Publishing

Question: "a colleague here in the library who wrote some poems and I’m trying to help him get copyrighted and perhaps published. Where did you go to get your book of poems printed, bound and copyrighted?"

As far as copyrights, once someone writes something it is copyrighted automatically.

With that said, poems should never be sent out with any copyright symbol. No one will publish it as it is copyrighted. Editors who publish always want first rights to publish, then the rights revert back to the writer.

In the poetry world, one should send poems out to different lit mags first. Then with a number of poems published in different lit mags, a poet can choose to have a chapbook or book published. I highly recommend going for a chapbook first, as you can use those poems in a full-length book. So it is like triple-dipping!

Here are links to great articles about the publishing world. One more suggestion is to attend AWP when it is in Kansas City in 2021! It is the writers conference!

If you are talking about self-publishing, I recommend using Kindle Direct Publishing. Again, no need to apply for copyright, and it appears on amazon.com. Plus, you order copies at a cost and earn money for sales through amazon. It is another way to go.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/

Oh, to answer your question: I sent my poems out to different literary magazines, then published through different presses. Fast-Food Sonnets was published through Coal City Press in Lawrence. Like the link said, I did not have to pay to be published, received a few free copies, and buy my books at a discount.

Woodley Press is on Washburn's campus, too: http://woodleypress.org/

I hope this helps!

Overall publishing:
https://www.pw.org/content/publishing_book

Lit mag sources:

https://www.newpages.com/magazines/undergrad-lit-mags

https://www.pw.org/literary_magazines/all

https://entropymag.org/category/where-to-submit/

AWP:

https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/overview