Long time no substantial stack

I am back !

After a little silly, yet revealing, as they often are, poem yesterday here is a little update from my life from a Poems & That perspective.

Here, I like to write about what I have learned through poetry, but not about the poetry itself. There are far more qualified people who can, and do, write about the craft of poetry. I write more about the life lessons that I have tripped into learning by sharing my poetry.

Lessons from releasing a self published book

In November I launched my first self published collection, PrOving I ExisT (deliberate capitalisation of the hidden POET in there).

I wrote about my week one lessons here:

But what has happened since? I am glad you asked!

Proving I am still learning

Transparency with donations led to transparency about money

I have been sending my royalties to Choose Love and Refuge and so far I have been able to send them over £275 each. I felt really strongly about being transparent about the donations which meant I published a few slides on Facebook and Instagram about the values and volumes of books sold.

I felt like I was lifting a bit of a lid on the value of royalties vs cost of the book. I was getting around £5.50 per book from Amazon (for 130 pages) and I have sold circa 130 to date (including physical sales at live performances.

I wish I did it sooner

I know that if I was still out performing once every few weeks I would be able to sell more books. I was asked a few times when I was performing where they could buy my work. And that was actually the time I should have been doing this.

Performing with my book in hand has been a joy! You can see a video clip of me in action here:

I have still have questions to myself

Like,

• Why didn’t I release smaller pamphlets over the years?

• Did the people I dedicated poems to ever read them?

• Is it too long?

• Should I have held some back and sent them to poetry competitions etc.

• Did the people who have not messaged or left a review like the book?

• Should I have got a cover designer?

• Why did it bother me , on a very low, but it happened, level…. that some of the people I have supported over the years have not commented, or shared a single thing about the book. I have now accepted people are not required and should not be expected to support you back, it is not a transaction and we aren’t all to each others tastes. That would be ridiculous. I was being temporarily ridiculous.

• Have I blown my chance for getting big boy published in the future (I still have dreams)

When people tell me a poem resonates with them it makes IT ALL WORTH IT AND ALL DOUBT DISAPPEARS in that exact moment.

I love talking about the book

I was delighted to be asked by people I have connected with over the years to talk about my book on podcasts and in an online zine article. Them reaching out and offering to expand my reach is hugely touching. Huge thanks to:

• Foul Language podcast

• The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press
  Podcast

• Andy N Spoken Label podcast

• God is in the TV

Removing the ick

I had a loss of faith in self promotion (which I also wrote about here). When I explored this a bit more, part of that related to my original decision to publish via Amazon. Which leads me to the biggest lesson:

I changed my printing outlet:

A few months on, I was getting increasingly uncomfortable selling via Amazon (even though nearly every big time author is selling on there via their big boy publishers and part of me thought, if they can sleep comfortably why can’t I shake this feeling off?). Ultimately, I realise my market will be small and will only be people who find me online or in the real world will be the ones who buy it. And with a ‘real world’ performance rate of once every 6 months, together with deleting X, Threads and Bluesky (they all ultimately felt the same) my market is really very small (but perfectly formed). I just need to keep in tune with my gut instincts. So, in the last week, I have moved it from Amazon to books.by/lisa-ohare.

Books.by is something that appeared to me on a Facebook ad and it seemed as easy to use as Amazon in terms of uploading books and covers. I am not blessed with time for lots of research so the algorithm sharing this ad was a time saver as I know I do not have time to complete the harder templates I found UK print on demand services had. I also did not want the expense of bulk printing and doing all the postage, again due to availability of time I have to do these things, Print on demand was a service I needed. So I paid the subscription of around £70 (books.by currently charges in USD$, even though they are Australian based as that is the most used currency using their service). So this brings the total of my cash investment into my book to £160, as I originally spent £90 on a unique ISBN for the book.

What will I miss about Amazon?

• People know it and people look up books there.

• I occasionally hit various charts. I was above John Cooper-Clarke for about an hour in one chart! This was dopamine at it’s very best!

• I got into the ‘hot new releases’ charts which may have meant some people who do not know me at all.

• People leave reviews there.

• It is connected to Goodreads so other readers may find you.

• No subscription costs for me.

One last lesson that I already knew

Selling your own work is really hard work. It takes time and resilience to keep going. I knew this from every poetry night I ever helped to run. I knew this in triplicate from making fringe shows. And you don’t have to do too much. Don’t undersell it but don’t make it so much work you stop enjoying it.