Publishing your Poetry Chapbook - part 2

In our previous post, we talked about what a chapbook is and how it can help you gain the attention of readers and publishers alike. Today we will start crafting. So take out your red editing pencil, put your intellectual blue filtered glasses on, and let’s go.

So you have been writing poetry on your phone, on napkins, on receipts and on Instagram. Congratulations, if you did this more than 20 times, you will definitely have enough material for a chapbook. You can think about theme, style or a story arch if you want to, but you can also just ‘Allen Ginsberg’ the thing and use one poem that is 20 pages long. You can get really creative on this one. You can include anything you hold the copyright off, but also works that are in the public domain. When in doubt, talk to a copyright person / lawyer. If you want to involve third parties, like artists or illustrators, then you have to make sure you bought the reproduction rights of the artwork as well.

Now that you have a clearer idea of what kind of stuff to put in your chapbook, the fun bit begins. Just kidding, we are going to edit the shit out of your poetry.

Editing

We are going to assume you already know how to write a decent poem. After writing, comes editing. Some people make a big deal out of the editing process, probably because it makes them feel important. They think you should be completely ready in order to publish a work, but we don’t entirely agree with that. We think it is more important to get cracking and to do what you can with what you have right now, than to not do it at all. Our editor-in-chief keeps editing her books even after they are published, so how bad can your editing process really be?

If we can recommend one thing, though, it would be to read your poems out loud. We find this incredibly helpful for editing process. If you are a grammar nazi, we do recommend getting some critique from your poet friends or even hiring a professional editor to help you out. For those of us on a budget, there are plenty of great editing tools out there that can help clean up your mess. We will talk about that in another blogpost (so that you will keep coming back for more).

Avengers, assemble

The next step is to assemble your poetry into a work that makes sense to you. We don’t think there should be any rules for this. It could be as simple as ordering your poetry chronologically, or order them by a certain mood. There is no right or wrong here. It needs to feel right to you. If you want, or if it makes it easier, you can assemble works with the same subject or theme, but you don’t have to. There aren’t even any assurances that your readers will get through the book in a chronological fashion, some people just pick a random page to start reading.

Publishing

The first question you need to ask yourself next is: how do I want this thing to be published? Do I want to self-publish or get published? We are a big fan of self publishing because it removes the gatekeepers and gives you complete creative control. You also have a better chance of actually profiting from your chapbook if you publish it yourself. There are however, a bunch of reasons to go the traditional publishing road, and most of them have to do with fancy literary networks and cold hard cash.

We will talk about publishing a bit more in depth in our next blog article in this series. If you have any questions about this, leave them in the comments.

El formatting

Congratualtions, you know which way you want to go with publishing, now it is time to make your assembled poems look nice. Formatting and typesetting are fancy words for that. We will write about those subjects in other blog posts a bit more in depth, but for now we will keep it short and essential.

You don’t need a fancy but expensive program to format your chapbook with. We use Indesign but with the monthly subscription costs, this might not be an option for you. You don’t even have to use Microsoft Word if you want to save money. We installen Open Office on our laptops and it works just the same as Word, but it is opensource software, which means you can use it for free. Open Office can export your document in a PDF format. We use IlovePdf.com for editing PDF’s. This is also a free resource which doesn’t require any installion but works in your webbrowser. They did recently bring out a desktop version of their tool as well.

If you are unsure about design, we recommend using Canva.com. They have a rich assortment of templates that can really clean up your act. It doesn’t take much to look your work more professional if you are using their templates. You can use their templates for your book cover, for your interior and for your press releases and social media. Your entire brand kit can come from Canva.

Right, now that you have the tools to start creating, you will need to decide on trim size. The Trim Size contains the final dimensions of your book. Trim sizes are typically dictated by genre. Mass market paperback books are nearly always 4.25 x 6.87”. Most fiction and general nonfiction books range from 5 x 8” to 6 x 9”. Shorter works, like novellas, are nearly always 5 x 8”. Hardbacks are most often 6 x 9”. To give you a size example; our anthologies are printed in a 5.5 x 8.5” format.

When formatting your book you might want to keep in mind that less is usually more. When we see a crazy font on the cover of a book, we have the tendency to start running. Simple serif fonts work best in our opinion. Think about Garamond or Minion. A standard font size would be 12pt, which is perfect for readability, and for the love of everything holy, don’t be cheap when it comes to the paper and only feature one poem per page, even when they are short. Some chapbook contests have recommended or required fonts and font sizes.

Once you have decided on trim size and typesetting, you will have to think about the interior of your book. Other than your brilliant poetry, most poetry books also have the following pages:

• A Copyright page: on this page you can reserve your rights. You can also print your ISBN number, and there is space for your publisher’s information (if you have one).

• A Table of Contents page: this page would contain your titles and the page numbers that correspond with them. Make sure they match before you send your proof print out. If you have a bunch of untitled poems or your chapbook only contains one long poem, you won’t need a TOC.

• An Acknowledgement page: On this page you can thank the people who supported you. This would be your Pulitzer price acceptance speech.

• Dedication page: You can dedicate your book to your dog here. Or your parents. Or Harry Potter, or whomever you like really.

If you are struggling with any or all of this, use our free template to get started.

That’s it for now kids. Our next post will zoom in on the actual publishing side of things.