Hey y’all, since I’m approaching this coursework as an independent artist and not someone looking to join a specific industry after graduation, my week three assignment looks a little different. My goal this week was to research publishers and literary agents and see what they’re looking for in terms of authors and manuscripts. When I started my research I found that my goal was very broad. There are countless publishers and literary agents. My research process was actually quite overwhelming. To narrow things down I just started with what I knew and went from there.
I started writing poetry consistently as a form of emotional release when I was a sophomore in high school. At the time, I had no prior knowledge about contemporary poetry books. When I took AP Literature my senior year of high school I was introduced to Clint Smith and Rupi Kaur. That’s when the thought of publishing my poetry seemed like it could actually be a reality. Through those introductions I also found Courtney Peppernell and her book of poetry called Pillow Thoughts. These authors are the only contemporary, published poetry writers that I know of so I began my research with them.
Counting Descent by Clint Smith was published by the Write Bloody Publishing Company. (This was the first contemporary poetry book I was introduced to.) This company disn’t seem like something I’d be interested in submitting to. They have certain dates set aside for submissions and pick finalists and winners. They require that their chosen authors be free to tour and do at least twenty readings within the first year of the book’s release, and they only accept submissions during the the set time frame. Five poems are required and they do not allow submissions from previously published books or full manuscripts. Based on the vibe of the website, looking at the biographies of other authors there, and the requirements I didn’t think this would be a publisher that I’m actually interested in submitting to. So, I proceeded to research the only other poetry authors I know.
Pillow Thoughts by Courtney Peppernell and Milk & Honey Rupi Kaur were both published Andrews McMeel publishing. I found that this is one of the most popular publishers of contemporary poetry. Their website said, according to Nielsen Bookscan, that their titles comprise seven of the top ten best selling poetry books and more than fifty percent of Nielsen Bookscan’s top ten and top fifty titles in the poetry category. They accept submissions, but because of their popularity they receive a large volume of submissions and take an indeterminate amount of time to get through them all. Also, in researching these two different publishing companies I realized that I needed to be searching for a company that aligns with my values and truly believes in what I’m publishing.
My published poetry will most likely be faith-based, and I’m an African-American woman so a lot of my content will be coming from that perspective. I thought of the only faith-based African-American female writer that I follow, Jackie Hill Perry, and looked into her publisher. She is published by B&H (Broadman and Holman) Publishing. They do not accept submissions and they only accept proposals from literary agents. After seeing this I just looked up other faith-based publishing companies and came across Solum Literary Press. They accept poetry submissions, but only up to seven at a time, and they accept proposals for poetry chapbooks and poetry collections. I had no idea what a poetry chapbook was, so I looked it up. A poetry chapbook is a small collection of poetry that usually consists of fifteen to thirty poems, is generally no more than forty pages, and is focused on a specific theme. After researching all that, I continued to look at the website to see what the publishing company was about. My views aligned with theirs, but they’re such a small company and I didn’t recognize any of their authors or titles (possibly because I need to read and research more contemporary poetry, especially faith-based poetry.)
At that point, I back-tracked and looked up Jackie Hill Perry’s literary agent because I was most interested in her publisher. She’s represented by Austin Wilson from Woglemuth & Associates. They only accept submissions from authors who have a t least one book commercially published or through a referral from one of their clients or close contacts. They don’t even entertain unsolicited material.
So now my head is spinning from all the rabbit holes I’ve been down in research and I realize that I don’t even read enough published poetry in the field that I’m interested in. I don’t even read poetry by authors with the same target audience as mine. So, before I even think about really looking into publishers or literary agents I need to sit back and study authors that are doing the same thing that I would like to do in terms of writing and publishing poetry.