Contests? Chapbooks? What?
May 19th, 2008 . by laurieToday my email inbox was full of calls for poems, manuscripts, and so on. Contests here, contests there, contests contests everywhere. I don’t like to enter contests because they typically cost money and I feel like my chances of winning are slim. Not because I don’t think I have work worth publishing, but because it seems like the world is glutted with MFA grads with great poems all entering contests. I mean, how can one even compete anymore? And sometimes it just seems so arbitrary. And exhausting.
However, I saw a contest today that I thought about entering. I have no idea why. Call it a gut feeling. It’s for a chapbook, though, up to 26 pages. The question is…is it even worth it? I mean, does a chapbook mean anything anymore? Will publishers of full-length manuscripts even care? Will it put me any closer to my goal of publishing a full-length book of poetry? Certainly, the chapbook would encompass my very best 26 pages, which would also then be contained later within a full-length book manuscript. Is that kosher? I have to assume so, just as people publish single poems all over the place and then include them in books.
And then the big question: am I totally over-thinking this? (I’m guessing the answer might be yes.) Advice (or even assvice) welcomed.
Laurie, I won a chapbook contest about (gulp) seven years ago, and I have been really happy to have the chapbook — you never know how many opportunities come up for book exchange, sales, promotions, etc., until you have that little book. Atny readings you do, you can sell chapbooks; you can sell/promote it on your web site; when you meet other writers at conferences and whatnot, you can trade books. It gives you a kind of credential that can bridge the gap until your full-length book comes out. Also, many people think of it as an opportunity to explore a particular theme, which can be fun. And then you CAN include some or all of the chapbook poems in your full-length manuscript, so you’re not losing anything (except the opportunity to publish the chapbook poems in journals).
One thing to look out for is that chapbooks can be of really varying production quality, so that’s something to check out if you can — what the specific publisher’s chapbooks tend to look like. You want to make sure that the physical book will reflect the quality of your work.
I hope that helps a little!