I've tried selling my collection of poems. And tried it with my short stories too. If it's the whole collection, yeah, I can see a publisher not wanting it. But if you have a mix, some published, some new to offer, they'll still consider it.
I had a publisher interested in my poem collection. He said he loved it, but they were getting too repetitive, who know? I was hoping no one would ever catch on, I'm like a broken record.
Anyway, he told me he loved all the published ones, of course and the ones he pointed out that were weak, were the ones that weren't published, go figure, right? I pushed every one of my poems out there, some took and some got wasted. He came to me and asked if I could draw up a new batch, yeah....like sure, right away dude. No prob. Not. I told him I was more into my story writing now and I couldn't just drop everything to write up 10 to 20 new poems.
I'm not even really sure where this guy was coming from. I mean, he was from a reputable publisher, but what was he thinking when he said if you could just write a batch more, like I'm some robot printing company of my own. That collection, I think I had a little under 100 poems. That took me 6 years to write, dammit! Sorry I can't just pump them out like that, it doesn't work that way.
Anyway, long story short, I passed and never looked back. I got really turned off when he said all that. This stuff is a lot trickier than one full-length story. Like short stories, you need to think of different stuff to mix it up. You can't just pull it out of thin air, you have to come up with a new story idea and everything. Same thing with poems. With one fat story, you're just following along with what you wrote.
So that was my experience. I'm not sure if it's necessary or not, just thought I'd let you know. Again, collections are more difficult for several reasons. You can have a running theme thoroughout, but they still all have to be different stories or poems. I always have trouble with short story collections, am I the only one out there that glazes over the ones I don't like? and only read the interesting ones. Isn't that bad to do? I can't believe how fickle I am. I'm open to new ideas, obviously, that's why I'm here. But when I read a few lines, or a paragraph or even a few pages, or the first half of the story. Once it starts getting predictable, repetitive (there's that word again) and just not really fresh to read, it's a turn off. At least for me it is. I'm only speaking of my own opinions and experiences.
I wish you all the best of luck on this Fruitsy. I don't remember coming across any of your work. But you sure are a clever word artist in the Office, ya know what I'm sayin, Miss Orange Banana? You can peel off some silly, clever and just wonderfully cool writing in one shot of a post. Like Bruce Lee, done in 60 seconds. So anyway, I have a good feeling this work is pretty rock solid stuff here. You have every right to forge through. So don't let the non-responders get you down.
It's not worth it. Some you come across, you wouldn't want as a publisher anyway. Like I said, just keep moving it forward, keep active subs going as long as possible and always write new things in the wings while you're waiting. Just keep the steady course going, you're bound to hit on that iceberg eventually.
Keep us posted.
