Getting poetry published is really difficult. Of course you can get an occasional single poem published in a newspaper
or magazine and that is very satisfying. You may get invited to have a poem published in an anthology - usually without payment
of any kind and all too often part of a vanity publishing scheme.
Another approach is to self publish - produce your own work and either publish locally or pay for an on-demand publisher
to produce your work.
Of course we all dream of a contract with a mainstream publisher with our books appearing in all the popular bookshops.
Unfortunately poetry is often regarded as the poor relation in the publishing world and many publishers will only publish
what they perceive as low-risk poets - those with a proven track record.
So we end up with a chicken and egg type problem - to get published - you need to be published! How on earth do you start?
Well the answer is often - small but reputable. Avoid vanity publishers at all cost and although anthologies may be nice
- your name is lost amongst many others. YPS approach small scale publishing by producing good quality chapbooks at no cost
to the poet in exchange for the rights to promote the work for a 1 year renewable period. Each poet published gets 4 free
copies and royalty payments on sales.
Don't expect to get rich however, as poetry sales in general are low-volume, but your credibility will build and we promote
our poets with the major publishing houses at intervals through the programme. What's more is that if you are unhappy with
the YPS programme you can leave with no financial penalty subject to the YPS retaining the rights to sell off surplus stock
to recoup costs.
In case you have never heard of the word chapbook - this expression came into common usage hundreds of years ago to define
low cost booklets produced outside the mainstream publications. They may still be of high quality and of course today we have
a world market through the Internet.
There are two phases to go through if you want a Young Poet Society publishing contract.
Phase 1 Submit three poems for consideration together with a short article about yourself and your aspirations. You
may use the form below or email or direct mail. There is a small donation requested at this phase.
Note: We are starting to get a lot of enquiries in and these are stretching our very limited resources. Please
be patient. We are all unpaid volunteers and will get back to you as soon as we possibly can. We will try hard to get
a report back to you within 7 working days of receipt of your donation.
Phase 2 is by invitation only and requires between 17 and 25 further poems to be submitted and quite a lot of hard work.
If successful the reward is a royalty based contract with no cost to the applicant. This phase is entirely free of any charges.
Got what it takes? Well this is the way to find out.
