Sending out Poetry

This month I decided to concentrate on sending out literary poems. I have scads of them and haven't sent out much for a while. So I did a search through www.duotrope.com and first found the sites that I could submit to electronically. I looked for the highest paying ones of course. This is still a several night project because you have to read each set of guidelines and check the deadlines for submission, any special formatting rules, who the editor is and where exactly to send it.

Then I go through my poems (and if the magazine has samples on the site I read a few) and match the best ones. Plus I read through the poems and do any rewrites that are needed. I reformat them if it's needed, save them into separate documents and send them through email with a cover letter. I then checked the lists for the postal submission magazines. Literary magazines tend to not accept submissions by email. It's the minority that does, but there are more of them than there used to be. I still managed to send out quite a few through email. I'm now sending off another eight by mail. Mail of course means printing out the poems, and a personalized cover letter. Making up SASEs and adding addresses and postage and mailing. In all, this month I've sent out about 23 submissions of poetry with a total of 93 poems going out. Yep, 93! Guinness Book, look out.

I still have some poems sitting around. There are the sex poems that are too descriptive for some markets, a few SF poems, some witch/tarot series poems as well as those I did on Mexico and India. Of the ones still on my desk/computer, some are good to go and some have sat for a long time because they are just...not...right.

It's an elusive thing, and this round I did send out poems that have sat for ten years. In all, I probably have at least another 60 poems at home, including some unfinished ones, and another ten out. I did finish a poem I started last year called Perfect Lover, and another literary one I started two years ago called A Gathering. The second is a 3-4 page poem which I'm quite happy with. And I wrote a new one this week called Medusa that could sell as speculative or literary.

I try to send any poem I can off to literary markets first as they pay much better for poetry on average than a speculative market. I have managed to get $50 for one spec poem and now $100 for a literary poem. On average though, spec poems are around $10 and liiterary $20 and up. I also sent out about ten stories this month. And I continue writing on the erotic novel, but I'm going to have to pull the other novel out this coming week and read over it and the outline and synopsis if I'm going to do the Kansas workshop.

Next month I might delve into the very hard market of children's lit. I have a few stories so it won't take as long. I had this great dream two nights ago and woke up going, this would be a great young adult novel. It had the full plot, conflict and resolution. And can I remember it? No. Wah! But overall, I'm feeling rather accomplished, along with three sales for the month. Wheee!