Do you think it's wise for a 14 year old to get a poem published?

I'm fourteen and a teacher said that I should get a poem published(try) I am very happy with what she said. All though I do not want to set my self up for the stress of what readers would think as I have low self-esteem and get stressed easily. Also I don't want to set myself up for dissapointment. Well. here goes. Here's my poem ..



Wind and rain sunshine and grass

salty oceans, and warn down paths

a warmed up fiddle

a summer breeze a winter cry

spring is here we live without fear

the promises we left behind

when first snow fell

short the seasons, long the days.

my heart has lifted, warmer it gets.

april showers soon the flowers

now fiddle play and the grass shall sway

this is the way

for summer I pray



[wrote during class, for no reason. sun was beating on me. my feelings about spring's hope and summers joy]

Do you think it's wise for a 14 year old to get a poem published?
First of all, if your teacher read that and didn't notice that it should be "worn" down paths, she should turn in her credentials and get a job selling lottery tickets at 7 11.



Secondly - it is fair. Just fair.



I hate to be the one to say this to you, but will find it is next to impossible to publish poetry. The odds of someone making a living as a poet are astronomical - worse than astronomical. Poetry is Just not a big seller anymore.



Prove it to yourself. Go to the biggest bookstore you know and ask to see the poetry section. After you dust the books off, count them. There won't be many and most of them will be from established and old poets.



Now go to the New Fiction section and see how many books are there. About 50 times as many as poetry. Because they SELL.



Stores cost money to rent. A bookstore has to ration its selling space accordingly to what they can sell to meet their overhead. They simply cannot devote a lot of square footage to books they aren't going to sell rapidly.



A high body count Dean Koontz thriller sells. Poetry doesn't.



As for selling poems to magazines, let me explain it this way. Recently the Poet Laureate of the United States sold a five line poem to a magazine. He got a check for 25 dollars - 5 dollars per line. If that is all the Poet Laureate can get, how much do you think you could get? The answer is probably nothing. They would be published free.



If you want to self publish, you need to understand Uncle Jim's Law "The money should flow TOWARD the author, not away from him." In the case of Lulu and other self publishers, the money flows AWAY from the author and at a rather large clip. It will cost and cost and cost you. You will pay and pay and still your books will not be for sale on shelves in any bookstore in America. Unless you pay for an ISBN number, they won't even be for sale on Amazon. And now, Amazon says they are removing all BUY buttons from books that aren't self published by their subsidiary BookSource. They will only carry your book for sale if you pay them 29.99 annual fee, plus 55 % of your cover price, plus you have to purchase the books yourself from your own self publisher and mail them at your expense to Amazon so they will stock them. That will put most self published books in the red REAL fast. Especially if the average sales for a self published book is 100 copies - or roughly 2/3 of your family and friends. You will lose money big time.



And the question is, without paying for publicity and promotion, how is anybody going to know the book is out there to buy it? Nobody actually surfs Amazon looking for interesting books. You can't. There are millions there.



I know that is not the answer you want to hear, but that is the cold, hard truth. Poetry is not a big seller. No major publishers are reading poetry so no agents are interested. They won't bother with something they can't sell. Sorry, but true, and a visit to your local bookstore will prove it to you. Pax-C



Just to prove it to you - Random House - the largest publisher in America currently has ZERO poetry books in their line. Harper Collins - the #2 publisher has 368. About 85% of those poets are deceased and about 10% are celebrities. Not much chance for a new poet to get published by them.
Reply:I think it's a good idea; I was first published at 13. But make sure you check your spelling! If you want the punctuation a certain way, fix it now, before you go looking for a publisher. Right now, it's a little off grammatically, but a few commas and semicolons would fix it.



Need a publisher? go to your library and take a look at "The Poet's Market." It'll have thousands of publishing houses and magazines in it from all over the US and Canada.



Good Luck!
Reply:This peom is really good, but even if you fail, who cares. Send the peom to a publisher and just try it. You miss 100% of the shots you dont take. Also, you said you didn't really write it for any reason so who cares if it doesnt get published. If you do succed it could help with your poor self esteem problems.
Reply:It's really not bad and you do show some signs of talent. I would check out children's literary magazines online, there should be a list of them somewhere. Being a writer is all about being rejected, even if your work is amazing. You should have some luck with the kids lit mags though.
Reply:It needs to be spiffed-up a bit , especially as to punctuation, but here is a source of potential publications. look for magazines under the For the Love of It (no payment) classification.



http://ralan.com/



Dai Alanye

http://alanye.com/
Reply:I think it'd be just fine if you could find somewhere to publish it. Age isn't really a huge problem in the publishing world--it all just revolves around the quality of your writing.