And you might even get a review in a prestigious journal. The journal has a subscription base of 1,800 people, of whom 200 subscribed because they’d heard the thing was highbrow but give it a desultory look-over. Five subscribed online while high. Another 250 are shipped out to university libraries. Some 600 are subscriptions from former and would-be contributors largely looking to see what work of theirs might be appropriate to send in, given what’s been running lately. Thirty subscribers graduated from the same creative writing program as the editor, while another ten are undergraduate chums. Then there are the thirty or so contributors of poems, fiction, and critical articles. The reviewer of your book won’t buy a copy; she has the review copy. The editor might, except that the magazine reviews sixteen or so books of poetry a year, and he knows five of those under review, who take priority. Most of the poets look at the issue to check for typos and to make sure that the poems next to theirs don’t suck. Ditto the fiction writers. Of the seven contributors who read the review, one buys the book reviewed immediately after yours; two decide that your book doesn’t sound like their thing at all, four think they may well buy the book some day, and one actually buys it when you’re booked for a double-feature together nine months later. The subscribers, of the 400 who make it to the review in the back of the magazine, skim the review as a rule, noting the kind of poetry it is. Of these, 146 decide they might be interested, and nine actually buy it (out of the twenty-one who decided they should), one of whom because he lives in the same town as your publisher’s second cousin (who owns a bookstore and actually has your book on the shelf).
- from Lehr's article "Quincy Lehr on Selling Your Poetry Book" on the Contemporary Poetry Review website.
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