After a semester of learning about poets, their writing styles, writing and publishing–I have finally reached the end of this (specific) project. Throughout the semester I have learned and cultivated a lot with my writing. I have also had the experience of learning how to design and publish a book. Now that I have gotten to the near end, I wanted to talk about how I plan to sell my book.
Recently, I just got a package in the mail of all the books I am planning to sell at school. I’ve ordered 75 copies, and I plan to make a small profit off of them. All the money that I make off of these books (online and in person) is going to the Chester County Fund for Girls, as mentioned before.
I realized after getting my package that I needed to learn more about selling books correctly. If I wanted to be a writer, and make the most of my independent project, I wanted to learn every aspect of publishing. Therefore, I did some research on selling print books, and I thought I would share some of that research with you.
According to Publisher’s Weekly, poetry books are the most difficult to sell. That may be because of how poetry is not the most liked genre of literature across the globe, or it may even be because of how specific poetry can be at times. Despite the difficulties, there are ways to sell poetry books successfully.
“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is also a phrase that is extremely relevant when selling a book. Unfortunately, if I ended up putting my book in a store or cafe, my book may be compared to others based on covers. Since I am selling my book individually, I do not believe that comparison will be a problem. However, I still wanted to have a great cover design to attract readers. With the help of some of my photography and visual design friends, they helped me put together a strong cover (front and back) that represented my work very well.
Another tip my research gave me was to always have a few extra copies to carry around. This is so if buyers were not able to come to me during the times I was selling, I could have extra copies to sell at any time. Since I do this anyway, this shouldn’t be a problem.
The last main tip that I got from both my research and comments from my recent blog posts was to create a social media to promote my book. I created an instagram a while ago, @besspoetry, that has my poetry, updates, and promotions for my book. It has been working extremely well, and I have made many connections from it!
I am planning on beginning to sell at the beginning of next week, and I’m hoping to make a good amount to donate! Selling online has already gone pretty well, I have just had a hard time selling more copies online. (As they are a higher price than in person).
I’ll end this blog post with a poem that I wrote at the beginning of the semester before learning everything that I did, and recently revised it. Its called : we fell in love
Before the semester began, this poem was much longer, filled with more empty metaphors and words. I feel that reading about the poets helped me understand purpose in a poem, and that helped me develop the purpose for mine. After performing at multiple spoken word events, meeting with Toluwa, and writing on my own for a few months, I feel that those skills I learned from those experiences helped me cultivate a poem in which an audience would relate to it. I also believe over the semester, my writing skills have gotten much better from practicing and learning from others.
Thank you, and I hope you consider buying my book!
Independent Seminar Blog 
BESS! Oh my god – you should be so proud of yourself. I love how you learned from other poets and added on and developed from them! My only question is where are you going to go from here? Is there gonna be another book? So excited and happy for you!
This is awesome! I am glad that you learned a lot and using what you learned to impact others through selling books. I definitely think this will be an extremely meaningful project! Furthermore, it is also awesome that you did research on book selling strategies. I can clearly tell you are making your works available to as many people as possible. Since I am not very familiar with how poetry books are usually sold, a question I have is if you have included your research part (how you got the idea, etc.) or the book will only include poetry? Either way, hope you a great success!