In a world where the success of every writer is measured by the number of books they’ve written, learning how to Publish a Poetry book could mark a dramatic leap that will get your work from scrap books to spotlight, leaving enduring trails behind.
For a second, imagine your poems getting a life of its own in a book form. Imagine it getting read by people, thousands of miles away from you. Imagine your words affecting readers in their numbers and inspiring their actions beyond ways you could ever think about.
This is the hope of every poet…
That one day, their poems will move beyond fleeting thoughts into indelible words that will transform lives. That their most intimate thoughts will one day be read by people around the world. But most poets will never get their works read outside their scrap book.
This shouldn’t be your story. That’s why I am putting together this guide, to take you through the whole journey as you write and publish your own poetry book, using the steps below;
Outline your Goal
Table of Contents
The first step to Publish a poetry book starts with defining your goal. Find out, what really do you want to achieve with this book?
It is important you define your goal because it sets the tone for your book. Gets you to easily put together purposefully, a book that will meet that goal.
Also, defining your goal from the outset will give you a decent data to measure the success of your work, when it’s all done.
Usually, some of the most common goals for most poets are to: get their poems into a book that can be read, grow their brand as a poet, reach a larger audience, make money etc.
Your goals can be anything as far as publishing a poetry book is concerned.
It can be pushing an agenda, promoting a cause, getting other poets heard etc.
Whatever it is, the most important thing is for you to identify this goal so it can guide your writing and publishing journey.
Create a Title & Theme
Now that you have identified your goal, its time to create a title and theme for your work.
As you journey to publish a poetry book, you want to find a theme or topic that meets your goals as set out in step one.
The most crucial part of this step is finding a theme. Your title can always come up at anytime during the writing process.
As soon as you’re able to find a central theme for your work, it gets even easier to put together, poetry pieces that will be consistent with that theme.
If you’ve already had your poems all written down, the best way to work out this step is to review all necessary poems and find a central theme that resonates with all your poems.
With this, you can tweak your existing poems to fit in with the central theme.
If its entirely a new poem you intend to Publish, setting a central theme guides you on the kind of poems you can come up with.
Group Your Idea Into Chapters
Your chapter titles are crucial because your poetry book is going to be a collection of themes, sub themes and topics.
To get the best out of this, divide your book sections into sub themes that come together to make up the whole body of work.
If you have pre-written poems, all you want to do is to get closely related poems or poems under the same sub theme together. And then put them under a single chapter.
Where you’re writing from scratch, you just want to create a balance at this point by choosing a single sub theme for each chapter in a way it works for you.
As you set out to Publish a poetry book that sells, you want to give your poems interesting chapter titles that captures the need of the audience for poetry works in that theme or subject matter.
Write or Edit your Poems
This is the part of your poetry writing journey where you put together your writings.
It’s possible you’ve already written out your poems. If that’s the case, at this point, you want to sort each of the poems and then edit each of them.
Remember, your goal is to get your poem to meet the central theme of your book as well as the theme under the chapter title you wish to publish it.
Where you’re yet to write the poems, this is where you get started with your writing.
Usually it may take a longer time if you’re just getting to start writing the poems. But, with your goals and themes all set out in step one and two above, you now have some good clues to get started easily.
Using your writing goals will guide you as you write and get set to Publish a Poetry book. It will get you to maintain a uniform theme, sub themes and all necessary nuances that will work for you.
Review & Revise
After writing a poetry book, you want to review and revise your book to be sure it meets with your expected outcomes.
Normally, you don’t necessarily have to be the primary editor of your work. You can hire others to do that for you
But, there are different kinds of editing needed for a book before it can finally get published.
For example, there’s the editing that demands you go through your book to ensure that the content is consistent with your goals.
Outside this, there’s the other form of editing that’s needed to ensure the grammatical and every other aspects of your work is fit for public consumption.
Usually, I prefer you do the first part of editing yourself. This will be easier for you as you can easily pick up every single part that will make your book meet with your expectations, compared to an outsider.
The second part can be given out to an external editor if you have the means.
In a nutshell, while planning to Publish a Poetry book, be sure you have your book all edited to meet with your publishing needs before you put it out there.
Layout & Formatting
The layout of your work is another important aspects of your writing and publishing journey that has to be properly put in place.
You want to set the interior layout of your book to meet up with the requirements based on the publishing platform you want to Publish on.
For example, if you’re publishing your book on Amazon, you have the options to publish either eBook, Paperback or both.
Where you choose to Publish both, you will format the interior of each draft to meet with the needs of your preferred publishing options.
This is very important if you plan to give your audience a good read. Also, you may not be allowed to publish a poetry book on platforms like Amazon if your interior formatting falls short of their requirements.
Here’s a guide to write and format the interior of your book for Amazon.
Design your Book Cover
Your book cover is a key aspect of your work that might make or break your book. You want to pay premium attention to this aspect of your work.
Outside choosing and designing a book cover that meets the central theme of your work, you need a cover your audience can connect with.
Since this is a creative work, you have options to use any creative means to come up with a stunning book cover however, this infinite creative options can also leave you without clues.
To make it easier for you, check out other poetry books in that niche or with a theme closer to yours.
Find out their cover designs and see ways you can use this to inspire your own designs.
As much as possible, while writing and getting set to publish a poetry book, be sure you’re not copying others totally. Make your work stand out.
Choose a Publishing Platform
Publishing a poetry book is a great way to leave a legacy of your thoughts and words for people all around the world, even after you’re gone.
Unfortunately unlike most other big budget books, poetry books gets far less budgetary allocation from most big traditional publishers.
For this reasons, most poets opt for self publishing options, using either online publishing platforms or other offline self publishing options.
As someone planning to Publish a Poetry book that will be read from people around the world, one of your best options is to use a platform that can allow such access.
And if this is your goal, one of the best platforms to get started with this is to Publish your poetry book on Amazon.
Here’s a complete guide to Publish your book on amazon here.
Publish & Promote
Now that you’ve chosen your publishing platform, its time to Publish and promote your work.
To get the best out of this, you need to start promoting your work even before it goes live.
If for any reason you were not able to do that, you must start the promotion immediately as soon as it goes live especially if you’re publishing on Amazon.
You need this to work out so well because without getting a decent sales in the first few days your book goes live, the book might not get as much visibility for the work.
So you have to marshal your marketing strategy and get to work promoting your poetry book as soon as it gets published.
Here’s a guide on How to Promote your book on Amazon.
Final Words
No matter what, you deserve to be heard. And your works read. You deserve a legacy that is beyond a scrap book of poetry.
And regardless of who you are or where you live, using the steps above, you can write and publish a poetry book that gets read around the world.
As professional Amazon publishing experts, we can also publish your books on Amazon or get you started on your Amazon publishing journey from your laptop to getting it on Amazon best seller list if you reach out to us here.
And of course you must known that while you’re not alone on this journey, it is your duty alone, to get your words out there for readers and leave a legacy behind.
Now, its your turn. What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to publishing a poetry book on Amazon? Drop your comments below.
No responses yet