That's the essence of it.

Marketing stories:

The best first step in getting anything published is to invest in a copy of the current Writer's Market. The book contains useful articles on manuscript format and other things you need to know, as well as a fairly exhaustive listing of what publishers are looking for what material.

Some of the best online resources are:
* http://www.writersdigest.com/
* http://www.inkspot.com/
* http://writerswrite.com/

There are increasing options for publishing books these days, including e-books. The above sites have information on all of the options.

How much you are going to be paid for a 1-5 page short story is going to vary extremely according to where you sell it. A literary magazine might pay you $10, or pay you in free copies; the New Yorker might pay you $250. Some publishers pay a flat fee for stories and some still pay by the word. The online sites may be the easiest to search for exactly the right publisher who is looking for your type of story and will pay for it.

If you want to be published professionally, do take the time to study professional writer's guidelines. Your manuscript will be competing with many others, and the more professional it looks the better chance it has of being read, and bought.

Marketing Poetry:

One of the best things to do if you are serious about becoming published is to get a copy of the current Poets Market. Poets&Writers magazine is an excellent resource also. Poets&Writers also has an online resource at http://www.pw.org/

http://www.ockhamdesign.com/paper/guide/ is an excellent step-by-step guide to becoming published -- which begins with looking through Poets Market.

There are a growing number of high-quality ezines publishing poetry on the web. Some of these are:

CrossConnect http://tech1.dccs.upenn.edu/~xconnect/

Eclectica http://www.eclectica.org/

Recursive Angel http://www.calldei.com/~recangel/

15 Credibility Street http://www.anti-naturals.org/15cst/home.htm

Melic Review http://www.melicreview.com/

Alsop Review http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1001/

Web de Sol http://www.webdelsol.com/solhome.htm

Agnieszka's Dowry http://www.enteract.com/~asgp/agnieszka.html

Zero City http://gate.cruzio.com/~zerocity/

A Writer's Choice http://members.spree.com/writer/

Web de Sol has "Contributor's Recommendations" at http://webdelsol.com/Perihelion/p-links2.htm -- poetry sites recommended by the featured poets from previous issues.

You can find 350 more listed at http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/keywords/poetry.html

Some other excellent places online for posting and discussing poetry are the Alien Flower Poetry Workshop at http://www.sonic.net/web/albany/workshop/ and The Scroll at http://www.scroll.org/

You can find another list of online and print poetry journals at
http://muse101.net/Kalliope/web.html

I hope that's enough to get you started. One psychological tip that's worked in our local worskop: set yourself a goal of 10 rejection slips. Getting rejection slips means that you are doing the work of writing and submitting your poetry. Going after rejection slips will encourage you to be persistent, and persistence is what will finally get you published.

Chapbooks:

 The first step for most poets, after getting individual poems printed but before trying to market a book to a publisher, is to self-publish a "chapbook" -- a small folded-and-stapled booklet. You can usually find a local printshop or copier service that will print, fold and staple such booklets for less than $1 a copy. If you are willing to do the folding and binding yourself, you can create a more appealing book for less cost. There are a lot of books out there, so anything that you can do to stand out helps!

Some references:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~knops/boekbinden.htm
http://www.gigabooks.net/

I have had 52-page 8-1/2 by 5-1/2 books printed locally for under $1 a copy in 500-copy lots. Hand-bound books are not only lower in cost, but they stand out more. I've sold those 52-page books for $5 at a book fair, next to a small press selling tiny little handmade books for $5 apiece. They outsold me 5 to 1.

Updated August 30, 2001