Marketing Madness

6/12/2023

While writing a poem can be a very tough challenge, getting people to read even the best of poems is almost always tougher. Poets face a serious "no win scenario" with marketing. If you don't market your poems, nobody will ever know they exist. If you market your poems, you risk looking desperate or self-absorbed.

What's more, marketing is a very stressful, rough and tumble world. It's a shark tank mentality, while writing poetry is more of a Zen, one-with-nature and inspiration feeling. The difference between writing poetry and marketing it is as big as the difference between eating a nicely cooked steak or trying to eat a live cow.

So what do we do?

Actually, I was hoping you'd tell me!

It's a very problematic obstacle and it's probably only going to get worse with the rise of AI platforms. Not because AI's will write good poetry, but because even more wannabes will flood the market cheekily devising a masterplan to use their AI word-salad to get rich and famous.

It's going to be very, very ugly. And it's already pretty bad.

Here are a few things I think may help:

Avoid flooding the market. If you out to much stuff out, people will tune out.
Be selective about what you publish or post. This is particular true of self-publishing. If you're going to bother to self-publish something be prepared to put in 5x the amount of work promoting it.
Don't pester people. If they want what you've got, they'll find it; if they don't, they'll just move on.
Lower expectations. If you self-publish a chapbook, 25 copies is a Big Number to move.
Spend money. If you can do it, and you really believe in your work, hire professionals to promote for you. Be careful who you hire and remember, you'll get what you pay for. Fivr alone won't do it.
It's basically everyday. You can't take a break form marketing or you lose momentum. If you're trying to market something you have to be on it all the time.
Don't expect to make money. Expect to spend it.

Poetry for the most part only self-markets for dead poets. Something about being dead makes a poet more interesting. Unfortunately, you can't bask in the glory from six feet under and the light from your halo up-top past the Gates will blind you to earthly success.

So, I leave you with these famous words, slightly paraphrased: "Do you know what it takes to sell poetry....?"

One thing you can do is to have really solid, polished work. If you want some help with your poems, email at [email protected]
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Tally
Poems Written: 311
Submissions: 51
Rejections: 21 (13 tiered)
Acceptances: 0
Poem written today: "n/a" Mixing song "Coming Home" for release!

poem polisher

7 secrets of poetry

Creativity & Reflections
by Daniel E. Blackston