There are some poems already published in a magazing the others i saved the best for last. Where or who should i send them the poems to and after that and after that and after that? (Do i pocket cash if they get published?)
Dancing Bee
Favorite Answer
Most poetry book publishers will not consider a book of poetry that has no publishing acknowledgments. What I mean by this is that you need to have somewhere between 30 and 70 percent of the poems in your collection published in magazines and anthologies--the better the magazine, the better your chances are of getting the collection published. It's a bit of snobbery sometimes, but if you were to have poems from your book manuscript published in Poetry, The Boston Review, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, AGNI and others, that would appeal more to a book publisher than if you had poems in your manuscript published Tar Wolf Review, California Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Southern Poetry Review, Free Verse, and 5AM. I'm not saying the latter magazines listed aren't good, and you won't find something you will like, just that it's way harder to get your poems into the first set of magazines and therefore that first set of magazine naturally commands a certain level of respect. There are 2000 or so publications out there.
Your best poems, btw, should be published in magazines. Trust me on this, a poetry book editor is going to go to the poems you've listed in your acknowledgments first, read those and go from there.
You should pick up a copy of Poet's Market and read the front sections on how to put together a submission. There's some good information on what to do and what to avoid. The middle section of the book is full of publication listings with their guidelines included as well as if they consider new poets. You can also go to duotrope.com for listings, they give you links to the publishers' websites and you should probably read any sample poems the publisher offers so you can figure out whether you like the work published and whether your work will be a good fit. This kind of leg work will save you a lot of postage and waiting.
Now, the other thing that happens when you do the above steps, is you begin to realize which book publishers are more likely to publish your manuscript because you will shop them the same way you shopped magazines. You will recognize aesthetic tastes and differences and you will again save yourself a lot of postage and waiting by knowing who will be more likely to publish your collection.
And here's the other thing that will happen. Once you start sending out poems and getting them published, you will likely notice other poems in the collection that are not getting published, but are in fact, getting rejected repeatedly. You will also be writing new poems that will be fueled, in part, by your reading more poetry as you investigate magazines and in the magazines you've been published in, and you will probably want to replace the repeatedly rejected poems with the ones you are now writing. For a new writer with a first book, I'd say you really want to shoot for 50 to 70 percent of the poems being published in magazines.
It's seems like a long row to hoe, but if you love poetry, then it's a labor of love. I've published several books and chapbooks. I know many, many poets and all of them have had repeated success with the above process.
Now, you probably will never see cash from the publisher. More than likely you will be buying your books at a discount and putting cash in your pocket when you sell them at the readings you will be doing to promote the book. Poets really don't make money on their published poems, they make it by being published and then getting teaching gigs, doing workshops, judging contests, etc. etc. Everything else that comes when you get published.
Good luck!
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http://www.anitraweb.org/write/publishing.html