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Summary: Publishing a book of poetry can be done by self-publishing through a reputable printer or through a major publishing house that can market the book. Understand the realistic options of getting poetry published as a book with advice from an English professor in this free video on writing.
David M. Harris has taught English at Vanderbilt University and elsewhere. He has published poetry, essays, short fiction and a novel, and he has worked in book and magazine publishing.read more
"Whatever you're trying to publish and especially poetry, you need to decide why you're trying to publish, why you're writing the poetry in the first place. If you're trying to get rich, you need to get back on your meds because that's, that's a delusion. You are never going to get rich writing poetry. If you want to get famous, you have an outside shot. Most people could probably name two or three poets, perhaps one of whom is alive. Billy Collins, Mattie Stepanek is dead now. Those are about the poets that people would know. So, what do you want to get out of publishing a book? If you have some poems that you want to share with your friends and your family and perhaps your church organization, then go to some good reputable printer and this is what we call self publishing. You bring them the text, they turn it in to a book. You probably have to design it yourself and you don't actually expect to sell any copies. If you want to get real recognition, if you want to get out there in the market place, well if you self publish, the amount of work that would be involved in getting it in to stores and getting it promoted and getting it reviewed is just enormous. You are free to do that but you won't have any time to write any more poems and you still probably won't have much success because reviewers in particular are very leery of self published books. You can go to major presses which occasionally publish collections of poetry, but usually only if the people have published substantially in well regarded literary magazines. Smaller presses, and there are a lot of small presses in poetry and most of them that I know of are completely reputable. They'll publish a couple of hundred copies of your book. They will do what they can to sell it and then you put that on your resume and you move on, basically. You don't want to get yourself all wrapped up in one book and then stop writing because you're focusing your life on publicizing and trying to sell that book out of the trunk of your car."
eHow Article: How to Publish a Poetry Book
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