• you don’t have to convince the poetry editor to accept your book.
• You have exhausted all other publishing possibilities (that is, being turned down by too many publishers) and, having worked long and hard on your poetry collection, want to see it published.
• Writing poetry is a pleasurable hobby which you have enjoyed and you use a Vanity Publisher to provide copies of your book.
• You don’t want to spent a huge amount of time or lack the expertise of book production.
• You can get the book published in in two or three months instead of two of three years.
• You have control over what’s included in the final manuscript and a say in book production.
• You may do a lot of open mic readings or are going to a festival and need to have a number of books to hand in order to sell to people who enjoy your work.
• You make more money per book.
• It may of course get picked up by a commercial publisher but this is unlikely.
• It allows publishers to accept more poets, have more writers in print with less overall risk.
• The publisher no longer has to finance the entire project.
• You may want to use a particular imprint and have them as the publisher of record.

“Personally I can’t get very excited about this controversy over whether XYZ is a mainstream or vanity firm or something in-between.”

“never pay to get your poems published”

“Poetry is too marginal proposition to be worth serious attention”

1. DEFINITION

Vanity is excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own achievements and as such applies to both the author (who wants to get their work into print) and the publisher (who is made to feel important, worthwhile, gain pleasure or kudos in publishing his/her work and those other others. Vanity Publishing is a term coined by Johnathon Clifford in 1959/60 and the definition (as accepted by the UK Advertising Standard Authority) is “Vanity publishing, also self-styled (often inaccurately) as “subsidy”, “joint-venture”, “shared-responsibility”, or even “self” publishing, is a service whereby authors are charged to have their work published.” Generally speaking they will accept the work of anyone, charge the author for the production of their work and/or the author must purchase X copies of their own book. However, where do you fit print on demand, different types of subsidy publishing and self publishing services offered to writers – editing, proof reading, cover design, printing and marketing?

2. EXAMPLES FROM THE PRESS

Publish through …… Avoid the vanity press. All categories considered. Combined Editing and publishing package. Your book never out of print and for sale in all major UK &US on-line bookstores, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Authors invited to submit manuscripts all categories including poetry. New authors welcome.

Writing prize for short story or poem any length up to 2500 words. Theme refugees and peace-0seekers. No entry fee. Closes 31n March.

Free poetry contest, max 21 lines, £50,000 in prizes.

Best submissions will be published in an anthology

Poems on any subject required for anthology.

A proven reading/criticism service for new and published writers. Professional appraisals of … poetry. I am a scout for a leading literary agency.

If you’d like to develop you poetry, then this course is for you.

Creative writing weekends from £240.

To be considered they must buy one of our publications.

I’ve finished another of the novel and have started reading about deep third person POV and this set me thinking about imagined communities, that of poetry and prose. I like poetry. A great place where everyone is helpful, there are different genres, specialized magazines, publishers, readings, workshops, competitions, books showing you how to write and so on. Writing poetry has made me aware of using senses, how to be concise, use sound, voice, imagery and how to edit. As Hugo Williams said “if you can’t write poetry you can’t write prose.” I’ve been an active member of this community for the past 30 years.

 

Unfortunately, I had an idea. I wanted to write something longer than 40 lines. I wanted to do something with characters, that has a plot and theme. I even had a title, The Poet Assassin, and a tag line. So I sat down and started the solitary business of writing and finished up with a 60,000 word draft. Great I thought, now I can find out how I should have done it and what to do next. A visit to the local bookshop for advice was overwhelming and confusing, as was a search of the internet. Lots of names being thrown about, jargon, do’s and don’t’s. It was a different world, a different community.

 

A look at my bookshelf shows BANG SAID THE GUN next to THE FORWARD BOOK OF POETRY, JOHN HEGLEY next to THOMAS HARDY, and ELVIS MCGONAGALL next to OSIP MANDELSTAM. Page vs stage, academic vs lay, cooked vs raw, pale vs redskin, open mic vs serious, doggerel vs hardcore poetry. Different communities and tribes where trading relations haven’t yet been worked out. The big question – where do I belong in all this?

Another milestone is always reached. In my case it’s another chapter. The revision is not looking at a checklist but rather just reading and making changes along the way. Thinking for example that chapter 6 could be from the viewpoint of Maggie to save a run of 4 from Bill’s viewpoint. But chapter 10 will be an information dump about vanity presses, still can’t be helped although I should try and just keep it to the business end and have Daniel and his friends talking about POD and subsidy publishers. This week I want to get at least to chapter 13. So by my birthday I should have revised to the end of Part 1 (chapter 55) and should start on Part II which will be about how Bill is forced to assassinate members of the poetry world by Hannah and how he’s hunted by the police

When writing poetry feedback is quicker. There are workshops and it’s easy to send them by email to magazines. It’s also a medium I’m quite happy working in. It’s a nice place and the world would be better if more people wrote, but that will do for another blog.

And the novel goes not well. One reason is because we now have granddaughter three days a week and I can’t seem to work on non consecutive days. Still, I should research writing for well-being and maybe writing in the digital age. At least I  can work on my poetry. I’ve selected 20 love poems, done a proposal and will send them off to the Emma press next week. Fingers crossed.

Apart from the fact that today the Queen became the longest reigning Monarch in English history today is notable because I finished typing in the revisions for the first draft of my novel. That’s 54 chapters and a rewritten final chapter. At least now the tenses are fairly consistent and the story makes sense. I’m so glad I’ve managed to incorporate episodes of the life of the real Bill Billings, at least when I knew him in the early 80s; also what poetry was like in the 80s and a few poems to give a bit more flavour of the time. The next job will be just to read through it.

The school term has started so now my writing/revising days are on Wednesdays and Fridays. They are also days I go to the gym.

I’ve just started the process of actually revising the text. So far I’ve completed  Chapters 1-5 and it does actually make more sense and the characters have started to come alive. I can’t help thinking of that Hugo Williams quote “if you can’t write good poetry then you can’t write good prose.” Bearing in mind the number of time you have to revise a poem I can look forward to spending the next couple of years revising. I wrote a prose piece, since published in the Screech Owl, about my time at Lumb in the 80s seeing Seamus Heaney eat a plate of Jammy Dodgers; it’ll fit in the book without any trouble.

Went to the Yvonne Arnaud to listen to Dr Howard Cunnell from Kingston  University talking about the process of writing and rewriting. Most of what he said  made sense especially about character confusion, too much explanation, plot holes and over written description.   Useful points too about the structure and harmony of the novel as a whole. As I expected there is no one or indeed best way of doing anything; you have to find your own way to revise.So it looks like 5/6 more drafts before it’s ready to be read by  or to anyone else.

I’ve been spending the past few weeks (or rather my Weds and Thurs busy ensuring the story makes sense. Thought I just about finished when it seemed like a good idea to add a real character (me) into the mix so I can appear in future parts of the book. Once I’ve done that I’ll get busy with my notebook and different colour pens.   This is going to be the fun bit, moulding the raw clay of words. I’m up to Chapter 6 now and worried that I’m not changing enough.

Still writing poetry though. Love poems in my bluesy form BC/AB/AC in 3 stanzas. that some people seem to like.