[patricia-brown Posts: 25 Status: Offline I'm a teacher and aspiring children's book author. WWW]

Hi Everyone,

I"m having so much fun writing a poem everyday for April on the blog I started for NaPoWriMo. The most challenging part of writing the children's poetry isn't the actual writing, but doing it before work and then getting to work on time lol! I have a few questions regarding publishing and contest entries, and am grateful for your feedback.  Thanks so much for your help, have a wonderful day everyone. 

My questions:

If I want to query an agent or publisher with either individual poems that are on my blog, or create a compilation of children's poetry after the month is over, will I be able to do that? I don't know whether my poetry blog is considered self publishing, in which case, should I just take it down after NaPoWriMo since I would like to get some, if not all of my children's poems published?

If I queried an agent, or contacted a publisher would they frown on the fact that my poems are already online, free of charge?

Am I able to enter children's poetry contests with my poems on my blog? Would I be required to remove them from my blog first?

Thank you again for your help. 

Pat 

[Debbie Vilardi Posts: 6,625 Status: Offline Language is so cool! WWW]

Any work published on a publicly accessible blog is indeed published. Whether this is acceptable for a contest depends on the specific contest rules. Some are okay with it and others aren't.

If you take the blog down or remove the poems, do a search for the titles and your name individually to make sure they aren't linked anywhere else. I once found one of my poems on someone else's blog without my permission. That would also be considered published.

I hope this helps you decide ho to proceed.

[Vijaya Posts: 8,674 Status: Offline BEAUTY WWW]

Patricia, if there are any poems you're thinking of submitting, I would take them down. Since your blog is public, the poems are considered published. Some publications will offer reprint rights but many only purchase first or exclusive rights.

That said, have no fear, because you will most likely come to these poems in a year and will see how to improve them or take them off on a tangent. Once a poem is perfected, you can submit it and the fact that you published an earlier version on a blog might just be an interesting fact, or something educational. Now I'm going off on a tangent, but I have a book on revisions by Sandy Asher that is most instructive [Title is: Writing it Right], and it's very interesting to see how a story evolves with an editor.

I've visited your blog and it's wonderful to see your creativity! Keep at it. And your joy clearly comes through. I think poems are the hardest to write so I've not even tried to attempt a daily poem.

[patricia-brown Posts: 25 Status: Offline I'm a teacher and aspiring children's book author. WWW]

Thank you so much for your advice. I am thinking of taking the blog down after NaPoWriMo. In the meantime, do you think I should  I say somewhere on my blog that I don't allow anyone to post my poems without my permission? I would be so upset if someone put one of my poems on their blog or site without my permission! I'm so happy with my blog so far, and think it's great to have a link to show agents when I query, so this may be a hard decision for me since I would like to have my poetry traditionally published.

I just reminded myself of the expression "You can't eat your cake and have it too," I guess I may not be able to have my poetry blog and have it published too lol. 

Thanks again for any help and suggestions. 

Pat 

[Debbie Vilardi Posts: 6,625 Status: Offline Language is so cool! WWW]

In the meantime, do you think I should  I say somewhere on my blog that I don't allow anyone to post my poems without my permission?

Unfortunately saying it doesn't stop people from doing it. It is copyright infringement whether or not you have a notice up. Just Google your name and poem titles periodically so you can ask anyone who does post them to take them down if you find them. The person who posted mine thought they were helping the authors of the works, not stealing reprint rights. Once I educated him about this, he took his blog down with no further difficulty.

[Vijaya Posts: 8,674 Status: Offline BEAUTY WWW]

Patricia, you can choose to keep a few poems up there as a showcase. If you want to be published, you do need to have a web presence and having a blog does that. You don't even have to update it. You can have several pages...the main home page, an about me, and perhaps your poetry page. Sadly, as Debbie says, posting a copyright doesn't prevent people from taking your stuff. All best as you navigate the blogosphere.

[patricia-brown Posts: 25 Status: Offline I'm a teacher and aspiring children's book author. WWW]

Thank you Debbie and Vijaya, 

I will keep a few poems up, and it may be hard to decide which ones. I'll have to explain somewhere on the blog how I participated in NaPoWriMo and then decided to further pursue my children's poetry writing. I also have a domain (patbrownbooks.com) and am wondering if it would be too early to have information about myself on that, where I would include a link to my poetry blog. Do writers that are just in the querying process ever do that? Would having a website (not sure if it would be Wordpress, Blogger, Wix, or another yet) at this point just be too premature?

If not, I'd also like to hear suggestions on what platform is best for an author's website.

Thanks again for your help and suggestions. Have a wonderful day! 

Pat 

[Vijaya Posts: 8,674 Status: Offline BEAUTY WWW]

Pat, it's not too early to have an "about me" page. You can get comfortable with Blogger and have your domain name point to the blog. You can experiment with other hosting options and see what suits you best. For ex., I tried WordPress but I find it not very user friendly. Many, many years ago, I also had web-hosting through GoDaddy but after a few years of blogging and not updating my website, I canceled the hosting. Updating was a royal pain but I did learn a lot.

[Debbie Vilardi Posts: 6,625 Status: Offline Language is so cool! WWW]

I have a WordPress site. I am able to maintain the basic features on my own. I do think an online presence is a goo idea. I recently read a blog post about this: https://www.jenniferlaughran.com/faq/do-i-need-a-website-and-if-so-what-should-be-on-it. Jenn Laughran is an agent at Andrea Brown and really knows her stuff.

[laurel-decher Posts: 28 Status: Offline WWW]

Patricia,
Congrats on coming up with a writing habit that results in new work! A friend of mine has published books of poetry. Before they were published she sent them out as printed booklets. Old school and so charming. Poets have a tradition of chapbooks, don't they? Here's her blog and published books so you can see what she does: http://abigail-carroll.com/books I'd add a photo of a chapbook but I don't know how to add a photo on this forum.

I worried about the same questions when I started my blog years ago (not poetry though!) and it seems to me that the more important question is: how can I steadily keep creating work? If a blog helps you make more poems, that feels much more important (to me) than the hypothetical publication question. Does that make sense? I don't want to trivialize your question in any way.  Personally, I have delayed creating things sometimes because of a technical question and sometimes the deeper question was related to some kind of fear holding me back. So, my advice would be: whatever you decide, charge ahead!

Best wishes!

 

[patricia-brown Posts: 25 Status: Offline I'm a teacher and aspiring children's book author. WWW]

Hi Ladies,

Debbie, thank you for the article, it was very helpful. I actually just started a WP site. It's really basic, and I'm glad that I was finally able to sort of figure out WordPress lol.

Laurel,  I agree that participating in NaPoWriMo has taught me a writing discipline that I hadn't had before. Sometimes it's challenging getting the poem written but I have been doing it (sigh!). Thanks for sharing your friend's poetry site, I always like to read other people's work and am humbled by the talent out there. I have charged forward and have a website now, it's just the beginning, but we all have to start somewhere. I'm planning on pruning my poetry blog so that I can pursue traditional publishing for some of my children's poetry.

My new website is https://patbrownbooks.com/ 

Thanks so much for your help and encouragement, have a wonderful day!

Pat

[Vijaya Posts: 8,674 Status: Offline BEAUTY WWW]

Pat, it looks great. So cheerful and the color scheme fits with the poetry blog as well.

[patricia-brown Posts: 25 Status: Offline I'm a teacher and aspiring children's book author. WWW]

Thanks for the kind words Vijaya, have a wonderful day! 

Pat 

[anastasia-suen Posts: 11 Status: Offline]

I agree that participating in NaPoWriMo has taught me a writing discipline that I hadn't had before. Sometimes it's challenging getting the poem written but I have been doing it (sigh!).

Maybe Poetry Friday can be your next step?
http://kidlitosphere.org/poetry-friday/

Then you'll have a weekly deadline, but you'll only be sharing ONE poem a WEEK  on your site.  And the Poetry Friday poets are publishing their work in the Poetry Friday anthology series books @ http://pomelobooks.com/

Happy writing! 

[patricia-brown Posts: 25 Status: Offline I'm a teacher and aspiring children's book author. WWW]

Hi Anastasia,

I apologize for not responding sooner, I've been busy with testing at work. Thank you so much for this information! I will definitely look into this, I love the idea of Poetry Friday. 

 

Pat