I just finished a letter I began a month ago. When I send a copy of Thousand out I include a handwritten letter. My writing is pretty legible, if sometimes ambiguous. A friend recently read “month” when I’d written “mouth.” I suppose I could count up how many copies of Thousand I’ve sent out. These are not paid orders. I am sending out books to people I like/admire.
I’ve gotten out a few this year. Not a lot. Not much response. I don’t blame anybody for not writing back. I can be a good correspondent, or a bad one. Everybody’s busy. And what does one say? So far I’ve always asked before sending, so the Thousand should never be a surprise.
I continue to send out work — to submit, goes the lingo. The process hasn’t been rip-roaring this year. But looking back over LoveSettlement posts I see twelve publications. Not nothing!
The sense of discouragement sets in with the book length manuscripts.
Autobiography of a Book has now been out to 18 publishers. Eight rejected it. The other ten have yet to respond. At the writing of my new year’s resolutions post Book had only been rejected three times. I have a goal of sending Book to 100 places. Are there 100 places to send it? If Book gets its 100th rejection, I will reevaluate. Maybe at that point I will just post it on the blog or upload a file to a print on demand service.
When I have energy to market a manuscript I default toward Autobiography of a Book, thus the full-length poetry manuscript is neglected. That one is currently titled Nobody You Know. It is out to one publisher.
#keepyournumbersup … There are 30 places still considering work I’ve sent out since the beginning of July (to pick a recent date). That number includes poems, chapters from Book, and the two book manuscripts. Pretty good. It means I am not neglecting the process.
The question with which I ended the new year’s resolution post, “I wonder how many readers a published poem gets?,” got a data point in April.
