Poets and PR - Do we need it? What Do We Need?

You don’t see those words together very often, do you? I’ve noticed the last few years have been tough for books, book publishers, and most of all, for poetry book publishers. Universities are cutting back and closing their presses; small presses that were just making it before now…aren’t. Even established presses are publishing fewer books, taking fewer risks, and as a result, poets are left out in the cold.
So, is there anything poets can do to make a little more splash when their books come out? Especially poets with smaller presses who don’t necessarily have the cash to travel around the country independently, doing readings at every bookstore? I think a lot of times poets shy away from doing publicity, but it is awfully hard to sell books without it.
I won, in a twitter contest, a month of PR book service from a new place called “YouDoPR” a couple of months ago, and it was a fascinating experience. Because of this lucky break, I wrote (and released) my first poetry book press release, started to think about gathering local media contacts, thought about national markets who might be interested in my book. Because this is coinciding with my first job as a “public” poet (as Redmond’s second ever Poet Laureate,) this meant I was thinking about interacting with the public and with media in a new way.
We can’t just write the book, spend the agonizing months (or years) finding a publisher, and then…cross our fingers and hope for the best! No! At the very least, poets with a new book need to:1.      Have a web site where people have a clear way to find out about them and their book and a link to buy the book2.      Get onto Facebook and Twitter (yes, I know it’s killing your soul, wah wahh, do it anyway,)  and post about your book release, your readings, etc. Other sites to join might be Goodreads, SheWrites (women only, obviously) and RedRoom. 3.      Send out (additional, if you’re lucky enough to have a press that sends out review copies) review copies either to friendly reviewers or to journals that have recently published your work (They’re much more likely to run a review of your book – you already know they like your poetry!) 4.      Get in touch with media and let them know about your book. If you have friends at radio shows, newspapers, or magazines, do get ahold of them and send them a book. 5.      Join your community. Attend readings by other poets, bookfairs, local writing conferences. Go and hang out in local bookstores and get to know the owners. Make friends for the sake of actually making friends. Word of mouth is a great way to sell books.
If you’re anything like I was when my first and second book came out, I had very little idea about how to go about getting in touch with media in an appropriate way. I lucked into a couple of things on my first book – Garrison Keillor read two poems on his Writer’s Almanac show on NPR, and a local NPR station ran some of one of my readings – both of those resulted in increased sales, so the radio is great for poetry publicity, if you can get it. Some highlights from the twitter "Poetry and PR" chat with @YouDOPR:Collin Kelly mentioned using a mail blast program called “MailChimp” which I’m going to look into, for updates and newsletters.YouDoPR, my partner in crime in tonight’s twitter chat on PR and Poetry, is offering a "buy one month of premium membership, get one free" temporary promotion: http://ow.ly/dA8S5 They offer help setting up a press release, giving you media lists, netgalley access, and other fun stuff you may not already know about!If you want info on how to get reviewed, check out my old post on “how to get reviewed” here: http://myblog.webbish6.com/2011/11/how-to-get-your-book-reviewed.html  This is also pretty interesting resource on the basics of poetry marketing (I think they’re selling their services in this article, but it’s still helpful):http://www.wordclay.com/genre/PoetryCourse.aspx
If you want to go back and read the full chat, just search twitter for “YDPoetry” to read all the questions, answers, etc.