TheGirlWhoReads asked Sanober Khan:

Hi, hope you are well. I wonder how the publication process was for you? Is there a story behind it, you know how we read about manuscripts being rejected a lot, before getting accepted. How was that moment like for you and how did it feel to receive the first acceptance letter?

Sanober Khan Hello Pisces, Thank you for your question!

Yes, you are absolutely correct, getting published for a poet is never an easy task. In the initial stage, I wanted to bag the big publisher's attention with my poetry. So I started sending them manuscripts filled with what I thought was my best work. But unfortunately, the response never came....let alone rejection. That was extremely demoralizing. I thought maybe I wasn't good enough, but after doing a little more research I learned that the market for poetry is almost non existent. In fact, some of the publisher's websites clearly stated they do not accept poetry manuscripts. So for a while I gave up trying.

I was curious as to how the other published poets were getting by. I came across plenty of poetry journals that are released both in paperback and online, so I tried my luck with one of them (The Taj Mahal Review) by submitting one poem . I was both shocked and thrilled when it got accepted, that was the moment that truly set the stage for me. So I just took the plunge and published all my poems with the publisher of that same journal. I've never stopped writing since :).

I'm so glad you asked me this question.

Be well!

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