Publishing Poetry Online

Video Transcript

"I have something of a prejudice against publishing on-line, publishing poetry on-line in particular. Because I worked for many years in book publishing, working with dead trees. And it just seems to me a little bit less respectable. That's me, that's not actually the case. There are a lot of very good poetry journals that are on-line now. And there are a lot of people who are just using Blogs, either to post their own poetry or to post other people's poetry. There's a guy running a Blog, it's called, My Poem Rocks, and he pays people for the poems he uses. And he makes a pretty good selection, but it's basically just a Blog. There are more formal journals that come out four times a year and completely new issue on-line. And there are even academic poetry journals that are connected with colleges and universities that are on-line now. All of this is pretty good stuff. If someone asks for money to put your stiff on-line, run away. Never give anyone money to publish your poetry, unless you're having your book printed. You can probably find any number of places to send your poetry. Either through Duotrope.com or just Google on-line poetry. And then you ignore all the ones that explain how to do it for free, because of course, it's going to be free. The same rules apply for trying to get your poetry published, anyway. Look for some place that seems to be publishing the sort of stuff that you like, that is vaguely similar to what you're reading. Send them something along those lines and you've got a much better shot of getting accepted. If you want to set up your own Blog and put your poetry out there. Well, that's fine, but then you have to find a way to attract people to it. And the advantage of going to an established journal, is that they're already doing the promotion for you. Whatever they're doing, you benefit from it and then you can also tell all your friends."