There is a longstanding stereotype of poets as outsiders and Romantic loners but, until recently, most societies at least respected poetry and saw it as a valuable pursuit. Of course there are still people who believe in the value of the arts, but too many don’t – or not for the right reasons. I base this contention on personal experience because the first question most people ask me when they find out I am a writer is if I am a “bestseller”. This is the only category of writer the general public seems to be interested in: one who makes a lot of money. And poetry books rarely become bestsellers.
According to an EPJ Data Science study that used big data to analyze every New York Times bestselling book from 2008 to 2016, of the 100,000 new, hardcover print books published each year, fewer than 500 make it on to The New York Times Best Seller list. This amounts to 0.5 percent of books published each year. Even in the USA, which has more publishers and more readers than Canada does, and in which books are generally published in larger numbers and get more publicity, the statistics are grim: the average yearly sales of conventionally published American books amount to less than 200 a year, with less than 1000 total in a book’s lifetime. Most self-published authors sell 250 books or less.
Poets are more marginal than most other writers, and also than most other artists in any medium. The first and most obvious reason is that we don’t make objects that people can look at or adorn themselves with. Painters, print makers, sculptors, photographers, glassblowers, potters, jewellers, etc. all make stuff that has potential monetary value. It is extremely difficult for them to find buyers, but not inherently impossible. At some price – though often not one that values their expertise fairly – if the product they make is good, it can be sold.
Because poetry sells so poorly, it is very hard for poets to find publishers. Even those who find publishers receive little if any profit from their work. Let’s take a typical Canadian case in which it takes 5 years to write a book of poetry and 2 years to find a publisher. Say the book, when it finally comes out (generally 2 years after it has been accepted) is priced at $20. The poet’s portion of the sales price is 15%: 3 whole Canadian dollars. Say the publisher publishes 500 copies of the title and it takes 5 years to sell out. Over those 5 years, the poet will receive $1,500 for what was 5 years’ work, completed 9 years ago. Add up all the time since the book’s inception and we have 14 years. $1,500 divided by 14 = $107 a year.
This munificent sum won’t even pay for all the tea a poet has to drink in order to write the stuff.
Teapot; graphite on paper, 2023.