How to Self-Publish Poetry Chapbooks

Sometimes called pamphlets, poetry chapbooks are short collections of poems, inexpensively and usually independently published. They are typically in ebook or paperback format—though indies are now producing print-on-demand hardbacks and audiobooks of their own readings, too.

ALLi Director Orna Ross publishes chapbooks regularly, whenever she has ten publishable poems, for her "Poems to Inspire" series.

In this session, Orna and Dalma Szentpály will explore the delights and challenges of chapbook publishing, including some upcoming chapbook publishing competitions.

Tune in for discussions on a different theme each month with a focus on developing prosperity for poets through community building and self-publishing.

Find more author advice, tips and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center: https://selfpublishingadvice.org, with a huge archive of nearly 2,000 blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need.

And, if you haven't already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. You can do that at http://allianceindependentauthors.org.

About the Hosts

Orna Ross

Orna's work for ALLi has seen her repeatedly named one of The Bookseller's "Top 100 people in publishing." She launched at the 2012 London Book Fair, after taking her rights back from Penguin in 2011 and republishing her books herself, with the titles and treatment she'd originally wanted. Orna writes award-winning poetry and fiction, runs a Patreon page for poets and poetry lovers as well as an active author website. She is on a mission to help eradicate creative poverty through digital publishing and enterprise. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram: @ornaross.

Dalma Szentpály

Dalma Szentpály co-hosts the Self-Publishing Poetry salon. She works at PublishDrive as a self-publishing professional and has been a lifelong lover of poetry. A native Hungarian, she started learning about lyricism from poetry giants like Attila József and János Pilinszky but also recited brooding lines of verse from international poets like Pablo Neruda or Anna Ahmatova. In university, she fell in love with W.B. Yeats and Emily Dickinson and wrote her thesis about the "villanelle" form in Sylvia Plath's poetry. As a university lecturer and an event manager at an independent bookstore in Budapest Dalma encouraged readers to re-engage with poetry. Check out her blog post about contemporary poetry trends here: https://publishdrive.com/publishing-poetry-2018/. Find Dalma on Twitter and LinkedIn.