I have nothing against self-publishing. Some of the most read poets in history were self-publishers. I won’t go through the list. You know them.

Instead, I’ll tell you why you should publish your books for the Kindle. In fact, not only should you publish for the Kindle, but you should publish in other e-book formats as well. Without further ado, here are the top 10 reasons you should publish your poetry for the Kindle.

1. Publishing is free – Compared to paying a printer or a POD publisher to mark up its services, publishing on the Kindle is free. Amazon charges $0 for you to upload a Word document and have it converted to the Kindle format. Even if you don’t sell a single copy of your poetry book, you have lost nothing but the time you invested in preparing it for the Kindle.
2. E-books sell more than print books - An article published in 2010 shows that e-books sold more on Amazon than hardbound books. They sell more today than they did then. More and more people are adopting the e-book format and it’s inevitable that eventually this will be the preferred reading format. The sooner you get in on this action the more likely you are to become a preferred e-book author among readers.
3. It’s easy – Publishing on the Kindle is easier than publishing in print. You don’t need an ISBN. Amazon will assign your book an ASIN, which is Amazon’s equivalent. All you have to do is prepare your manuscript according to Amazon’s publishing guidelines. The hardest part of publishing is writing your book.
4. Publishing is perpetual – “Out of print” is gone. With print, your publisher decides when your book is no longer available on the market. If you’re the publisher, that decision will most likely be made on economics. With e-publishing, you can update your book and re-publish it without taking it off the market. If it isn’t selling, there’s no financial reason to remove it from the virtual shelves. It can remain in print virtually forever.
5. Competition is low - Go to Amazon and search for “poetry” in the Kindle section. There are currently only 27,808 results (compared to millions for print books). And most of those are classics. Most contemporary poets haven’t started publishing for the Kindle yet.
6. E-books sell more print books – Your print book is more likely to sell if you have an e-book component. And your e-book is more likely to sell if you have a print component. Giving readers a choice in format increases sales all around. One reason for this is because many readers will buy the cheaper version of an e-book and if they like it enough they’ll graduate to print. If you offer readers a choice, then you increase your chances of making a sale.
7. E-books lead to new readers – With e-books it is easier to adjust the price to encourage readers to take a chance on you. Many readers would rather pay 99 cents on a new author than to spend $9.99 and take a chance that they won’t like the author’s work. E-books increase your opportunities.
8. Amazon reviews – By offering your e-book for free to reviewers you can increase your exposure on the market and encourage more sales.
9. It’s easier to make the best seller list – Amazon publishes a top 100 best sellers list in every category. Even poetry. With less competition, just a meager amount of self-promotion can put your e-book on the poetry best seller list. That will make it more visible to people who browse the poetry book shelves and increase your sales opportunities. My own poetry book “I Like War” made it to No. 18 on the top 100 list last month when I ran a one-day promotion.
10. You’re in charge of marketing and promotion – When you self-publish, you are in charge. You don’t have to rely on your publisher to move your book for you. You can run your own promotions and drive your own sales. There’s power in being able to make your own decisions about the success of your book.

As of this date, I’ve self-published 4 of my own e-books for the Kindle and one of those I’ve published for other e-book formats as well. I have not been disappointed. My sales keep going up and each time I run a promotion on my e-books the others sell a few more copies. I’m looking forward to self-publishing more new poetry titles soon.

Related posts:

1. Free Poetry For Your Kindle – Today Only
2. Should You Self Publish?
3. Should Poets Self-Publish?

Twitter Poems is the genesis of the #twitpoem project, which I started in April 2009. These 30 poems were published one day at a time on Twitter during the month of April 2009. All are 140 characters or less. I’d be honored if you’d check them out.

If you do read them, will you also write an Amazon review?

You don’t have to own a Kindle to read a Kindle book. You can download the free Kindle app for your PC. So now that you have no excuse, will you read Twitter Poems?

Related posts:

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2. Dinkle Dorkle And Other Nut Cases
3. Twitpoem Chapbook Is Now Available For Free

As you can guess, it’s a site devoted entirely to selling books for $1 each, plus shipping & handling. That includes poetry books and books in other genres. I have upwards of 1,000 books that I’ll be uploading to this site as a I go, so feel free to check on it often.

Currently, I’ve got a handful of poetry and fiction books listed, and one history book. I’ve got a box full of more poetry and fiction titles that I’ll be loading a little each day as I have time. It should take me about a week to get the box loaded to my inventory.

$1 books, folks. Poetry, fiction, you name it. Yes, they are used (except for the history book I’ve got listed). The Myth Of The West (America As Last Empire) is also $1. In pristine condition. And by the way, it’s a great read.

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Poems consisted of 140 characters or less. At the end of each virtual line I add a / to designated to readers that there would be a line break if they were reading the poem in print. // represented a stanza break. So a Twitpoem would look like this:

This is a poem/that I wrote/for you.//I hope you like it.

Then I’d add the #twitpoem hashtag at the end.

It seems silly, but I had fun writing these for several months. Then I decided to publish them as e-books. So I did. But when I converted the Twitpoems to the page, I took out the / and // marks and created actual line and stanza breaks. Initially, they were published in PDF and available through the World Class Toolbar. I am now beginning to publish them for the Kindle, Nook, and other electronic reading devices.

Which brings me to the subject of this blog post. “Dinkle Dorkle And Other Nut Cases” is now available at Smashwords for free. You can also get it at Amazon. Though the chapbook isn’t free at Amazon, it will become free once Amazon discovers the book is free at Smashwords, so give it a day or two. Of course if you own a Kindle, then you can get the book at Smashwords in the .mobi format, which you can read on your Kindle.

So here it is. 30 poems. 140 characters max, each. Silly, whimsical, and wacky. By yours truly. And did I say they’re free? What are you waiting for?

No related posts.

It’s been a little over two years since my last blog post. A lot has happened since then. The Kindle has become a preferred reading device for millions of people, Smashwords has become the leading distributor of independent e-books online, Barnes & Noble has introduced a competitive device to Amazon’s Kindle called Nook, Apple has entered the e-book competition, and there are more poetry and literature blogs online than ever before. In fact, online literary magazines are proliferating.

When I started World Class Poetry in 2005 I wanted to build more than a run-of-the-mill website that publishes poetry or lives off grant money and endowments while catering to a small group of specialists within a certain circle. I wanted it to be informational and broad, but helpful.

I started the World Class Poetry Blog in 2007 in order to accomplish a number of things as I worked toward my publishing goals:

1. First, I wanted to promote my own poetry without simply offering poems as blog posts. There were enough poets taking that route.
2. Secondly, I wanted to foster a serious discussion of poetics across a broad spectrum.
3. And thirdly, I wanted to promote the main website as I worked toward building a publishing platform.

This plan worked out well for a couple of years until I decided I wanted to merge the blog and website into one entity on a third domain. It was supposed to take two months, but it ended up being two years fraught with frustration after frustration.

How I Convinced Myself To Give Up

My plan with World Class Poetry all along was to build a publishing platform, not just for my own writing but also to help others promote theirs. Unfortunately, I got derailed by my own ambition.

For two months in 2009 I worked feverishly to move all of my content from an HTML site into WordPress at the new domain. All was going well until one day I hit a design snag that obliterated much of what I had worked toward. I’m still not sure what happened. It took me a couple more months to figure out how to fix the problem. Meanwhile, I continued to blog.

Once I fixed that issue I moved my blog to the new domain and was about to go live when another snafu occurred. Again, I spent months trying to fix it. This time I stopped blogging because I wasn’t sure how long it would take to fix the issue and because I didn’t want two blogs at two separate virtual locations with different content. While this was going on the blog was hacked and that made me want to move it to another domain all the more. Virtual publishing has its own unique challenges.

Long story short, for two years I’ve fought with three domains to get one little issue after another solved. I’d fix one and another one would pop up. As I worked on the new domain, the current domain began to fall apart – like an old house that no one tends to. Finally, I admitted defeat and just moved my blog to this domain (the original home of WCP) and did some cleaning up.

I hate to lose. The tenacious fool in me refused to admit defeat. At one point I grew so despondent I just didn’t do anything for several months. Whenever that happens, I take to writing. But instead of writing poetry, I wrote fiction. I even managed to get a few pieces published here, here, and here (a mere sampling, but be forewarned: these are pretty weird). I also found a home for this epic opus, which you can also find in my collection “Rumsfeld’s Sandbox.”

Still, publishing credits aside, the last two years have been a frustrating endeavor for me as a publisher. Alas, I have realized that my goals for World Class Poetry are too big for me to handle alone, so it’s time to ask for some help.

Let’s Build A Team

I have had to humble myself to confront my weaknesses. While I am well-versed enough in HTML and CSS to get the job done, I am not by any means a web designer. And I am by no stretch of imagination a web developer. I’m a writer, and I prefer that.

Web designer alert

Therefore, I’m looking for someone who has the design skills and development skills to fill in for my lack. If you have what it takes or want to join something great, contact me for more details.

Of course, this is a labor of love, not an enterprise. In other words, I can’t pay a bucket of gold for Rolls Royce wheels when I’m driving a volkswagen. But I believe in fairness and I have some improvements to the site that need to be made. As you can see by milling around, there are a few design inconsistencies that need to be fixed and some bells and whistles that could be added for effect. There is definitely work to do. I’d rather spend my time writing and editing content, which is what I do best.

Ideally, the right candidate will have some knowledge of WordPress, PHP, phpBB, Moodle, JavaScript, or the wherewithal to learn what you don’t know. If you’re up the task, I’d like to talk to you.

Writers, come to the fountain

Besides some design issues, there is a lot of content that needs to be written. I can’t write it all. There are sections of the website that need additional pages and some content that needs updating. Additionally, I’d be excited to discuss guest blogging opportunities with anyone interested in contributing to the blog.

While World Class Poetry is profitable in a technical sense (it earns a few pennies in AdSense money each day), it isn’t earning me a full-time income (that would be a dream!). But I am willing to pay a writer fairly for content and to help me take WCP to the next level. If interested, contact me and tell me what you think needs to be done to improve the site.

Other needs

Like my logo? Yeah, I’m not married to it either. I also think the site could use more graphics overall. I could entertain the idea of adding cartoons to some of the pages. I’d be open to other suggestions. If you have any ideas or if you’re a graphic artist and you think you can help with some of these, then contact me. Let me know what you want and what you’re willing and able to offer.

Did I leave anything out? Got other ideas? Contact me. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Let’s Build A Community Together

I have no idea where I’m going from here. I believe the community can build itself around the talents of the people who respond to my call. So let me know what you have to offer.

If you have sent me a book review in the last couple of years, I apologize for not being able to follow through. I will be getting back to reading books and reviewing them soon. But since that is a time intensive task that provides little return other than the enjoyment of finding a good read in the slush pile, that just illustrates another reason why I can use some help with the site.

There are improvements and additions to WCP that I’ve been planning since the very beginning. I still have not wavered on most of them. I still have plans to do some digital chapbook publishing, a project I was just beginning to get underway when the aforementioned troubles started. I will pick up where I left off on that plan very soon.

Obviously, I cannot do all of this alone. I need a team. If you love the idea of using your talents to promote poetry, want to join a progressive and forward-thinking team focused on bringing 21st century poetry alive, don’t mind putting up with my temperament, and believe you can improve the World Class Poetry website and community, I’d like hear from you. Contact me. A volunteer spirit is appreciated, but compensation based on contributions and resources available is my mantra. I’m hoping you’ll see the opportunity and respond. Any takers?

Image credit: Jonwatson

No related posts.

The reason I haven’t posted much in recent months is that I’ve been quite busy working on two projects, one of which is the publication of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox, my collection of poetry based on my experiences in the Iraq War. But let me qualify that statement.

I don’t consider myself a war poet. I am a poet. It’s true that I’ve been lunged onto a battlefield. But I didn’t go there willingly and I refuse to glorify a war effort with which I disagree. It is my firm position that the Iraq War – its conception and initiation – is unjust. So Rumsfeld’s Sandbox could be aptly called “unjust war poetry”.

Why I Chose To Publish Online

When you’ve been living with a group of poems for as long as I have, you are ready to unleash them. There is as much power in the unleashing as in the writing.

It’s been four years since I’ve returned from Iraq, five years since writing my first poem related to it. Some of the poems in Rumsfeld’s Sandbox had first drafts composed in the desert. Others didn’t make it to life until my return. But I have spent the last five years of my life living with these poems – sleeping with them, eating them, regurgitating them, playing with them, fighting with them, loving them and hating them.

I seriously considered seeking an established publisher. I’m confident I would have found one. But I’d have spent a lot of time looking. Honestly, I’m ready to give up the ghost.

I am fully confident the poems in Rumsfeld’s Sandbox are excellent work. But, of course, one cannot judge one’s own literary value. That judgment must come from the marketplace – the readers, who often can be more honest critics than the reviewers. Nevertheless, I chose to self-publish for a few good reason.

1. No. 1, as noted, I was ready to get them out there. Expediency was a value that I held and still do. I didn’t want to spend an additional year looking for a publisher.
2. More than that, I wanted to take a calculated risk, but I didn’t want to give my work away. Much of the poetry that is published online is published as a blog, with each blog post entered as an individual poem. Much of it is also quite maudlin.
3. And finally, I am comfortable in certain formats and like to experiment in the age of the digital presentation. I thought I’d publish Rumsfeld’s Sandbox in a format that I have become familiar with but that would also afford me an opportunity to pave a new path for publishers. I found that in a blogging software I am familiar with called WordPress.

Once I decided to self publish, I thought I’d offer readers a chance to preview my poetry before committing a full $12-$15, which is the going price for a published book of poems these days. So Rumsfeld’s Sandbox is currently being offered as a paid subscription blog with the subscription price being attributed to the price of the print book when I make it available later this summer.

How Much Does Rumsfeld’s Sandbox Cost?

I wanted to make the digital version of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox affordable. After all, why offer a preview if it is too costly? The point is to provide an affordable alternative so that readers who do not want to purchase the entire book upon publication do not invest more than they are willing to part with. So I’ve decided to place the price for the online version of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox at $1.99. Again, for readers who will go on and purchase the book in print later, that will be attributed to the price of the print version so the blog is efectively free for them.

More Than Just A Blog

I am proud of the work I’ve done on Rumsfeld’s Sandbox. But it is more than just a group of poems on the Internet. It is a multimedia presentation. Subscribers will receive:

• Downloadable PDF broadsides
• Audio versions of the poems on the same page as the written poem (and you can also download these to distribute to your friends for free).
• Videos of me reading the poems (not all of these have been uploaded yet, but this is a benefit you don’t typically get from a poetry blog)
• Essays on Just War doctrine (again, not uploaded yet but these will shed light on Just War theory for those not familiar with it)
• The ability to respond to the poems with comments as you would any other blog. You can even enter into discussions with other subscribers.

I have gone to great extent to include as much value in Rumsfeld’s Sandbox as I could. I want subscribers to get all the benefit with little of the expense and I am so confident that you will like the poems that you will be interested in the book when it appears in print.

Why Now?

The official launch of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox was Friday, March 19, 2010. That was the seventh anniversary of the bombing of the presidential palace in Iraq. The full invasion took place one day later. So this was the perfect time to launch a book as a stand against unjust war.

I hope you’ll accept my invitation to subscribe to Rumsfeld’s Sandbox. If not, at least do me a favor and pass the word to your friends. Join. Discuss. Meditate on them.

Go to http://www.rumsfeldssandbox.com now.

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The poem is a part of my upcoming collection Rumsfeld’s Sandbox and follows the publication of other poems in the collection. Those poems include:

• “Battlefield Confession”
• “Cigar”
• “Life”
• “Love And War”
• “Old Goth”
• “20 Acres”
• “Nocturne: Battlefield Sonnet”
• “The Armor Dims”
• “Carcass”
• “Siege”
• and “I Like War”

You will soon be able to read Rumsfeld’s Sandbox online as a digital book with audio presentations and downloadable .PDF broadsides and chapbooks. The planned publication date is March 19. Savvy readers will know that this is the anniversary date of the Iraq invasion, particularly the air strike on the presidential palace in Iraq.

More information will be published soon regarding Rumsfeld’s Sandbox. Meanwhile, take a peak at “Gunfight In Manhattan“.

Related posts:

1. Poem: Battlefield Confession
2. Have A Cigar … A Poem On Me
3. When Is A Poem Finished?

I am in the process of redesigning both the World Class Poetry website and this blog. It’s a slow go as the poetry site alone has more than 200 pages and I’m making some significant improvements that I hope will make the site more social. Aside from that, I am also continuing to review books and work my day job, which many people have told me not to quit. They’ll be glad to know that I’ve taken their advice.

At any rate, just dropping in for a report. Look for more news soon.

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