Amazon Kindle Poetry

[Perscribo]

Hello Poets!

I'm hoping I'm putting this in the right area, but I'm curious if there are any others who might be interested in a thread/FAQ for formatting your poetry on Amazon Kindle. This might be especially useful if you use non-traditional type constructs.

As many already know, the portal to publishing your own Kindle eBook for free is here (https://kdp.amazon.com).

The HTML code for one eBook I have developed is here (http://www.perscribo.com/backup/carroll_1.html).

Feel free to use or abuse at will.

Having extensively sampled (and sadly, in some cases wasted precious dollars on) all the sub-sections and genres of poetry in the Kindle Store, it appears that 99 percent of the publishers (Amazon and big houses included) are not formatting their Kindle poetry the right way. I am 99% sure (alas, evil hubris!) this code is the code that works best.

So, whether you're a brilliant publisher/programmer looking to hack this (please reference actual lines if you want to get technical) or debate, or just a poet looking for pointers on how to get your poetry correctly built and placed onto the shoulders of Amazon (aka "the 800 pound gorilla")--this is the place to ask.

[poetinahat]

Hey, thank you, Jen, for posting here. I'd had this in the back of my mind for a previous self-pub project, and I'm keen to look into this.

[Blarg]

Very interesting subject. Will enjoy learning more about it. Thanks.

[Sheryl Nantus]

I remember seeing some articles on Publisher's Weekly bemoaning the trouble of formatting ebooks for poetry - thanks for the info!!!

[Perscribo]

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone. I also hope to encourage discussions here on how to market Kindle poetry: from the Amazon boards (which, in my opinion, are a little unfriendly) to social networks to your own web site. What I want to push, overall, is helping poets feel less encumbered by their lack of technical ability (myself included) or bullying from gorillas.

[Perscribo]

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in earning a little extra income beyond what your original poetry pulls in (dare I use the "99%" ratio again?), I highly recommend using this HTML as a template for reproducing and publishing (under your own virtual "house") any public domain poetry that doesn't seem to be available on Kindle or, if it is available, it is terribly formatted. I say with certainty that Amazon, Gutenberg, and Penguin are all getting it wrong--so there is definitely a market for it. If the terribly-formatted Kindle title happens to be the free version offered by Amazon, you can still get your title published if yours is illustrated (with at least 10 images) or appended with something interesting and relevant (i.e., critical reviews); keeping in mind these additions must be original, if not also fall under public domain.

Be smart about your source, though. I can't stress this enough because this is where so many other small name eBook publishers are screwing up. If I can't find the actual original in a library (university special collection departments often offer reprographics services at nominal fees) or your own bookshelf (I scour antique marts for old poetry books), then there are some internet sources that are reputable. Archive.org is one I use, but stick to the eBooks that are actual PDFs/scans of the original (paying close attention to page numbers, because sometimes these can be missing!), and not anyone else's eBook or web site (which, unless you have permission, is stealing the design, and does not fall under public domain). If it is a PDF, don't just do a cut, paste, conversion, and dump. It's sloppy, hard to edit, and just plain dumb. I also don't recommend using any sort of OCR software once you've scanned the book. Seasoned writers are also excellent typists, no? The tap-tapping of the keyboard is our instrument of choice. No matter if we are enjoying outputting our own composition or a classic that has influenced us, the execution of it is second nature. What I mean to say is: once you get used to the code the production becomes automatic, and the actual poetry shines through. Transcribing, for me, is almost as pleasurable as reading the book itself. Since we have to incorporate reading (other poetry) into our practices of writing anyway, why not make it something that might earn you a few pennies down the road?

Sound painstaking? It is, but I have worked through it. I am loaded with tips to tone down the technical and enhance the actual wonderful experience of being a scribe (for example: never transcribe directly from the book; you must scan it and put the image adjacent to your editing space…you'll kill your neck otherwise!) It took me nearly 40 hours to compose this collage of William Carlos Williams, but the residual income and pride in my work (he is my favorite amongst all the other authors I've published) has come back to me very satisfactorily:

http://www.perscribo.com/backup/williamsearlypoems.html

It seems outrageously simple, but quality sells. I can say this with confidence because, though my original intent was to get these eBooks (http://www.perscribo.com) formatted right so I could enjoy them on my own Kindle, what pleased me more was the several thousand copies that have sold (with a mere dozen or so on my shelf) and continue to appear on the bestsellers list for my genre (20th Century) in the past year.

So, why are Kindle eBooks so much better than lunky PDFs or other eBook formats? That, like poetry, is probably a matter of taste. I don't want to go there so much except to say: "A Nook can't read, so a Nook can't cook. SO what good to a Nook is a hook cook book?"

Jen

[Blarg]

Wow really continually interesting. The plot thickens!

This will sound really ignorant, because of course it is -- but what time limits or other considerations make for a work being public domain?

Another question -- now that you have formatted works for Kindle, do you want to reformat them for the Nook? Or any other readers? Surely with a proven seller, you have proof that a market is waiting ...

As an aside -- Magdalen, oh She Of The French Poetry Translators, perhaps this might be up your alley? A little Baudelaire? Maybe with an added essay or such?

[Perscribo]

stick to the eBooks that are actual PDFs/scans of the original ... and not anyone else's eBook or web site (which, unless you have permission, is stealing the design, and does not fall under public domain).

I wanted to clarify this a bit. Obviously I am at the same time encouraging the use of my own design; but that's because I believe it do be the lowest-common-denominator of HTML for Kindle Poetry construction. Pure HTML logic in the context of Kindle readers. No fluff. No banners. No imbedded code or mile-long footers.

Public domain laws vary by country. In the U.S., for the most part, anything published before January 1, 1923, is considered free to use.

Another tip (I'm brimming with them...more to come!): Be certain to actually save these (links) as actual files to be opened in your editor, and don't just cut and paste the code from a viewer...it makes a difference!

Jen

[Perscribo]

Wow really continually interesting.
Another question -- now that you have formatted works for Kindle, do you want to reformat them for the Nook? Or any other readers? Surely with a proven seller, you have proof that a market is waiting ...

I would...if I knew anything about it. This is not my niche (I own a Kindle, LOL). If there are any Nook experts out there I'm hoping they'll chime in. Does B&N allow anyone to publish freely, too?

[Perscribo]

For all my shouting for Kindle I'm actually pretty ignorant about how Nook books (and Apple eBooks) are designed. Aren't they graphic/PDFs based? One of my favorite things about Kindle is the ability to search, earmark, and enter comments into the eBook itself. The eBook files are, generally, much smaller, too, so you can fit more onto whatever device you are using.

[Blarg]

Text takes up so little storage space that I'd hope e-readers would allow for vast libraries without worrying about space. Or is there all that much more space involved?

[Perscribo]

More tips...

Don't append supplemental information (i.e., reviews, etc., that highlight an author's life or style) at the front of your eBook. Although this goes against the grain of conventional introductions and prefaces in regular books, Kindle "samples" are only comprised of the first 10% or so of the eBook; preventing customers from perusing the whole thing. Customers don't want to see the salad (honestly, it's easy enough to find embellishments of the literary sort across the internet). They want a cut of the actual entree: the author's poetry. Whatever you put in that first 10% is going to be what's going to lure the customer to buy. Give them a sample of the best, in immaculate form. That way they can compare for free, see yours is the best, and they will buy it.

If you build it right, they will come…LOL.

Also, don't use the KDP tool to do your proofing/previewing, other than a cursory view in the final step. This preview is a (slow) web interface that doesn't really give a true representation of how the book will look on a Kindle. If you have a Kindle, the best way to proof is to e-mail the .html file to the @Kindle.com address that was given to you when you registered your Kindle. Amazon will charge you for this (I think it's about 5 cents), but it is well worth it, no matter how many times you have to resend the file to yourself.

[Perscribo]

Text takes up so little storage space that I'd hope e-readers would allow for vast libraries without worrying about space. Or is there all that much more space involved?

It depends on how much you want to put into your book. If I had to guess I would say 1 MB of space can hold about 400 pages of text on a Kindle. Anything over 1 MB, in my opinion, is too large for an eBook. Sounds conservative, but I stand by it. If you throw in illustrations it gets larger, but there are clear rules of logic for Kindles on how to format graphics so they are lean and still don't sacrifice quality.

[Perscribo]

More tips...

Also, don't use the KDP tool to do your proofing/previewing, other than a cursory view in the final step. This preview is a (slow) web interface that doesn't really give a true representation of how the book will look on a Kindle. If you have a Kindle, the best way to proof is to e-mail the .html file to the @Kindle.com address that was given to you when you registered your Kindle. Amazon will charge you for this (I think it's about 5 cents), but it is well worth it, no many how many times you have to resend the file to yourself.

BTW, you won't be able to preview the book with graphics in this manner (since the Kindle email will only interepret .html, .PDFs, and the like...not bundled .zip files). Nonetheless, it saves a ton of time to get the text alone edited this way.

[Perscribo]

One last thought for today (because I have to start getting dinner ready!):

I don't condone pricing public domain collections any more than the minimal Amazon price: 99 cents. No matter how much work you've put into them, they're still public domain. I don't think it's ethical to charge more.

[Perscribo]

Iambic Monometer: A verse which present the iambus (a foot where s1 is unstressed and s2 is not) in a one-foot line. For example:

Thus I
Pass by,
And die:
As one
Unknown
And gone.
I'm made
A shade
And laid
I'th' grave:
There have
My cave
Where tell
I dwell
Farewell.

Upon His Departure Hence, by Robert Herrick

Where am I going with this? Definitely not another place to meet about meters and feet. Such thread-builders are my new gurus. This is an extract from a Poetry Handbook (pub. in 1930, buried in my stacks of used bookstore finds) which has just moved to the top of my reading queue. I'm no MFA. I couldn't recognize a sonnet the other day (for which the thread guru was exceedingly merciful). As a matter of fact, I didn't even finish my undergraduate degree. However (like most college drop-outs, LOL), I like to think I have a different kind of net worth. An impressive bevy of English and Computer Science courses aside, I like to read. Especially the old stuff. Language is to my blood as tea is for the English. Poetry, of late, has come to my relief more and more. Unfortunately, I couldn't recognize a meter if I was parked next to one and the only foot that smacks in my mouth is my own. If I'm ever going to get good at this stuff it has to be automatic. Time to practice, practice, practice--after I read this book.

My real segue here is to my next tip: If your poetry lines run around the same length as these (i.e., you minimalists), then a tables-based approach to building your Kindle eBook might be a little excessive. <br> ("carriage-return") tags are well enough for you. The tables are built into my eBooks (encapsulating each <p> tag in it's own cell) solely to provide the ability to create a "poetic" (slightly-indented) line wrap for lines that are too long for the screen. So, unless your reading device is also super-minimalist (or your eyesight is so bad as to require a size 96 font), then it isn't likely the lines iambic monometer will need to be wrapped.

Happy formatting.
Happy reading.

Jen


[On a side note, should I be mortified that my first poem (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220802) proffered to this forum has still not been critiqued? If anyone has the time, please mark it up! My skin is tougher than you might think.]

[Perscribo]

Are you a poet in this Cooler who's got a Kindle poetry book going and would like another pair of eyes for review (if not on the content, at least on the Kindle format)? If so, I would be delighted to provide mine (all confidentiality applying, of course). Just send the .html file (I prefer < 1 MB) to perscribo@kindle.com from the email address you would like me to respond to. If you've got graphics in your books I won't get these but, to be honest, that's just fluff.

Jen

[LawlessLara]

Hey think I might take you up on the offer.

I will email it over now
(My email is lara@logophilepress.com) just as a heads up

Cheers

[LawlessLara]

OK I dont have a html file for my ebook that I can send so not sure how you want us to send them but it is available on Smashwords and Amazon.

I can send you a code to get the book for free.

[Perscribo]

OK I dont have a html file for my ebook that I can send so not sure how you want us to send them but it is available on Smashwords and Amazon.

I can send you a code to get the book for free.

Hi Lara.

Go ahead and send the code to me in a rep comment and I'll take a look.

A few Qs: What is the name of your book? Did you have someone else publish it for you or did you use the KDP tool yourself? What format, if not HTML, did you upload the file in?

Happy to help!

[Perscribo]

Irony of the month: My (extremely precious) "free time" priorities have shifted. I haven't transcribed one line of poetry (besides a triolet or two (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6421108#post6421108)) since joining this Cooler. :D

[Blarg]

Feeling your creative juices flowing is probably a lot more fun.

[LawlessLara]

perscribo halllllo sorry I have been away.
No I didn't actually write the book. I helped publish it. It is available on Amazon Kindle and Smashwords
The life and times of Mr Grimez (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/78626)
That's the smashwords link so you can access it for free the coupon code is PC36A

[Perscribo]

The life and times of Mr Grimez (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/78626)
That's the smashwords link so you can access it for free the coupon code is PC36A

Thanks. I'll take a look at it and send you an email (hopefully in the next few days).

Jen

[Perscribo]

Lara,

Could you give me any more background as to how this eBook was created? I.e., did you use Microsoft Word and upload it? If I knew this I could give you a bit more than just this generalized feedback.

First thing I noticed was there was no Table of Contents. Was this intended? Since any sort of automatic index is a major selling point for eBooks, I highly recommend incorporating one. Some simple code you could drop in/replicate to produce this is:

<a name="TOC"></a>
<h3>CONTENTS</h3><br>
<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem1Title">Title Poem 1</a></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem2Title">Title Poem 2</a></p>

You'll notice these paragraphs are styled to create 1) a hanging-indent; should the poem title be too long for the screen/font width; and 2) 0 point bottom and top margins. This second attribute is necessary because the default for paragraph <p> tags is to create a hard return and an extra space (similar to two <br>s) before the next paragraph. This is the same style used for the actual lines of poetry, which brings me to my second observation: because the <p>'s are not styled your lines appear to have double-spacing. I recommend using the same format for composing the lines:

<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a name="Poem1Title"></a><h3>Title Poem 1</h3></p><br>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Line 1</p>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Line 2</p>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Line 3</p>

...and so on.

Lastly, one bit of information it took me some time to discover is a (very short) list of non-standard, "custom" tags supported by Kindle Direct Publishing (https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A1B8OEIMUN0HFY). If you are uploading any other format (.doc, .txt, .rtf) besides customized (.htm/l) into the KDP converter, it's not going to register the most important of these tags, the (standalone) page break:

<mbp:pagebreak />

As you may guess, this tag goes at the very end of any content/tags you have for your title page, TOC, individual poems, etc. A division marker that forces a new page for the next section.

Hope this information helps!

Jen

[Blarg]

Not a coder so I have no idea what any of that means or what the ordinary joe (is it still ordinary not to be a programmer?) would do with it. But it's nice to see your continuing to help with what looks like it should be very useful to people.

[Perscribo]

If hypertext-markup is a completely foreign language, it doesn't hurt to bone-up on the very basics (http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_primary.asp). After all, this is what the KDP converter is outputting all those other file formats into. I think some folks are intimidated because it is deemed "programming" when, in reality, you're just layering and nesting formats. [Some of us old 'smiths (like me) might remember the "Reveal Codes" function in DOS WordPerfect 1.x. It's very similar to that.]

The rule of K.I.S.S. applies here more than anywhere, and is especially useful for editing down the road. I start out all my .html files in Notepad between two tags. The minute my eyes start to go buggy I'll switch to my editor, of which there are plenty of free ones (http://webdesign.about.com/od/windowshtmleditors/tp/free-windows-editors.htm) out there (HTML-Kit is my favorite) which--for the purpose of keeping eLibraries current--will serve you way better than any word processing application.

[Blarg]

I used to do a lot of that sort of thing in Wordperfect and other word-processing systems. If it's pretty much like that, then a bit of concerted effort should make one comfortable and productive before too long. I've kinda always wanted to learn more about working with the web. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to start out. Thanks for the links.

[Perscribo]

Here's the bare-bones template for a (2-poem) eBook which, I think, is easy enough to transcribe and modify in an editor. Just save it as an .html file and *poof*, you have an Amazon eBook. If you want to add a space/return, just add a <br> to the end of the line:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Poems, by Poet</title>
</head>
<body>
<a name="Cover"></a>
<div align="center">
<br><br>
<h1>My Book Of Poetry</h1>
<br>
<br>
By<br><br>
<h3>Poet</h3>
</div>
<mbp:pagebreak />
<div align="center">
This book is dedicated to poets everywhere.
</div>
<mbp:pagebreak />
<a name="TOC"></a>
<div align="center">

<h3 align="center">CONTENTS</h3><br>

<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem1">Poem 1 Title</a></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem2">Poem 2 Title</a></p>
</div>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<center><table cellpadding="1"><tbody>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a name="Poem1"></a><h3>Poem 1 Title</h3></p><br></td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 1 Line 1</p></td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 1 Line 2</p></td></tr>

</tbody></table></center>

<center><table cellpadding="1"><tbody>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a name="Poem2"></a><h3>Poem 2 Title</h3></p><br></td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 2 Line 1</p></td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 2 Line 2</p></td></tr>

</tbody></table></center>

</body>
</html>

[Blarg]

Er ... yeah. Heheh. I'll be able to figure it out eventually. Thanks!

[Perscribo]

Er ... yeah. Heheh.

LOL, I know. It's mostly redundant, but this is basically describing each verse in it's own table cell. As such, it is much more malleable!

I also want to stress (again) that the actual Kindle device interprets HTML code differently than your typical web browser, so any "previewing" in your editor will not be true-to-form, exactly. This is code that caters to Kindles.

[Perscribo]

One last thing (I need to go write some poetry before my left-brain implodes): how you structure these "tags" around your book is completely a matter of taste, but crucial. There are techniques of arrangement that--according to your own perception--make the copying/pasting far less painful, and the editing of the actual text really very easy. If you do prefer to craft your own "mold" in this regard, just be sure to adjust your editor settings so it doesn't do any auto-arranging or (worse) adding of code.

[Perscribo]

I'm fairly ticked at Amazon, these days. My eBook sales are slipping, and I'm convinced it's because the the "Sort By" drop-down menu on their search results page (http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_scat_157113011_ln?rh=n%3A157113011%2Ck%3 Aperscribo&keywords=perscribo&ie=UTF8&qid=1318097852&scn=157113011&h=2fb4c9f800cbfcb019448c7b1a36c9869d518660#/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D157113011&field-keywords=&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A%21133141011%2Cn%3A15460601 1%2Cn%3A157028011%2Cn%3A157088011%2Cn%3A157107011% 2Cn%3A157112011%2Cn%3A157113011) has suddenly replaced "Bestselling" with "Popularity." My PD titles were bestselling, because they were the best format--and with this visibility they sold themselves. Now they are slowly being lost to this "Popularity" algorithm. Surely they aren't synonymous, right?

[Blarg]

Could popularity be measuring what's currently trending hottest? More of a short-term thing?

[Perscribo]

I think you may be right, some sort of trending by week or month. Now that I've been thinking about this more (or, as my hubris trends back towards humility), I wonder if it's because more people are reading these eBooks on iPads and iPhones more than they are on actual Kindles. My eBooks were all designed for the latter. It's a shame they couldn't keep it unilateral. I acquired my first smart/iPhone just a few weeks ago, and I already think it's the invention of the century. I may have to reprogram everything to honor Jobs' memory, alone.

[Perscribo]

Actually, only the more traditional/structured poets (i.e., Frost) would have to be reprogrammed. The free verse titles--Cummings and Williams--would not (and are actually still selling well, hmm).

[Perscribo]

Found this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html?_r=1) interesting, but not surprising. Everyone knows self-publishing involves taking a risk. Ebooks make it too easy, now. I would NOT recommend using Amazon for producing actual books, though. Definitely not their business.

[Blarg]

Looks like it's becoming their business though. And they have a guaranteed place to house infinite "copies" that never have to incur costs just to go on remainder -- and the kindle to sell them on.

I am curious about the secret publicity details though. What kind of connections does Amazon have with key reviewers/review papers and sites/Oprah Winfrey/Joe the Plumber? And how much does that matter anymore, when some new authors have already proven to be doing great business without traditional publishers?

[Perscribo]

To me, eBook business has always seemed distinctly different from the print business, but I can see how this is changing. Perhaps Amazon is bringing in talent (and exploiting resources of said talent) that used to be employed with large publishing companies...perhaps even disgruntled talent, victims of economic and paper-industry downturns.

I was turned on to this article by a friend who posted it on Facebook. (Not your run-of-the-mill FB friend, but a friend I used to swap books, notes, and music with in my middle school years--one of my coolest of friends who I think deserves her own prime-time talk show.) I'm sure she wouldn't mind my pasting the thread here; which I've edited to the interesting parts:

Person 1 (Comment posted w/article link): Oh yeah, sure! This will totally work! I love when large online retailers who specialize in web development start deciding what's good art and what's not. They're so GOOD at it!

Person 2: Everyone is dying to read that Penny Marshall memoir. What a brilliant base for a publishing business!

Person 3: I like it! Why should the publisher benefit from the author's work? Especially now that they're not even making a physical book? As for Art, the literary world is filled with stories of so-called experts at the Publisher who rejected a story that later when on to be a hit.

Person 1: Well, as someone who worked for a music magazine that had to employ eight editors just to get through the better portion of the records released each week (and that was ten years ago, when it was a fraction as many as today), I'm a big believer in the "human filter." It's sort of like, which would you rather have for music: some really informative blogs and magazines, or a MySpace clusterfuck and a "good luck!" pat on the back? Both record labels and publishers also invest in getting the music/book to its audience organically, not just via merchandising. You can definitely argue about the quality of the "deals" between these companies and artists, but the companies do still have a clear value.

[Blarg]

I think they do provide clear value, but in deciding what clear value is, they alternately fill the market with garbage (Snooki memoirs and reactionary hate literature) and decide the only culture worthwhile is overwhelmingly centered in one place (The Northeast) and among one class (the upper middle) and one race (white). This has given us a literature that is provincial at both ends of the quality spectrum and that shows and makes accessible to America and people interested in America around the world only a fraction of what America is about, feels, and thinks. Fiction and poetry have been trapped in cocoons of style, comfort, and register for as long as I can remember.

In arbiting "taste," publishers have narrowed the fictional world so much that the majority of Americans can only look at its stories and style from a distance. If we want to ask why more people don't read, there is more than one answer, but one that should be put front and center is that most fiction is not about most of those people nor particularly interested in or in sympathy with them, so they have little or nothing in it to relate to -- worse, little or nothing that seems believable according to their life experience.

The problem with gatekeepers is that to do their job well, they must exercise their authority not just as a privilege to be dispensed according to their own peculiar needs no matter how unbalanced, but in a way that fairly fits the situations they encounter and the materials whose admission into the cultural stream they provide for. Yet our modern American gatekeepers, faced with little serious opposition, have been able to get by with doing their job poorly and would seek to go on doing so.

As good work as some traditional publishers do in their narrow spheres, perhaps it's time we acknowledged how narrow those spheres really are. And busted down some gates so there is more than one way to get into the culture. The web and the camera phone have been wonderful in doing that for journalism. I'd like to see the same done for traditional book publishing. It won't destroy everything in its path -- but it will enliven and reinvigorate publishing.

Best of all, in so doing, it will likely promote literacy itself by increasing the types of voices heard and invigorating the largely untapped market for them -- both the reading and writing.

[Perscribo]

A well-articulated, contrasting viewpoint. With the light-speed advancement of new technologies, it's hard to not think about what you bring up, Blarg. Actually, my said friend also happens to live (now) in NY, and may very well be one of the (disgruntled?) demographic you've defined. (I have this theory, though, that the more snow an area has, the more well-read the population; being indoors so much--but I won't go there!). You tap into the comical comment Person 2 put out there (in post 39) about the Penny Marshall memoir --which I would throw into the same bin as Snookie's--the trash bin. Amazon is a reservoir for mass-consumption, built upon a matrix of millions of mail-order book sales, T.V. viewers, Kindle consumers, and N.Y. times bestsellers. It's too big to be niche, or artistic (at least in the sense where the writer is more concerned with his art, and not his paycheck), or relevant to (at least our broad vision of) the best of American literature.

I get just as pissed off as the next person over the amount of crap that gets distributed through these wide-market channels (our population is booming, we can't avoid it!), but I do agree that, at the very least, Amazon is giving authors the chance to launch their own flagship in this sea of a million titles (of which I'd be curious to know how many are self-published). How they choose to self-propel once embarking in is the most critical. I would be very pleased if it did indeed encourage a culture of increased literacy and a better representation of "American" literature. We'll just have to wait and see.

[Blarg]

Interesting article on e-book formatting/kindle formatting (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-dionne/e-stands-for-errors_b_1023072.html).

[Perscribo]

Wow. I knew about the scanning/OCR errors for the public domain stuff (for which there is a definite need for the human filter), but didn't realize publishers were also taking shortcuts on the new stuff. If I were an author subject to this sort of slipshod handling by my publisher I'd be royally pissed. All the more reason to break away and self-publish. I'm shocked that the big name publishers didn't have much foresight into the future of their eBook business. If they can't keep up with the game, then they have no right to complain.

[Perscribo]

The problem, of course, was always the line numbers. I tried to emulate Norton, and didn't think to question at first. So, if anyone feels like line numbers are mandatory for your ultimate eBook experience, raise your hand. I'm starting with taking them out of my Frost book first, then Eliot. This will effectively bridge the gap between Kindles and the REST of yoose reading devices. (If I want to start squawking over my iPhone, I'll start another thread…or restrict it to my own poetry.)

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as a search-and-replace code fix. I gotta manually edit thousands of lines. But if anyone can do it, I can. It's moving along. I'm a machine!

Of course, you gotta take breaks from the assembly line, too. Mine is going off to Pound the pavement for a while. Ha!

[Blarg]

I was thinking of getting the kindle then saw a bunch of complaints about their build quality and it made me hesitate. I really like the nook, but Barnes and Noble is in some financial trouble, so investing in their e-reader seems dicey at best. I hate DRM, but wish these clowns would at least have a unified standard DRM instead of trying to capture customers away from each other by corralling them into proprietary DRM schemes.

[Perscribo]

That is, by far, my biggest beef, too. Even Gutenberg's seemingly simple standard smacks of proprietary smugness. My Norton lookalikes look quite nice on a Kindle, but I haven't looked at mine in months. I considered for about two seconds taking the paltry $30 they are offering to apply for a trade-in/upgrade, and decided it wasn't worth it. I still believe a common denominator exists, though, and will continue to use Amazon's ginormous accessibilty to distribute them. Their library size is what gives them the power over B&N and iBooks, I think.

[Perscribo]

Of course, I'll still be using my Kindle (and now, my iPhone) to proof my final editions, just not for my own reading.

Thanks for keeping this thread alive!

[Blarg]

It's interesting to me. Good to learn something new. I'm interested in hearing about your further discoveries.

[Blarg]

So ... I broke down and even after reading negative reviews that didn't seem crazyfied, I bought the Kindle. But I kept my investment minimal -- I got the cheapest one, the one for 79 bucks with the ads. I took my credit card out of Amazon.com and bought a $25 kindle-only gift card at Staples so that if the problem of finding yourself getting charged for unwanted books comes up, the damage will be limited.

I look forward to tinkering about with this new experience! Think I'll start by downloading some freebies, and I'll buy one of your e-books, Perscribo, to see personally what your stuff looks like on the Kindle.

I never thought I would buy one of these, even though I'm a gadget freak. But I look forward to poking around with this new toy and seeing if it's my style.

[Perscribo]

Good for you! I'm actually curious which of my titles interest you most, and whether it looks any different on the newer Kindle. I'm assuming they shouldn't, because the programming is so simple, but you never know.

What's also nice is that, once you buy a Kindle eBook, any subsequent editions are pushed out to you (in the "Manage My Kindle" area) at no charge. Although I've got some fine print on my web site for folks to send me an email if they encounter an error, I've never gotten any feedback. Although, I can't assume it's perfect, so if you encounter even the smallest typo I'd love to get your feedback.

Thanks for buying one of my eBooks, and have fun with your new gadget!

[Perscribo]

My latest eBook by Robert Frost (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006BG4QUC) is now available. Instead of upgrading, I took the old one off-line and published a new one, with a slight modification to the title. I had to do this in order to disassociate it from the Penguin eBook (which, as I stated earlier, is terribly formatted,) and from a negative review, which is no longer applicable. This is the only edition for which I am doing this, the rest will be simple upgrades. Apologies to all who already bought the old version--but hey--it's only a $1!

This new version should look impeccable on any device, and--in addition to the Penguin eBook--is a far better format than any of Amazon's free versions of the individual Frost titles. If anyone begs to differ, I would love to hear your feedback!

On to Eliot...

[Blarg]

I think that's the one of yours I'll buy. I'm iffy on ee cummings, who had been my other choice.

I've gotten some poetry on the kindle, but haven't looked at much of it yet. Too much to read already! I have noticed that some of it seems formatted okay -- a Gary Snyder book. But there's something organic about poetry on a page that I still appreciate. Page breaks, for instance, and a clear separation between sections in a poem. On a kindle, everything runs together. A new chapter, verse, or section doesn't start at the top of the page, giving you that sense of anticipation, nor end with blank space to spare, lending a sense of completion.

It's a small thing, perhaps, but I like it, especially in poetry. Some of the Snyder poems were mixed with prose -- or were they? Harder to tell on a kindle.

I still love the thing, though, especially all the free stuff. I've got 140 books and samples so far and think I've paid, like, a dollar.

[Perscribo]

On a kindle, everything runs together. A new chapter, verse, or section doesn't start at the top of the page, giving you that sense of anticipation, nor end with blank space to spare, lending a sense of completion.

Unfortunately, this is the case for much of the free poetry you're going to find in the Amazon store, but it doesn't have to be this way. All my eBooks are coded to replicate the look and feel of an actual book--including page breaks and correct indentation (even when the font size is changed). Having always strived for the best possible standards (and I am still learning/improving them myself--as evidenced with this new release), I'm frankly surprised all these other publishers could care less. Especially the big names.

The two old reviews I've appended (one by Ezra Pound) are pretty interesting, too, as they each give an unaffected first-impression of Frost's work, right at the time each book was released, and are not (as most everything that was to follow over the past 80 years) encumbered by popular opinion.

Thanks so much for your purchase!

[Perscribo]

On a kindle, everything runs together

I just want to re-emphasize that it is not the Kindle that is ruining the experience, but whoever has built the book--just as it is with web browsers and HTML.

I forgot to mention (way back when) that I finished upgrading all of my titles so they are decent reading on any other device (that has the Kindle reader application), too. I use my iPhone now to proof the final because it's the smallest possible frame I need to please.

Finally, I wanted to tell the world (/Blarg, lol) that I've just finished another fun volume of Carroll (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Verse-Carroll-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B0071DWJGW) for the kids. It's another one where I couldn't find a decent version of The Hunting of the Snark anywhere in Amazon's library.

Moving on to more Ezra (which I will need to consolidate at some point into one eBook, but the dude's more prolific than Williams!).

[Blarg]

Nice to see you're still around, Perscribo.

Still interested in your doings!

[Perscribo]

Thanks, Blarg. How's the Kindle?

[Blarg]

Lovin' it. Spending way too much money on it. Enjoying reading up about self-publishing on it. Even playing "Battleship" on it. Best and most useful toy I've bought in many years.

[Perscribo]

Hook, line, and sinker, eh? Glad to hear it.

[Perscribo]

now that you have formatted works for Kindle, do you want to reformat them for the Nook? Or any other readers? Surely with a proven seller, you have proof that a market is waiting ...

BTW - I still don't know the answer to this, and so have decided to do more snooping (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6969444#post6969444) to figure it out.

[Perscribo]

You know, there are chunks (ounces?) of Ezra Pound's poetry I find hard to understand, but there is something oh-so-marvelous about the way he fits words together. A Quinzaine For This Yule (http://www.amazon.com/Quinzaine-This-Yule-ebook/dp/B0076CQ2L6) is one of his shortest books I've compiled, but kept getting lost in it. I like to think of it as his valentine to Venice. An excerpt:


Beddoesque.

————————and going heavenward leaves
An opal spray to wake, a track that gleams
With new-old runes and magic of past time
Caught from the sea deep of the whole man-soul,
The "mantra" of our craft, that to the sun,
New brought and broken by the fearless keel,
That were but part of all the sun-smit sea,
Have for a space their individual being,
And do seem as things apart from all Time’s hoard,
The great whole liquid jewel of God’s truth.

[Blarg]

How are your sales going, Perscribo?

Do you foresee them at some point leading to at least a modest full-time income?

[Perscribo]

That kind of wishful thinking has crossed my mind. By themselves, though, no--I don't forsee paying the rent with them. I'm not sure everyone's scrambling to download poetry on their new wireless toys, either. Although my bestseller (Cummings (http://www.amazon.com/Early-Works-Cummings-ebook/dp/B004OYUFPI)) has consistently sold over 100 copies over the past 6 months (which equates to a top 20 rank among nearly 23,000 eBooks in the "Poetry" category), I think its popularity has a lot to with his style/form and the combination of several sources. A complete shot in the dark.

Obviously, not every idea is a hit (right now I'm looking at a first edition Sara Teasdale--not sure I like her yet), but I'd much rather these public domain "projects" (which should, er, really be free) lead to some other form of editorial employment for a publisher or author in need of proper eBooking.

[Blarg]

Well, at least the long tail should work for you. Earning a little bit sounds a lot better when you're going to be earning it for a long, long time.

[Perscribo]

That's also wishful thinking, if the code stands up to the countless device upgrades and demand stays with the Kindle. I'm optimistic that it's simple enough to survive a little while longer. It's already paid me back many times over for my time, so I can't complain.

[Blarg]

I doubt the kindle is going anywhere. I'd bet on the major publishers and the Nook going somewhere first.

Maybe it will be worth it to reformat as necessary, when changes come about. You showed the initiative the first time, so perhaps doing so in the future will look worthwhile too.

[Perscribo]

it will be worth it to reformat as necessary

I think so, too. I noticed Kindle is already trending toward what B&N does: creating graphically-based eBooks with fancier building tools (similar to you Flash freaks out there--ha ha, kidding!). I think the text-based eBook is still going to survive, though. People don't want to have to keep resizing their frame to scanned images. The clarity of text on a device has a neon quality that impresses me more, somehow. I find I read much faster on my Kindle and iPhone than I do a regular book. I still love books, but they're becoming more like disabled old friends (with innumerable protuding post-its).

One not-so-obvious source on the Cummings eBook was UCLA's library. When I started out I noticed a page and poem was missing from the Internet-archived .PDF version of Eight Harvard Poets. Easy to detect if you ask me because, besides noticing page numbers, it was also in the TOC. This scanned version had seeped out (beginning at the University of Michigan, I think) to every other electric avenue…

…and then I took it higher.

(Sorry…sometimes you gotta laugh at yourself.)

So, I bought something from Amazon (for $12!) that looked like a print-on-demand of a transcribed Eight Harvard Poets. It turns out the type-set was horrible (again, like it was a text-dump of an OCR scan), and even IT was missing the same page/poem--telling me the editor had just copied and pasted the text from the scanned PDF from Adobe--and then decided to sell it for $12 a pop! I've never felt so gypped.

So, having the fortune of working at UCLA during my secretarial tenure, I knew librarians offered copy services to the public for their special collections. I found a phone number, made the call, found out they had the original book, and paid $15 to have the single missing page scanned and emailed to me. Easy peasy. Needless to say, both the $12 and $15 turned out to be good investments. Both made me think about the reliability of sources.

Incidentally, the poem that is missing from the Internet sources is The Lover Speaks, one of my favorites:


YOUR little voice
__________Over the wires came leaping.
and I felt suddenly
dizzy
_______With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
_______________or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
____________stars and the Humourous
_________________________moon
dear girl
How I was crazy how I cried when I heard
_____________________over_____time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
_____your voice.

[Blarg]

I read remarkably faster on the kindle too, while enjoying reading more.

I imagine e-books will have more graphics as time goes by, but I'd bet most won't bother using them, as they will make the reading process less transparent.

Unless, of course, we wind up pursuing the google model -- advertising-supported ebooks for which authors charge nothing but are paid by advertisers per download or, within the book, by clicking advertiser's links.

[Perscribo]

Unless, of course, we wind up pursuing the google model -- advertising-supported ebooks

And there you have it. The Internet reborn. I loathe having advertising (or any sort of motion-propelled graphics, as I have hinted to some here with animated avatars) on the perimeter of what I read. I'm keenly sensitive to such things and am not going to change my prissy ways about it. If you're going to be totally Zen about when you read you can't have ANY distractions. This is the same reason I loathe mainstream television (but I am getting distracted, now). Would you look at the Mona Lisa the same way if it were surrounded by a flurry of banners for the latest Parisian hot-spot?

[Perscribo]

I loathe having advertising...on the perimeter of what I read.

Yes. I do realize this is a bash to AbsoluteWrite. I find, in this case, it is bearable due the content herein that absolutely cannot be found anywhere else.

[Blarg]

I find animation very distracting too, so I always have avatars turned off on the net, and as many scripts and as much flash blocked as I can get. Plus all that stuff can take ages to load.

I can't stand most ads, either. So many are sophomoric and cater to not just the lowest common denominator, but to the lowest imaginable common denominator, IMO. They can be so stupid they're outright creepy. It's weird to be addressed as imbecilic. They make it pretty much impossible for me to watch TV. Which isn't actually a bad thing.

[Perscribo]

I always have avatars turned off on the net

Good idea.

[Perscribo]

BTW, here's what I'm using now instead of the tables-based code previously developed. It's a lot simpler. I've emboldened the areas that would be repeated for additional poems (and the PoemX variable edited):

<html><head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>My Book Of Poetry</title>
</head>

<body><a name="Cover"></a>
<div align="center"><br><br>
<h1>My Book Of Poetry</h1><br><br>
By<br><br>
<h3>Poet Name</h3></div>

<mbp:pagebreak /><a name="TOC"></a>
<h3 align="center">CONTENTS</h3><br>

<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem1">Poem 1 Title</a></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a href="#Poem2">Poem 2 Title</a></p>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a name="Poem1"></a><h3>Poem 1 Title</h3></p><br>

<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 1 Line 1</p>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 1 Line 2</p><br>

<mbp:pagebreak />

<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
<a name="Poem2"></a><h3>Poem 2 Title</h3></p><br>

<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 2 Line 1</p>
<p style="margin-top:0 ;margin-bottom:0; text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 2em;">
Poem 2 Line 2</p><br>

</body></html>

[Blarg]

Cools thanks. I know I'll make use of all this stuff at some point.

[Perscribo]

My research on Sara Teasdale yielded a rather nice anthology of children's poetry she put together in 1922: Rainbow Gold (http://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Poems-Selected-Girls-ebook/dp/B007EV09DQ/). I then noticed (in the download counts of actual archives and the Amazon Bestseller lists) that children's poetry seems to be more in demand. However, once again, the format for these "popular" items is predominantly poor. I was very giddy to dive into it. These familiar rhymes are fun dog-paddling for any age.

The compilation brought to light another area I didn't cover: graphics. Here is the code I use to incorporate each:

<div align="center">
<img src="Rainbow015_062_S-480x186.jpg (http://www.perscribo.com/backup/Rainbow015_062_S-480x186.jpg)" height="186" width="480">
</div>

The extended file name and centering is a matter of preference. When incorporating graphics, it is important to remember:

1. The eBook (.html) file that you upload to Amazon must now be a .zip file, comprised of the (.html) text file and all graphic (.jpg) files.

2. The file names in the .zip file must all be in lowercase letters. Don't ask why.

3. Your graphics must be no more than 64 KB in size (individually).

4. You must specify the dimensions of the graphic in pixels (height="X" width="Y") in the image tag. If you leave this out, KDP will not default to the actual size, but can (depending on it's HxW ratio) balloon it up to fit the entire frame. This is why I put the dimensions in my file name after editing them--I know I'm going to need it later when building the HTML.

Keep in mind, all that I share here is in the context of the "old" KDP. I'm not sure how things are different/better on the new DX development tool--I haven't had time to look at it. I'm running with the assumption that this old-fashioned way is still the easiest. It suits my own needs fine (so far), since the illustrations in my eBooks are, for the most part, black and white drawings; so resolution quality is a non-issue.

More to come!

[Perscribo]

I find animation very distracting too, so I always have avatars turned off on the net,

I guess I changed my mind. I saw Kelly's avatar today (which you can't suppress if you're not logged in) and decided I was also missing out on some great stuff, too. Frills are nice when their not too taxing on the eyes or your processing speed.

I can't help but feel a little unnerved at the persistence of Kindle titles that are directly competitive with mine staying on the Bestsellers list, despite their inferior quality. I have gone back and forth nearly four times now posting and deleting reviews for these products that point out their flaws. In these reviews I have stated clearly I am another publisher offering a better product (that's often cheaper). I keep deleting these reviews because I get the sense it feels mildly unethical to post them. I keep putting them back up because I notice my sales go up when they're there. Is it unethical? I mean, as I'm typing them up I think: It's like Coke and Pepsi, right? Amazon is a marketplace even for the public domain peons. I can't help it. It just really gets caught in my throat when I see others who take a single poem like The Road Not Taken, create a terrible eBook out of it, slap a price tag on it (moreover, a price that is above the minimum), and see it stick at the top because this (?) is the essence of 20th Century American poetry.

Maybe I can wrestle a Warhol(-ish) poem out of this.

[Blarg]

I wonder if they do more to promote their book(s) than you do? It seems marketing reliably triumphs over quality.

[Perscribo]

I thought of that, too. Unless you're twittering and Facebooking like crazy no one's going to notice you. This is definitely not my strong point. I'm hyper-organized and have no time to wine and dine folks (virtually speaking). I'm only 20 pages into a marketing book (http://www.amazon.com/New-Rules-Marketing-Applications-ebook/dp/B005FMLI04/) that I know I need to read. Makes sense, doesn't it? All I want to do is put it down and write(/read/type) poetry. Go figure.

[Blarg]

Do you (or does your publishing company) have a blog?

[Perscribo]

LOL...ain't this one?

[Blarg]

Heh well if a thread in the poetry section of a writer's forum isn't going to bring the whole world's eyes upon you, what is???

I think for a business, you almost have to have a blog or an active website these days. I'm pretty sure a lot of authors get a substantial amount of their fiction sales from the dust and noise they stir up in the blogosphere. (Gee, I had always hoped I would never use that word ...)

[Perscribo]

I see what you're getting at. I should put together something more interesting (and polished) on my web site. All in time. I only really get impatient with my progress when I see the inferior stuff take off. Just hard to watch.

[Perscribo]

One book I discovered was not online but in an antique mart I was combing: James Whitcomb Riley (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Whitcomb-Volume-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B004M18ZJ6). Amazon ended up publishing their free version not long after I published mine. If mine didn't have the original illustrations included, they would have pulled it off-line as soon as their version came out. I had originally published many of the Frost and Eliot books as individual titles, but these were taken off-line as soon as Amazon came out with their free versions. I was angered by this because they considered my versions "undifferentiated" from theirs, which had absolutely no format to them whatsoever (again, this was a few years ago, they're getting better now). So, I had to consolidate and put these titles into collections with appended reviews. I am surprised they still have not come out with their own version of Ezra Pound's public domain work. The minute they do, I'll have to do the same thing for the separate titles I have for him now (which are doing pretty well by themselves with no supplemental information).

[Blarg]

It seems stupid to me that they would pull anything that was providing a service, public domain or not.

But adding reviews is a good thing for both the reader and for you as a seller, I think. It helps distinguish you, and why have an undistinguished product? The more assets, the merrier.

[Perscribo]

Just published another volume of Ezra: Lustra (http://www.amazon.com/Lustra-ebook/dp/B007HQQ6JO). Here's a poem from it that I particularly liked, and felt others here could identify with as well.

Further Instructions


COME, my songs, let us express our baser passions,
Let us express our envy of the man with a steady job
________________and no worry about the future.
You are very idle, my songs.
I fear you will come to a bad end.
You stand about in the streets,
You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,
You do next to nothing at all.

You do not even express our inner nobilities,
You will come to a very bad end.

And I?
I have gone half cracked,
I have talked to you so much that
________________I almost see you about me,
Insolent little beasts, shameless, devoid of clothing!

But you, newest song of the lot,
You are not old enough to have done much mischief,
I will get you a green coat out of China
With dragons worked upon it,
I will get you the scarlet silk trousers
From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella,
Lest they say we are lacking in taste,
Or that there is no caste in this family.

[Perscribo]

On a personal note, when I received (my first!) 1099 from Amazon in the mail last month I couldn't believe it. It's been nearly five years since I've made any money for myself.

It got me thinking that maybe I can tough this out for the long haul. Maybe there is a profitable market for old stuff. Well, if there is one, I want to be one of the ones to say this is how it's done. For someone with the right combination of skills/desire (and, let's face it, free time), poetry can be more than just a psychological outlet--it can be a financial one.

A hypothesis, really. This experiment will have to run another 5-10 years to see if any proof comes with this pudding.

[Blarg]

Awesome that it brings in some money for you. That's not the usual case.

[donatos]

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone. I also hope to encourage discussions here on how to market Kindle poetry: from the Amazon boards (which, in my opinion, are a little unfriendly) to social networks to your own web site. What I want to push, overall, is helping poets feel less encumbered by their lack of technical ability (myself included) or bullying from gorillas.

Just found this thread, thanks for that.
Even the big poets are intimidated by correct formatting of their poems.

I've bought several poetry books and won't even read them, they've been that massacred by kindle formatting.

[Perscribo]

Sometimes I get discouraged and think there's bound to be a limited number of titles that are actually marketable, no matter how you dress them up.

Then, I'll see a mini-documentary like this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQbEhZwWTZY&feature=BFa&list=PLDEDD7510A638DB98&lf=plcp&context=C3c7cf0fFDOEgsToPDskJo2OoHaEqiE19qG9MDi6ZL ), about the guy with world's largest vinyl record collection--and he can't sell it, though he knows for a fact that only the tiniest fraction of his records are available digitally. He knows he has some real gems. With millions of titles, how can there not be? The publishing (and recording) world had a far more refined human filter in past centuries; and I think we should pay respect to them by reviving them from the stacks;--even if it does have the creepy feel of foraging a dead person's pockets. That's the whole purpose of public domain. We are in a very pivotal time in the evolution of eReading, but we still don't have to abandon ALL of the old in search of the new, right? Ezra Pound's voice is magical to me. It doesn't matter that he lived in a completely different culture from my own. The masters adhere to the standard of art that is timeless.

I happen to have a natural talent for stating the obvious, but I'm willing to get laughed at by 99 people if it means I am proclaiming something new to one solitary person.

But I here I am, digressing to other threads that I haven't even finished reading...

[Perscribo]

I discovered and published another eBook written by a poet who I had never read before finding her in the Internet Archive: Elinor Wylie. To be honest, what peaked my curiousity the most was the title, Nets to Catch the Wind (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007JVRTHK) (which--yes--made me think of that song by Donovan, lol).

As I filled myself in on her background it seems Wylie was quite a popular poet during her lifetime. Posthumously, however, she did not retain this reputation among literary circles. I suspect the reason for this is because (in line with the idea that poetry loses it's power/influence with the passage of time?) her sparkling personality and ethereal beauty may have complemented these poems in a way that made them better than they were. Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of her many adoring friends, wrote a constructive, but still pretty glowing review of Nets To Catch the Wind right after it was published. Another reputation-boosting review came out of Poetry Magazine. One wonders if these reviews are what propelled the success of the book. I decided to append both reviews since one solitary, poorly-formatted free version (the stanzas are lumped into paragraphs!) of this eBook already exists in the Kindle library.

Still, Wylie's poems are pretty good. Not spectacular, but masterfully constructed. Her tight meter is still worthwhile reading even if the poems themselves are somewhat (as Millay states) "commonplace;" a talent that she expertly displays in the first four stanzas of her poem, The Fairy Goldsmith:

Here's a wonderful thing,
A humming-bird's wing
____In hammered gold,
And store well chosen
Of snowflakes frozen
____In crystal cold.

Black onyx cherries
And mistletoe berries
____Of chrysoprase,
Jade buds, tight shut,
All carven and cut
____In intricate ways.

Here, if you please
Are little gilt bees
____In amber drops
Which look like honey,
Translucent and sunny,
____From clover-tops.

Here's an elfin girl
Of mother-of-pearl
____And moonshine made,
With tortoise-shell hair
Both dusky and fair
____In its light and shade.

[Ozfizium]

Thanks for the thread, Jen. I've been looking to self-publishing, especially for poetry and short stories, and thought if you used CreateSpace you'd have to pay a $69 fee for conversion. Happy to see that that's not the case and, with some know how, I can just put it out without that kind of overpriced fee (in my opinion, anyway) so thanks again!

[Perscribo]

Sure thing, Ozfizium…well, I'm pretty sure it's a sure thing. I'd be curious to know if anyone out there is having success using this code to build. I'm more than happy to answer any technical questions or open this up for technical debate, which is sort of my primary reason for this thread.

As for the secondary, apparently more interesting, marketing side of things, I'm no expert, but I do have one observation: If you've got your book in the Poetry General and Poetry General American categories it only takes a handful of sales (4-6) to appear in the top 20 Bestsellers list in those categories, with even higher standing on the Hot New Releases list. But it will only ascend so far. If the sales don't persist, the title will trend down and disappear over time. It's the timing and what you do with that initial bubble that's important. Mine usually pop, but a fraction--mostly the collections and Cummings--have maintained.

I'm not going to lie, I use family and friends like slaves to cough up dollars for certain releases (and, believe me, this is like pulling teeth for most because poetry is not exactly at the top of their reading list), believing--if I time it right--can drop-kick it into the Bestselling universe on a Sunday afternoon; as I see it, high time for folks to be looking for poetry to nosh on. The trick is getting everyone to buy the release at the same time. In the next 24 hours, it will be on the Bestseller list.

Of course, if nobody is looking, it might not catch on. If they are, and the release is further boosted by pre- and post- release marketing in the blogosphere (all of the things that I am not doing right now), and it is good…who knows? I think everyone deserves a sporting chance.

Of course, I'm too chicken to publish anything of my own. My word-processing power might be brimming, but my poet's pen is anything but mighty right now.

Marching on...

[Medievalist]

Thanks for the thread, Jen. I've been looking to self-publishing, especially for poetry and short stories, and thought if you used CreateSpace you'd have to pay a $69 fee for conversion. Happy to see that that's not the case and, with some know how, I can just put it out without that kind of overpriced fee (in my opinion, anyway) so thanks again!

If you're setting poetry for POD, don't just autoconvert from MSWord and leave it. Be exacting.

If you're setting poetry for Kindle, hand-code the HTML. It's not rocket science; you only need to know about ten tags, but the results are much much better.

[Perscribo]

The Gift

What can I give you, my lord, my lover,
You who have given the world to me,
Showed me the light and the joy that cover
The wild sweet earth and the restless sea?

All that I have are gifts of your giving—
If I gave them again, you would find them old,
And your soul would weary of always living
Before the mirror my life would hold.

What shall I give you, my lord, my lover?
The gift that breaks the heart in me:
I bid you awake at dawn and discover
I have gone my way and left you free.
　

from Sonnets to Duse (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007LZPMC8) (and Other Poems) by Sara Teasdale


____

[Blarg]

Beautiful, but what a morose and self-defeating end!

[Perscribo]

LOL, you're right. I guess it was one of the few poems in that volume that I really really liked. I love structured verse that successfully captures the feeling, too. To be honest, there's quite a bit more (including most of my own which, despite the warm kudos from esteemed peers in other threads,) I just can't agree is that good. It's easy to build a house. Not as easy to make it a home.

I just watched a documentary on Charles Bukoswki, who I am a big fan of, and his publisher--the Black Sparrow guy--said that he thinks people who do "form" poetry are going the wrong direction.

Hmmm…

but I am wandering off-thread again.

The latest on the Perscribo front is that I decided, after all, to include the Chinese Rihaku translations that Pound incorporated into Lustra (http://www.amazon.com/Lustra-ebook/dp/B007HQQ6JO). These poems were published in their own volume entitled Cathy a year earlier. Why did I decide to include them? Because they're very very good. I dare say even better than all of Pound's own poems therein. Somehow, no matter his inaccuracies of translation, he does filter his own sort of magic into them; making them even more timeless.

Since I was editing the eBook anyway, I also added a review that was published soon after the book was released. I'm going to do the same thing for all of my other eBooks of his, instead of consolidating them. I don't think a 700+ page eBook is any more fun than a real book of that size.

If anyone out there bought Lustra when it came out, you can get the free upgrade in the Manage My Kindle area of Amazon.

Tapping on...

[Blarg]

Was it Born Into This? I watched that a couple of times on Nflix. Extremely good documentary. I don't recall his publisher saying that in Born Into This, though.

Apropos of probably nothing, I'm still recommending "The Song Poem Story" to anyone who will listen.

Re the seductions of form, I believe writing verse in different forms is tremendous training in rhythm and overall word sense and sensitivity, but can easily become an empty trap. The writing is not, finally, about the artifice; the artifice is there to serve the writing.

My favorite rhymed and/or metered verse tends toward being so ordinary and fluid you hardly notice the rhyme and meter. Anyone, with enough gnashing of teeth perhaps, can use meter and rhyme, but not everyone can make it disappear. Philip Larkin, as an example, does that for me. Ted Kooser does something similar with metaphor. He can use it so naturally it can be easy to forget how brilliantly it has been used until you go back for another reading. Certain kinds of top-notch writing can appear, so to speak, almost invisible.

[Perscribo]

Yes, it was Born Into This. I watched the free one on Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/watch/337491/bukowski-born-into-this). I'm too cheap to dish out any money to the likes of them or Netflix right now. There's still too many freebies I haven't seen that look interesting there and over at PBS. Documentaries make nice background noise for transcribing. Even better if it's about poetry.

Believe it or not, Born Into This was the first time I ever heard Bukowski's voice; even though I've read a lot of his stuff over the past 20 years and even more biographical information. It sounds exactly like I would have expected, a perfect fit for his verse. What I didn't expect was what a softie old Hank really was (at least when he's not at the tilt-point with the vino). In his writing he always seems tough nails.

Anyone, with enough gnashing of teeth perhaps, can use meter and rhyme, but not everyone can make it disappear.

Very true. I see it as very akin to having an ear for musical notes. Reading aloud helps a lot. Finding your voice does, too.

[Blarg]

Have you ever seen the short film "The Man with the Beautiful Eyes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW12Ealvj0s)"?

[Perscribo]

That was awesome. I'd never seen it. The artwork and different narrator (/translation?) made it even cooler. I completely forgot about YouTube. Lots of great footage there.

[Blarg]

Translation? Did I hook you up with the Spanish one by mistake or something?

[Perscribo]

OK, maybe that's not the best word...maybe I was trying to tie it back to the point about Pound. Interpretation? Just like no one sings a song the exact same way as the guy that wrote it (and some--like everyone who covered Bob Dylan (http://www.hulu.com/watch/337876/bob-dylan-the-folk-years)--sing it better). You know what I mean.

[Perscribo]

Made the specter of Phantasmagoria (http://www.amazon.com/Phantasmagoria-Illustrated-ebook/dp/B007QXT1XG) my April fool. While I know Gutenberg has a perfectly lovely, free web version of this, Amazon--as usual--didn't have a decent Kindle version, free or not. Just working to fill the gaps.

[Blarg]

What is this, by the way? Hadn't heard of it.

[Perscribo]

What is this, by the way? Hadn't heard of it.

Hi Blarg.

Phantasmagoria is a Poem by Lewis Carroll, originally published in 1869. Although, I obtained the illustrations from another edition that came out in 1919.

Instead of creating The Complete Verse of Lewis Carroll, Volume 3, I decided to give it it's original name. I'm also going to change the names for my existing Carroll eBooks. It didn't occur to me before, but people are more apt to be searching for the names of the original books, and not necessarily tracking my "series."

[Perscribo]

I just received my first fan email!

Hi, I was just on Amazon looking for a book of poems by Adelaide Crapsey, and found a Kindle book (http://www.amazon.com/Verse-ebook/dp/B003WEA1WS) for .99. After I downloaded it, I found your “name” listed as publisher. I though I would drop you a line to say thanks for making it available. (You saved me about $14) I hadn’t noticed the link on the bottom of your signature.


This volume is a must-read for fans of the Cinquain.

[Perscribo]

I found a 1900 edition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Mariner-Illustrated-Annotated-ebook/dp/B007WA369I/) with all sorts of nice supplemental information. I've always been a big fan of this poem, but was always annoyed at having to see the notes in the margin (intended for students), so linked them as end notes. I also decided to put the line numbers in, even though it was a bit more work, since this--more than any other title--I hope students will have the good sense to buy. Like magic, the Kindle readers no longer seem to be having a problem reading the table-based code. I'm very happy about that.

What I'm not happy about, though, the the "Click-To-Look-Inside" preview, which doesn't read the code right. It looks great on the PC-based Kindle reader (and, of course, all the other readers), but not the store front. Annoying.

I'm very excited to be going to the to L.A. Festival of Books today and tomorrow, hoping to drum up a little more business!

[Blarg]

Grats on the nice note, Perscribo!

I'll be interested to hear about your adventures at the book fair. How do you plan to drum up interest? Will you have a booth?

[Perscribo]

Hi Blarg,

I've never seen an event so big. It was at USC. They had a giant quad area just for poetry. Folks were sitting in the grass listening to poets read under a giant canopy. It was quite wonderful. When I started to tire of chatting up folks I just went around and surreptitiously put little stacks of business cards here and there; i.e., the USPS had a booth where they were releasing the new "20th Century Poets" stamp collection, the information booth, all the poetry book booths, etc. It seemed to be more of an event for books (I know--duh), not so much ePublishing. Some folks cringed the minute I mentioned "Kindle." Hard core book lovers, I presume. Some vendors let me put my cards out if I bought something and were very receptive to my pitch..."Do you have a Kindle? Have you downloaded any poetry? What's your impression of the quality..? and take it from there.

I did not have a booth. I couldn't possibly afford that now but, as I said, it didn't seem to be technology-driven. I had a new logo designed (it's my avatar and on my web site linked below) by an artist friend that I'm very happy with. The business cards took up my marketing budget in totality. It's a start.

I even went up to the Penguin/MacMillan booth and told them if they are looking for someone to help them edit their poetry books they can contact me. Aren't I audacious?

Realistically, though, I think I made the most headway with suppliers of vintage books, spending the most time with a one that specializes in old kiddie lit. Those books are easy to replicate and are oh so colorful and creepy.

Overall, I think it was worth going. Only time will tell if it's as effective as surfing the blogosphere.

[dclary]

Perscribo, I formatted my poetry book by simply putting it in Microsoft Word doc format... Is there really more to it than that? Of course, I've only sold 2 copies, since I'm at the very bottom of a non-poetry-oriented search list.

[Sheryl Nantus]

Perscribo, I formatted my poetry book by simply putting it in Microsoft Word doc format... Is there really more to it than that? Of course, I've only sold 2 copies, since I'm at the very bottom of a non-poetry-oriented search list.

That's one more than I've sold... and it was on Amazon.uk!

*laughs*

(Echoes of Red - haiku/scifaiku collection (http://www.amazon.com/Echoes-of-Red-ebook/dp/B007I6WP4I). Really. Also on Smashwords.)

[Perscribo]

Perscribo, I formatted my poetry book by simply putting it in Microsoft Word doc format... Is there really more to it than that? Of course, I've only sold 2 copies, since I'm at the very bottom of a non-poetry-oriented search list.

Hi dclary,

Well--does it look good? I know that Amazon converts everything that's uploaded via KDP to HTML, which is why I use that, because it allows me to cirvumvent anything lost in the conversion. In regular HTML, the paragraph tag, unless it is styled, automatically puts a space after the paragraph. It also does not create the hanging indent that you typically see in poetry books; this must also be styled. Word doesn't know you're publishing poetry, so it's just going to convert to regular paragraphs. The conversion will also not add page breaks (this tag must be added to the code). In terms of formatting, there are lots of little things that can go awry (pictures, alignment, etc.) that you cannot fix with Word. I find using HTML just gives me more control. I can easily see what to tweak if something doesn't look right. Word will also not add spacing to individual lines (that are necessary for authors like e.e. cummings). Lastly, I'm not certain you can program hyperlinks (i.e., for the Table of Contents) into Word.

I've used HTML for over 15 years, and just feel most comfortable using it. If your book layout is fairly simple and the output you are seeing looks OK, then Word might work well enough for you.

[dclary]

Hi dclary,

Well--does it look good? I know that Amazon converts everything that's uploaded via KDP to HTML, which is why I use that, because it allows me to cirvumvent anything lost in the conversion. In regular HTML, the paragraph tag, unless it is styled, automatically puts a space after the paragraph. It also does not create the hanging indent that you typically see in poetry books; this must also be styled. Word doesn't know you're publishing poetry, so it's just going to convert to regular paragraphs. The conversion will also not add page breaks (this tag must be added to the code). In terms of formatting, there are lots of little things that can go awry (pictures, alignment, etc.) that you cannot fix with Word. I find using HTML just gives me more control. I can easily see what to tweak if something doesn't look right. Word will also not add spacing to individual lines (that are necessary for authors like e.e. cummings). Lastly, I'm not certain you can program hyperlinks (i.e., for the Table of Contents) into Word.

I've used HTML for over 15 years, and just feel most comfortable using it. If your book layout is fairly simple and the output you are seeing looks OK, then Word might work well enough for you.
Yeah, that's what I thought -- for my purposes, this was fine. My poetry isn't formatted other than line breaks, so I just went with that. The only thing I wasn't able to do was insert a table of contents. How would you format something like that with HTML?

[Blarg]

Figure it out pronto, IMO. Having to scroll through a work to find a particular chapter/poem/article/story/etc is a gigantic ass-bite-by-a-bear. An active table of contents is a MUST!

P.S. !!!
P.P.S.: !!!@#$^)o*0#!~~~!!!

[dclary]

OK, AWPL!

[Perscribo]

To create a hyperlink that takes you to another spot on an HTML "document":

I.e., for the Poem entitled "The Fairies," here's what you can put in the TOC:

<a href="#Fairies">The Fairies</a></p>

And here's what you insert at the spot you are jumping to:

<a name="Fairies"></a>

You can make up any variable name (in red) for the anchors, as long as it's unique (meaning, no other anchor sets have the same variable name), and they match. There's no need to put any text between the latter anchor tag, unless you want to.

[Perscribo]

Sorry, I forgot you're not working with HTML! I think Word has a formatting function for hyperlinks, but I'm not sure how well they convert. As an alternative, you can always convert your Word document to HTML and then use the built-in editor to refine. The only problem with that is, as Word converts to HTML, it inserts lots of extra code that isn't necessary and hard to mill through.

[Perscribo]

Serendipitously, I found another incredible talent from the 20th century pantheon with nothing to show in the Kindle store: Orrick Johns. His first book, Asphalt and Other Poems (http://www.amazon.com/Asphalt-and-Other-Poems-ebook/dp/B007ZL3IYW), has a nice variety of structured and free verse. His lines to "Three Women" at the end are particularly beautiful, however I thought this forum might enjoy a sample that crushes closer to home:


THE LAST POET

The planet slain by lyric pain
....Lay crushed against the Universe
And threw off rhyming molecules
....And bits of quaint atomic verse.

The winds that had been torturing
....Its surface with their flute-like tones
Were hushed to hear the mountains sing
....Their parting diatessarons.

The seas were falling drop by drop
....In vain revenge upon the sun
Seeking to put its glitter out,
....The moon into a gold thread spun . .

High up upon a distant star
....Lolled sleepy-lidded Pierrot,
He plucked the strings of his guitar,
....He sang and turned his eyes below.

"I like to see the people dead,
....I thought it was a merry din—
The rivers were a lovely red,
....I lingered at the death of Sin—

"Into the sea I saw one fling
....His mistress drunk with love and wine
I do not care for anything . . .
....I only long for Columbine."

[Perscribo]

A little prose poetry for those partial to platitudes:

THE FOX

A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, "I will have a camel for lunch today." And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again—and he said, "A mouse will do."

From The Madman (http://www.amazon.com/The-Madman-Illustrated-Annotated-ebook/dp/B0083WSYIM), by Kahlil Gibran.

Once again, there were already a few editions of this in the Kindle Store, but none were properly formatted; nor did any contain his original drawings.

Happy Kindling!