Is Poetry Contest Publication Worth It?
Getting your poems published and read isn’t easy. The big commercial publishing houses devote most of their efforts to books that sell better than poetry collections, and a writer may have to develop some leverage by producing a novel or non-fiction work that generates income for the publisher before asking them to publish a book of poems. Poets will find it difficult to navigate among the vast array of small-press poetry publishers, some of whom do very good work, while others prey on poets’ hopes by offering substandard quality, expensive vanity publishing, or publication sans distribution. Many small presses use contests to generate submissions, in which the entry fees pay the prize money and sometimes there is enough left over to subsidize the publication of the award-winner or support the press’ other offerings. So poets end up having to choose between submitting to many such contests in the hopes of getting a book published, or spending the money on self-publication instead.
Just this week, we’ve seen a cautionary tale about poetry contest publication, in the experience of Stacey Lynn Brown, whose manuscript was chosen for the Cider Press Book Award and then withdrawn by the publisher. What do you think?
Comments
Be sure to read Cider House Press’s side of the story. There is a link in one of the comments on Ms. Brown’s blog site. lkm
Yes, to be sure, read both sides of this particular controversy. Stacey Lynn Brown published the response she received from one of the principals of Cider Press in the very next blog entry after her original posting: The Maelstrom, Part Two. So, folks, after reading everything about this particular incident, what do you think about the larger question: Is poetry contest publication worth it? What’s the best way to get a first manuscript of poems published?
Margy Snyder
Poetry Guide
What’s a poet to do? It seems starting with legitimate contest entries are your best way to get your foot in the door, if you can’t afford to publish yourself. And I would think, if you have something folks want to read, that winning of a contest could be the first step on the road to honest publication.
Do we need to do our homework to check out if a contest is legitimate? That seems like it’s all we have that we can do to cover our best interests. I’m really unsure, but want my poems published, believe they’re publishable to the point of being popular, so I take the contest route, not knowing how to really go about this endeavor.
I ask again, what’s a poet to do?
A big problem which you fail to address is that every person involved in your transaction (with the probable exception of your lawyer) is a female. I’m not intimating that this is wrong, but the fact is that most women at the level of publishing you are talking about do not do it for a living but as a hobby or as extra income while hubby grinds it out. Now don’t get your hormones in an uproar, but it is the truth. A professional depending on his good reputation to earn his living would never do to you what that press did. Women are swamping the marketplace and it is only natural that they MIGHT have given up their slightly used real estate licenses to join the feeding frenzy initiated by the chick lit craze.
Hate to disagree with Marlene, but gender is a complete red herring here. All poets have other jobs or are supported by other people, men included, Poet Laureates (the last few of which have all had university teaching positions) included.
What the article is about is whether you can trust that your poetry contest money is well used, and whether those who run contests respect and support poets. Cider House Press, probably out of a certain amount of incompetence, basically doesn’t — past Stacey Lynn Brown’s experience, their contest is far more poorly run than others. Some examples of this from my experience:
– no letter announcing contest winners, even though I sent them an SASE
– all contest results go directly to the Yahoo! spam folder (an indication that they have abused their email lists in the past)
– no schedule for results — entrants have a deadline, but the press doesn’t.
Some contests are better than this, but some are just as bad. Contests are the dominant funding mechanism for poetry presses — good ones and bad. The trick for young poets is to figure out the difference.