New chapbooks from CreateSpace

CreateSpace makes publishing easy. Maybe too easy. It's very seductive to throw together a collection of poems, upload it to CreateSpace, play around with the cover-- bam-- you have an ISBN and can order copies. Actual, paper copies that smell and taste just like a real book.

It's instant gratification. You don't have to do the hard work of searching for a publisher, submitting manuscripts hither and yon, enduring rejection after rejection in an endless paper chase that may just be a wild-goose chase.

On the other hand, it means foregoing the props associated with having someone else think your work is valuable enough to publish. In a field where nobody earns any money to speak of, that approval is the only currency worth discussing. This is where I part company with my novelist friends; the economics don't work out for poets, because for the most part, there are no economics involved.

I've put together three chapbooks on CreateSpace. Eleanor was edited by me, and I was one of the contributors; it was a tribute volume to Eleanor Berry, outgoing OPA president, and my mentor in all things OPA.

47 Haiku, I put up on Smashwords a while back.

salad days and knights is new. It's a collection of my word salad poems, written over the last few years. Most have appeared on this blog already.

They're all available through Amazon, thanks to CreateSpace's ISBN and distribution channels. Sales of Eleanor benefit OPA. Sales links will be in the sidebar as soon as I get around to it...

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside