So after entering contests, doing open mic, and just sharing my poems with different people, I thought, hey, why not get them published? My reasoning was that the poems I was sharing were sparking a conversation between me and who I was sharing with. I went to work, and once I was settled in and the phones were quiet, I googled poetry publishers. Not many publishing houses came up. I clicked on the first site and printed the submission guidelines. Of course, after I browsed the site. I went home and went through all of my poems, put them together so that they had meaning. I named this collection The Rebirth of My Soul. After putting the collection together, I went to the print-out and followed their guidelines. I don’t remember if I had to mail or email, but I sent it out and patiently waited for a response.
My routine after work was to come home, change my clothes, roll up, and smoke. On this particular day, I got home the mail was still in the mailbox. I went through the mail and noticed I had a piece of mail that wasn’t a bill. The envelope was one of those big brown catalog envelopes. It was from the publisher. I placed the other mail on the table and went to sit on the couch to open the envelope. As I sat down, I took my pocketbook off my shoulder and placed it on the couch. I got comfortable and opened the envelope and pulled out the papers. I read them in order.
The first paper complimented me on the poems that I submitted and said that they wanted to publish poems, followed by the guidelines, which were then followed by the contract, in that order. As I was going through the contract, my mother was walking through the door, and I was trying to be calm as I was telling her what I was looking at. I followed the remaining guidelines and sent in the manuscript, signed contract, and check(I’ll get to that). Once everything was mailed off, I decided, hey, well, since I’m doing this, why not learn about publishing? So every day at work I’d be do the computer learning all that I could and go to Barnes & Noble, get books, and read the books that those books recommended. Then I stumbled on something.
My name wasn’t Sonia Sanchez or Maya Angelou; it was going to be hard to promote and market my poetry because I didn’t have a following like them. I went to my contract to see where I was. The contract stated that at different times, I was able to get money back. I was at $0.00. So yes, in order for them to publish my work, I had to send in money. So I was paying for publishing, but once I learned that it wasn’t going to work out, I figured I would go another way. I went back to a short story that I wrote and figured out a way to turn it into a novel. And here we are……
Arnittress Dowdy 