Poetry News For May 25, 2008
Poetry News:
- — ‘Book of hours’ has rare female voice —
- — Avant-garde cockney slammed for slang that doesn’t rhyme —
- — Suggested blog topic: The Career Poet and How to Make Money & Influence People —
- — Job: Associate Editor/Staff Writer - St. Louis Cardinals (St. Louis, MO) —
- — Editor and translator Cor van den Heuvel is a haiku aficionado whose single-image poems capture moments from my own baseball-centered childhood —
- — North Jersey also gives Kleinzahler his other great subject: American masculinity, the qualities we attribute to tough guys and men —
- — As Memorial Day nears, James Winn lauds these works of war poetry —
- — Ancient poem found on wood strip —
- — So how much Morse, in iambic pentameters or otherwise, is out there? —
Trouble And Honey (I capped the “and” in the title because I thought it looked better, with that font I used haha.) results:
It’s been just over a week since the blog post that announced the availability of my book. There are just under 300 readers of this blog’s feed (296, according to Feedburner) plus 100-200 actual-human-being-visitors per day, so there are about 400 to 500 regular readers of Poetry Hut Blog every day. The blog tends toward the higher traffic when something negative is going on - scandal, death, po-biz in-fighting, etc.
400 people = daily readership (-ish)
83 downloads of free PDF version of Trouble And Honey = about 20% of readership (or the inverse = 80% were uninterested)
5 individuals donated via PayPal = (6% of 83 downloads; 1.25% of readership) This is better than the .06% that was recently referenced in the NYT, though my sample is way smaller. [link found in the techdirt rss feed thank you]
(Glass is half-empty: 98.75% of readership and 94% of downloaders did not donate.)
13 individual *orders* at Lulu.com = 3.25% of readership or 15.6% of downloaders (though some of the orders were for multiple copies — for example, someone bought 5 at once, maybe a sibling — Lulu.com doesn’t specify who the purchasers are BTW)
So there you have it. 
Check my math (muscle relaxants LOL).
Thank you & also, Americans, have a nice holiday tomorrow. I’ll be thinking about those who took an oath to defend the US Constitution.
Tags: August Kleinzahler, baseball, Cor van den Heuvel, George Swede, haiku, Homer, Imai Sei, Mary Dockray-Miller, Michael Fessler, poet, Poetry, Poetry News, poets, Raffael de Gruttola, Richard Marius, Robert Fagles, Rudyard Kipling, Steven Vincent Benet, Wilfred Owen
Jim Murdoch responds:
Posted: May 25th, 2008 at 4:55 am →
Then from all accounts you’ve done quite well. My book has been available for about the same time and I’d post my sales but really all you need to imagine is a picture of a grown man weeping and that about says it all.
There’s no permanent link to your book on this site. If people don’t know about it then the sales you mention might just be it. You might want to consider a redesign.
Rebecca Loudon responds:
Posted: May 25th, 2008 at 10:27 am →
Jilly, don’t forget that it takes a while for a book to find its legs, to garner the attention it deserves. Yours is still a baby and it doesn’t have kneecaps. Let’s see what happens in a year.
xxoo
Jilly Dybka responds:
Posted: May 25th, 2008 at 11:51 am →
I’m not complaining whatsoever — I’m grateful to be a part of the poetry world, fcked as it may be — whatever the universe has in store, I’m OK with. Just thought I’d share the tally thus far, in case folks are curious.
Yep, I need to create a link, maybe I’ll do that when the LIGHTNING CAKE is cooling off.
Anne responds:
Posted: May 27th, 2008 at 8:01 pm →
I ordered a copy because I downloaded the pdf and liked the couple of poems I read but I have no patience for reading more than a couple poems at a time online.
And why the hell not, since even the dead-tree edition is pretty cheap, eh?
It arrived in the mail just as I was on my way out of town for the long weekend, so I haven’t had a chance to sit down with it yet…
And yeah, like Rebecca said, give it some time! Even people who saw it when you first posted it might be procrastinators. Um, not that I would know about procrastinators…