful Peril Bimonthly, but she thinks they'd also be a good fit at New Mommy Review, as well as at Experience: The Journal of Finding Things Out the Hard Way. She only has the three poems, but each magazine says to send exactly three. What can she do? That’s nine poems Flagella would need to submit to all three magazines. Well, she could send to one, wait until she gets an eventual response, and if it’s a rejection, send the poems on to the next magazine, and so forth, or she could send to all three magazines at once and hope they don’t mind. Well, in this instance, let’s say these three magazines state in their guidelines that they allow simultaneous submissions. Great news. Flagella can simultaneously submit these same three poems to all three magazines. Her odds just jumped up a bit, and someone is bound to accept at least one, right? It will pad her bio and give her a better chance at acceptance, with much more potential for having her work read by someone, which is why people want to print in the first place, to get their work read, yes? Sending these three poems out to a group of magazines, instead of one, will up young Flagella’s chances considerably. This sounds wonderful to her, and in this instance, is surely the best bet for achieving her goal of publishing the poems.

It seems as if things are going to work out for our young poet, Flagella. Or maybe not...

Simultaneous submission is trouble, and perhaps selfish. I wouldn't recommend it. There are rights involved in printing with magazines and anthologies. Rights to print are important and held in serious regard. Flagella can send to all three magazines at once, and hell, she could send the same poems to 12 magazines if she desired (and if they allow it), but she’ll have to let the others know the second one of them sends her an acceptance, or worse, she’ll have to tell the magazine accepting her that she’s holding out for a better magazine if she decides not to take the first acceptance. The rights become an issue (a big one) the minute she fails to do either of these things. Different magazines ask different rights, as well, and she'll have to maneuver her way through them in order to figure out what she can send and what she can't. The process can be a hassle, submissions can become more complicated than necessary, and there’s always the ever-present chance that she’ll piss someone off.

To give you a better idea of what's really going on when you simultaneously submit, with the fronts and well-meaning stripped away, try looking at it with the roles reversed. Imagine, as a poet, getting something like this in the mail from an editor:


Dear poet,

As you'll remember, I accepted two of your poems last month for my upcoming issue of World Renowned Literary Journal. As part of my selection process, I strategically 'over-accept' for each issue. I use twelve poems per issue, but will usually accept around 20, to make sure I have enough at crunch-time, when I head to the printer. I am about to release the issue, and am sorry to tell you that I have my twelve set up now, and yours aren’t in that, so I won't be using your poems as planned. Sorry if I got your hopes up, and please consider your poems freed and no longer of use to me; I've chosen to go with other poets. Thanks for your submisson to World Renowned and sorry to take back the acceptance. No hard feelings, and feel free to submit to us in the future.

-Editor

Yeah, no hard feelings, right?

I've never had an editor do anything this cold and horrible to me, so why would I toss this kind of wreckage on one of them? I wouldn't, and I wouldn't advise you do it, either. Simultaneous submission in poetry is, in effect, over-submitting. There’s also the between-the-lines message inferred when you simultaneously submit. This message is that you don’t care about the magazine enough to send them something that’s solely for their perusal. This message is that you’re only out for the acceptance or credit, and don’t necessarily see yourself as a potential part of that magazine’s ongoing history. This message is that you probably don’t find their magazine any more important or necessary than the next one you have earmarked for the poems. In short, speed-dating. Many editors understand, of course, and are both tolerant and patient about a contributor’s submission practices, but on a certain level, simultaneous submission still bears with it an undercurrent, no matter how courteous it is handled, of disrespect. It can be a rude behaviour and carries with it a selfish vibe. Having to retract your work from an editor because of an acceptance elsewhere is an act of aggressive marketing, no matter how polite an editor may be to you regarding it.

If you're serious about your work and you’re doing you job as a poet, you should have enough material to send to the magazines you like. If you don't have these things, wait until you do. If you’re not serious about your work, wait until you are. Sending various editors the same poems at the same time is an efficient, expedient, helpful, bad idea. It requires more active charting and records, and can turn on you rather quickly. There are magazines that allow it (many, in fact, and some even encourage it), but most of them don't like it when it backfires on them much, especially when rights or money come into play. They're agreeing to allow it because they feel for you. They know you're trying to navigate a large and unusually sporadic gauntlet and they're willing to help, to some degree. Some editors do it when sending out their own work. Regardless, simultaneous submission is still a situation that can easily become a mess, cause you to burn bridges, and anger some editors that were counting on the poem you sent them for an upcoming issue. What happens if two magazines accept a poem? There are ethical choices to make in this situation, but in the end, you’ll most likely have to go with one and ditch the other. How is this going to mutate the now cuckolded and ditched editor’s view of you?

If you have certain works that you feel would be well received at various magazines, the smartest thing to do is go without and just submit within your capability until you've accumulated enough material to send unique and real submissions to the magazines you hope want them. In dating, under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t ask ten people in a room, one at a time, to go out on a date with you within earshot of the others, would you? If so, what the hell for? Upping your chances? Ask yourself this: Chances for what? Certainly not establishing something meaningful. An acceptance, a score? Sure, but to what end? There’s no simple way around it that isn’t damaging: You simply have to try your luck and wait for the rejection. You’re just going to have to wait. Want more poems out at more editors? Write them, then send them. If you get an acceptance, problem solved; you printed the work. If you get a rejection, problem solved; the work is free to revise and send elsewhere.

Now, many people use simultaneous submission to get around the achingly long response times of many magazines. This is understandable, and certainly a simultaneous submission can help you get your work to more publishers in that time span for which you’re waiting. However, in lieu of simultaneous submission, I offer that a well-placed rescinsion when necessary works much more efficiently and is far less confusing. I’ll get into rescinsion in another post, but for now, a ‘rescinsion’ is when you contact an editor and take your poems back because an irresponsibly undue amount of time has passed and you still haven’t heard back from them. This shouldn’t be done lightly. When I say ‘irresponsibly undue’, I mean that the magazine is out of line, and usually by leaps and bounds. Basically, if a publication states they received your poems and that they’ll respond in up to 6 weeks, and then eight months go by, and they aren’t answering your emails, they deserve to lose the poems. But that’s for another post. I only mention rescinsion as a useful and cleaner alternative to using simultaneous submission in the solving of long waits.

While the process does abound in the small press, I’d advise you to think it over before sending your work to multiple editors at a given time. Instead of debating how to out-maneuver the publishing process, and how to get a small number of poems out to more editors, you might want to ask yourself why you don’t have enough writing to avoid having to ponder these things. Again, you’ll have enough material to avoid simultaneously submitting if you're serious about what you do.

In conclusion, use simultaneous submission if you want to, but bear in mind the trouble you can cause, and the variety of bridges you can burn simply by losing track of who you sent what. Ask yourself this: Is getting a few more acceptances here and there worth pissing all over the longstanding conventions of the only place left that actually wants to print you and your ilk, for free, and often unprofitably?

**************

The following are some various viewpoints from several sources on the subject, as well as some information taken from guidelines of various magazine that use poetry. Some are fine with simultaneous submission, some discourage it, and some downright hate it. If anything, this should give you an idea that simultaneous submission bears with it some controversy, and the tolerance of it seems to vary nearly by press. Brackets are mine.


Here’s an approval of it from the submission guidelines at Pemmican Press:

“It is indeed difficult for poets to send out poems, wait weeks, perhaps months on end for a reply that, odds are, will be negative--and then have to start the entire submission process all over again. Therefore multiple submissions [at Pemmican] are understood and encouraged.”

Here’s a no-no, with the punishment, from the submission guidelines at Toasted-Cheese Literary Journal:

“We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Withdrawing a submission because it has been published elsewhere will disqualify you from future submissions.”

Several links to other articles of varying views on this subject:

http://clairelight.typepad.com/seelight/2006/03/simultaneous_su.html

http://www.writing-world.com/basics/simsubs.shtml

http://www.star-dot-star.co.uk/multi.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Are-Simultaneous-Submissions-a-Good-Idea?&id=455928

http://www.writehabit.org/journalfaq.html

http://www.marketlist.com/articles/artsimul.asp

An interesting article that also discusses a bit of rumored history behind how simultaneous submissions first began (purportedly Norman Mailer started it):

http://www.theroseandthornezine.com/Article/17SimultaneousSubs.html

Protocol, Baby

Just about every magazine or small press outlet in existence has something that sets it aside from other magazines, submission-wise. These requirements change depending on what you write, and who you're submitting to. For instance, a poet submitting to a small-to-mid press usually needs a simple cover letter that gives a brief hello and states what's been sent, possibly a small biographical note as well, though many publications don't require anything but the poetry and your name. Some ask that you send a truncated list of your publication credits, while some get annoyed if you send them this. A novelist, when submitting to a major publisher or agent, however, has more to think about: Query, synopsis, outline, complete bio, cover letter, strategic sample chapters... the works. I'll get into the poetry aspect of this here, and post an image of each in addition to some links, but will save information on novel protocols for a later post (later meaning: when I've written a few more novels and wouldn't be talking out of my ass).

I've done quite a bit of research over the last few years on the requirements of poetry mags (by 'quite a bit', I mean 'enough to make me sick', and by 'research', I mean 'submitted to over a thousand'.

This is the man I hired to haul my returned poetry off.

And not a one rhymed.

I have decided, for better or worse, to throw a little information down here. Rather than re-state what many other people have already stated (and better than I could), I've decided to resort to links. These all link to articles and outlines on basic protocols for submitting poetry to journals and the like, and I've described a bit of my thoughts, as well.

Cover Letters: Now, the two links at the end of this paragraph are fine. There are better ones, surely, but the best way to learn about getting down a cover letter is to find someone who publishes, and who is willing to let you see their current cover letter. Some poets write one for each magazine they send to, some use a kind of personal template, and some use a preformatted cover letter that they rewrite every few months, with a new bio, etc... In doubt as to what you want to put in your cover letter? Try emailing someone who has a few of them (an editor you've got a friendship with, another poet, an instructor who has published before...). And if you absolutely don't know any of these, email me and I'll send you an example or two.

http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal/editors-on-poetry/thrquest.html#letters, http://www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/19698/3150/2.

Bio: A lot of information exists about writing a bio, unfortunately most of the sources you run into tend to give you several paragraphs to really flesh yourself out, when most poetry magazines give you less than a hundred words. Some even say a good bio should be 2 or 3 sentences, tops. Why so short? Because poets are like _______; everybody's got one. Figured out what goes in the blank? That's right: biographies. And you thought it was gonna be 'assholes', admit it. For a bio, just write something to-the-point and don't make things up, unless you think the magazine wants you to. There are a handful of magazines out there that like comedic, bullshit bios, and if you're submitting to one of these, ham it up. If you still need links for some formats and the like: http://www.writing-world.com/basics/bio.shtml. There are others if you google the subject. The best way to write a poet bio is to look at the contributor's pages of various magazines at bios in action. Here's a ton of them: http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/contributors2.html.

I've also found that, especially with online publications, it's good to change your bio every now and then. If someone takes interest and looks you up in a search engine, they aren't going to be very interested if every link that pops up has the same bio text under it. While it can be difficult trying to trash-compact your literary life into a couple of sentences, it is a bit humbling to see what you, yourself think is most important, versus what you're trying to convey to an editor.

Submission Formats: These change nearly by magazine. In order to submit something to a magazine, you need to know the way they want to receive it, and your best chance of getting this right is to get your guideline from them, directly. Most magazines have websites, and most of these have guidelines. If in doubt, send something basic and simple. A good rule of thumb, when given no information or when you can't locate guidelines, is a brief cover letter with a short, short bio, and the poems. Put your name and contact info on every page unless you learn they don't want this.

How to Send: Again, this is heavily swayed by the magazine in question. Some will only accept a postal submission with SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope), while some want postal WITHOUT a SASE and will only reply via email. Overseas publications for which you submit by post will likely require IRCs (international reply coupons), though some will simply put your acceptance in you CC (contributor's copy) and send it to you as one package. Some magazines only want online submissions, and of these many will want your poetry in the body of an email in plain text, while some will prefer rich text. Also with online submission, some will want your work in an attached file (and even in specific file formats: .rtf, .doc, .txt, .etc...). There are magazines that have online submission and tracking forms/pages (I find these to be a little grotesque), and there are even SOME magazines that prefer you post your poetry at your own site, and just send them the link (though truthfully, most magazines hate that idea). The protocols for sending your work change, also, with what you're sending. A poem that incorporates visuals or a very specific layout may need some special formatting. If a magazine wants one poem per page, but you've written a load of haiku, they may be fine with several on a page, owing to the small size of that kind of poetry. Read the guidelines. Read the guidelines. Read the guidelines.

Once you've got your submission ironed out and sent, your next task, concerning that submission, is to wait until you get your wondrous response.

A response from a magazine can take anywhere from ten minutes (with an online submission and email response), to 2 full years (I've had it happen several times). This also brings in the idea of rescinsion, which is when you contact a magazine and take back your poems due to extended irresponse or other bizarre problems that can arise. I'll post something on rescinsion next time around. It's a very touchy subject and difficult to manage for a variety of reasons.

A note on guidelines: Most publications, agencies, and publishers have guidelines posted somewhere you can find them, and more often than not, you can find them online quickly. These guidelines can be extremely specific (Send 5-line standard bio, 80-100 words, at bottom of one paragraph cover letter, address in upper right corner, atop a submission of no more than 3 poems, each labeled with line and word counts, as well as your name and contact info on each sheet, in an email attachment, either .rtf format, or .doc, to the following four email addresses...), or they can be enviolably vague (send us good work, just not porn or hate, and be yourself), but these guidelines, no matter how complex or simple, exist for a reason. The most important facet of extending your work onto an editor's desk is following the rules they ask you to. An amazing and well-written synopsis is only an impediment to the editor who requests no synopsis. The idea is to be professional and human, like the editor. Follow the rules, show your stuff, then wait and wait for whatever response you get:

If you get the notion that a certain press has a good sense of humor or a laid-back demeanor, then by all means, have a bit of fun with your submission, but I've found that, in general most magazines, even the humor mags, and publishers prefer a professional approach that adheres to their format and reception system. Don't begin your cover letter with 'hey, what's up?', unless you know the editor, and even then it's still goofy. The basic tenet I use with just about everything is as follows: Submit and interact in the manner you want to be received. Want to be taken seriously? Be serious. It's the submitters version of 'do unto others as you would have them...', that whole thing.

That's about it for now. Submitting is something you should be able to pull off when half-asleep, once you've done it a few times, though I wouldn't advise doing it in this state:

"Dear Ray,

We appreciate your thinking of Skulk Magazine and sending us your interesting poems. Unfortunately, this is Boston Terrier Monthly, not Skulk. Mixed up your email list? Better luck next time, and get some sleep. Sorry to pass on these fine poems you didn't technically send us.

-Editors"

Submission Vs. Subscription

There is a particular sore spot with many magazines in the poetry world regarding contributors/submitters that carry few subscriptions to magazines. Most publishing poets can’t possibly subscribe to all the magazines they send to, or like, for that matter, just as most editors can’t print all the poems they receive, or like. It can be a source of contention with editors that they might receive hundreds of submissions in a very short period of time, yet not a single one of those submitters has a subscription to the magazine. On the other hand, most publishing poets get enough contributor’s copies and read enough books that they aren’t necessarily hurting for poetry (not to mention the fact that they’re constantly writing it, as well), and so more than a few subscriptions simply becomes an expense to avoid.

Struggling writers have a symbiotic relationship with struggling editors. Poetry is a hard sell, and the larger the press, the harder the sell. The bottom lines of poets and the editors of poetry don’t often match, or collaborate much. While a poet may expend a great amount of energy trying to get his/her work out, editors are doing the same thing. A poet often can’t afford dozens of subscriptions to magazines, and most of these same magazines can’t afford to keep printing poets and their ilk for free.

I think a better approach to describing the situation would be to stretch out some thought on both sides of the tension.


Editors:

For the editor of a print magazine, good will and love of poetry can go a long way, but these things won’t distribute the next issue. A great piece of work from a writer can help the magazine, but again, this won’t pay the printer. Therein lies the trouble. Who DOES pay the printer? There are several avenues for this. Some magazines can qualify for various grants (not many, though), some can manage to get advertising (very difficult for a smaller press, and sometimes unwanted), and a more common answer is to maintain a fully-functioning press for authors that wish to self-publish or whatnot. The most common route, however, for paying the printer is through subscribers, and when there aren’t enough of these, the editor and staff themselves often pay from their own pockets, sometimes for long runs, issue after issue. This can cause a magazine to slowly bleed to death. The money, staff, and even the will to want to continue putting out a magazine can begin to erode when enough losses begin to accumulate. After this begins happening to the editor and staff, it may take only a single issue wherein very little good poetry was submitted to make the editor question whether this is worth his/her patience, money, and time, and even if it is, they simply may not have much of these resources left.

Most editors are writers on some level, as well. They know the gauntlet you’re making your way through, and with magazines coming and going with such expediency, cropping up all over the place, it can be difficult spotting their own among the mix. Over time, or even right from the start, it may grow easy for a struggling editor to conclude that their publication is unimportant, or making no progress. If only there were more subscribers...



Poets:

The poet isn’t making any money with the poetry. Oh, on occasion, a magazine will pull a slipping of 5 bucks, or a token payment, but in general the writer gets published as his payment, and often there can be expected a contributor’s copy* or two. The very idea of ‘struggling poet’ is the poet part, but we can’t forget the struggling part. Struggling means trying write, then trying to get your work out there, and to do this well usually requires a lot of submitting. Gaining subscriptions to so many magazines is improbable and expensive. In addition to this, many poets feel there is a big difference between a poet and a subscriber, while some editors may want to unify these two into one.

So, the poet pays to write the poems with his/her time, thought, and whatever vices needed to create (escaping domesticity for a short spell to write, coffee, pens, pads, a laptop, books, maybe cigarettes, etc...), and all of this adds up. The poet is doing research on magazines to find out where their work may be wanted, which takes time and charting. The poet buys envelopes, printers, and box after box of paper, in addition to staying up late nights gathering select addresses and whatnot from the multitudes of magazines out there. After finding a magazine of interest, the poet pays to send a selection of poetry to the magazine, and the poet pays even, for the response, which arrives in the SASE. The poet pays much more if the magazine is overseas and requires IRCs (International Reply Coupons), as well, which cost quite a bit, especially if some magazines request that several be included. When every postal submission ends up costing around a buck each (and 3 times that for overseas submissions), sending out a large batch of submissions can break the poet’s bank. After paying to write, paying to revise, paying to submit, waiting long periods of time for a response, and then paying SASE postage to be rejected day in and day out, while trying to gain more time to write in the interim, there is little time, money, or patience left over for ordering subscriptions to the numerous magazines out there.



As with electricity, water, and poverty, the answer to the dilemma of subscriptions and submissions settles at the lowest point. This resolve is that most poets will subscribe to a few magazines at a time, if that, and with enough poets doing so, many magazines manage to stay afloat above the bottom line. Locality can play a crucial part of this situation, as many people will subscribe to something local over something that is not. Otherwise, magazines use whatever tricks they might need, as do submitters.

The big miracle would be if the general public started taking up more interest in poetry, but whether this is going to happen anytime soon is a hotly debated thing in the poetry world, especially among editors. For now, heavy competition for the poet and the act of keeping a magazine afloat for the editor are both intensive, creative things, and I have to believe these facets are directly responsible for the miriad of voices and styles you can find in today’s magazines and poetry. At the end of the day, we are not lacking for avenues or material. We are lacking only for assurance.
ray succre

Markets and Method

This is more of a beginner’s reference, and I am well aware that the following would be better served with a series, or in sections, but let’s face it: You’re busy. I’m busy. Read on and go publish. If you’ve been printed in even four or five magazines, you probably won’t find this post very useful, as you’re already doing something right.

Listen, you have a handful of poems (or hundreds), and you’ve been putting off publishing them because it’s such a big deal. I know how it works. Every time someone notices you writing, they ask “So, are you in school?”. No, you explain, you’re just a writer. They then ask: “Oh really? What’s your book about?” because, though you’re a poet, most people will hear ‘writer’ and assume you’re a novelist, complete with a big black typewriter somewhere and a wastebin full of wadded up page ones, and when they DO ascertain you write poetry, will most likely assume you’re into falling leaves, flowers, rhyme, and break-ups. So you mention you’re working on some poetry and they get that blank face. “Huh.” the face says. Then they ask the one question you’ve heard hundreds of times, and that makes you want to decay into a puddle of shit right there in front of them:

I know, you’re tired of coming up with new excuses why you’re not published and you figure it’s time to get printed somewhere. You want to publish some poems. The process is simple. You find a magazine or anthology that you think wants what you write, and you send it. There are loopholes and procedures along the way, but that’s essentially how it works. Rights are important, but you don’t have to concern yourself with most of that world until money is involved. Until then, follow the magazine’s guidelines and send your work however they prefer. After that, wait around. Voila, you’re a struggling poet, instead of the previous ‘regular’ poet that just wrote a lot.

Where to find magazines in the small press? You might be tempted to buy a who’s-who book, or a step-by-step guide to publishing, how to be your own agent, etc... skip it. It’s dreck. It’s one of the only ways people can make money with their knowledge of poetry publishing, by explaining it to you for a price. If you want to pay to have someone else tell you how it works, take a class. You get credit for those. Otherwise, save your money for postage (you’ll need it).

Now, after you’ve ditched your ten-steps-to-print books, you might want to pick up something a little more useful. A market book. These are books that mainly list magazines and places that accept poetry. Many of these magazines not only accept poetry, they do it without grudge. Some even look forward to it and actively seek poetry, even when little is submitted.

The most common market book in book stores is the Poet’s Market. It’s published by Writer’s Digest, and has a large number of markets you can flip through. They set up the listings in a simple and keyed way so you’ll have some information on the magazines beyond their name and address. I’ve found they tend to check their sources pretty well. I get less return-to-senders when submitting to magazines I’ve found in the Poet’s Market. Of course, don’t submit blindly. You might read an entry in the Poet’s Market and think, “My stuff is perfect for this magazine. I’m sending right now.” Don’t be tempted to do this, it mostly ends in rejection. Instead, find out more. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes because most magazines have websites these days. They do so for several reasons. One of them is you and your poetry. Visiting these websites (or more than visiting) is free, and you’re writing for free, so let’s face it, you should study the magazine with a keen eye and up your chances of getting printed for free, too.

The Directory of Poetry Publishers is another popular market book, put out by Dustbooks. This one seems rife with problems for me. It generally lists more magazines and reviews than the Poet’s Market, and the way in which it is designed actually works a little better for me, but I’ve had trouble with this directory. I used it for a couple of years to unearth many magazines I wanted to check out, and about a third of the magazines I attempted to locate online or submit to turned out to be defunct. It’s embarrassing to receive a response from an editor’s wife stating that the editor, as well as the magazine you’ve submitted to, have been dead for five years. Most of these horrible situations can be remedied by looking the magazine up online. A good portion of them have some sort of web-presence (though I very much wish more of them would put dates on their pages, as you often can’t tell from a webpage if they’re still going when they have no dates anywhere. For all you know, those submission guidelines and samples were posted three years ago, and the magazine shut down shortly after). So, the Dustbooks Directory has much to offer, but use it at your own peril. I did find my way to some very good magazines through it, certainly.

Note: I know Simon Perchik submits via the Dustbooks Directory, and he’s one of the most prolificly published poets around. Publish in a handful of magazines and you will most certainly run into Simon in there somewhere, in addition to Lyn Lyfshin, Virgil Suarez, Taylor Graham, Michael Estabrook, and throngs of others. These people have been publishing for long periods of time. They’ve got the ins and outs down pat, and I’d bet they all have different tactics for publishing. If even three or four of these poets got together and published a book on the technical side of small press publishing, from their perspectives, I’d pay a fortune to read it. Until then, you’ve always got interviews you can take a look at. Though the tactics someone might utilize in getting their work out is only icing, really. It’s the work itself that will finally see print, not your cover letter, publication history, or the chart of magazines you’ve made from digging around.

If you don't feel like shelling out for one of these books, there’s also the link page method. Here’s the drill: Locate a magazine you like online, and that prints the sort of thing you write. Preferably a place you’ve published. Hit the links page for that magazine. Look for other magazines among the links (some list them in groups). Follow any that appeal to you and have a look. Read some poems if they’ve posted any, read the ‘about us’ link that most magazines have. Do you like these people? Does the magazine interest you? If so, while your there, go through the guidelines. If all is well, get the information you need and submit what you think will work best, when it’s time. And read what they print. It keeps you current on what’s going on with small press tastes and is a lot cheaper than buying loads of books by people you haven’t yet heard of. Subscribe to a few, if you can afford it (I’ll post more on the submission/subscription dilemma at a later point, as both editor and poet can get quite sore about it).

After you’ve obtained the info you need, go to the next magazine you found. When you eventually run out of magazines, go to the links page of one of the newest ones you found. There you go. Considering most magazines only link to things they’re into, on some level, this process of using link pages can take you through loops of magazines that have similar tastes or aesthetics. If you fit in one, you might fit in a few more they link to. Find out. You’ll never run out of magazines that you might be a good fit for you if you keep current and see who likes who.

Another way to find magazines, similar to the link page method, is by visiting a site or subscribing to an email newsletter that compiles lists of magazines. This hasn’t worked out so well for me, but I’m sure it does for others. To start you off, here are a couple of useful ones: http://www.duotrope.com/ , and http://homepage.ntlworld.com/su_bainbridge/aaipg.html. Duotrope has a running statistics system as well, but I haven't felt it to be all that useful. Dee Rimbaud's AA Independent Press Guide is useful as hell. It's a good place to start if you need one.

There is something to be said for submitting almost blindly to absolutely everything you come across. I’m sure it works for some poets but it’s ill-advised, and requires a fucking ton of poetry. I don’t know... this tactic seems cold to me, and a little slutty. But hey, how you get your kicks is your business. In the end, it’s whether the writer, the editor, and the subscriber are all pleased with the outcome that matters most.

For most magazines, you’ll need a cover letter and possibly a short bio. You can find examples of these all over the internet. Find one you like and figure out why. Then write yours. You will change it over and over again as you go, and you’ll customize it often for certain magazines.

You should be aware that most poetry magazines, or magazines that handle poetry, dislike being thought of as a ‘market’, and who could blame them? You wouldn’t want to get email from these magazines addressed to ‘poem marketer’ would you? So remember, a list of magazines is only that. Don’t submit unless you know how they do things, and follow their guidelines. Editors are busy, and the simplest way to keep their endeavors running smoothly is by utilising some sort of system or regiment. When things step outside of that system, it slows them down and interferes with the flow. When you send to a magazine, do it the way they want to receive it. If they don’t want a cover letter, don’t send one. If they want a bio, include it. If you’re still confused, send an email. Keep it short.

Of course, the important thing isn’t that you submit to the biggest and best magazines around, because those are figurative ideas. You should submit to whoever you think could best utilise your work, whoever you think wants it, and doesn’t get on your nerves. Sending to the Atlantic Monthly, Colorado Review, and New Yorker right off the bat is great and all, but don’t forget the lady with the zine that’s hungry for a good poem or two, even if her mag has a circulation of twenty-two. I usually send my best to these smaller magazines. They deserve it. No one is paying them and they’re not making any money. Not many people are reading their magazine and it’s highly likely they won’t keep fighting against the thanklessness, exhaustion, and especially the slow, painful leak of money for too long (I’ve known a lot of writers that have quit for these reasons, as well), so the least you can do for these editors, whether they’re appreciative or not, is send them your best. Shit, you owe it to your self and work at large, anyway.

It’s wise to keep track of where you sent what. There will come a point where you won’t know, so keeping records is pretty key. Do this however the hell you want.

A note on statistics:

Having a record of responses and various magazines can produce some interesting statistics for you. I’ve been accepted by magazines wherein my odds were less than half of one percent, and I’ve been rejected by magazines that state they accept 90% of what they receive. The point is, stats are interesting, but they can be deceiving. I have a rather unhealthy preoccupation with the statistics of poets. I enjoy coming across someone’s personal site and seeing something in the way of a percentage and ratio or two regarding their vitae. It can be interesting to compare these people, as well. Writer A might feel great with a 17.94% acceptance rate over the last two years, but what if she runs into someone with a 38% acceptance rate? Is Writer B doing better than A? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe B has only sent out about 14 submissions in the last two years, whereas Writer A sent out just over 900. Who knows? Again, stats are of interest, but they mean very little. What means the most is whether you like what your doing, because odds are (with magazines shutting down left and right, small circulations, and larger circulations where primary readers are actually your competition), enjoying what you’re doing might be all you’ve actually got, as well as a hard drive full of poems and the occasional ‘you-have-talent’ email from an editor. This is supposed to be what it’s all about, not just getting your tiny-spined collection of 21 poems into Barnes and Noble for $14.95, wedged between Maya Angelou and that dying kid that writes the inspirational poems. That’s a great outcome, but not if you don’t like the process.

Money? I’ve made $90 bucks in the poetry world. I’ve spent around a thousand dollars on postage thus far. And about as much on exhausted printers and a perpetually vanishing supply of paper and ink, both cartridge and pens, printer paper and writing pads. Want to be a rich poet? Be rich first.

ray succre