Focus on poetry – Stalking down poetry readers

They don?t know who you are, they don?t know where you live and they don?t know how to find you. Many people who market poetry wouldn?t make very effective stalkers, notes Oliver Mantell. This may seem comforting, but to market poetry successfully (and the same is true of other small press literature) then three things are necessary: know-how, information and opportunity. Audiences Yorkshire has been working on projects that address each of these to support and promote literature both in Yorkshire and across the country.

The ?Hooked? literature marketing conference sought to draw together ideas and experience across the literature sector to enable us to reach and relate to our audiences more effectively. With speakers from the publishing industry, literature festivals and marketing agencies, the conference looked into the state of small and large-scale publishing, festivals and book purchasing. Other topics under discussion included the relation between libraries and festivals, the use of new technology to reach audiences, the relevance of place to literature marketing and poetry and reader development. ?Hooked: Engaging people in literature? was also published with further insights and case studies from across the sector.

Audiences Yorkshire provides ongoing support to literature in the region by producing a literature newsletter, The Yorkshire Word, that includes themed features, listings of events, competitions and readers? opinions. Alongside improving communications within the literary community, it?s important to connect with readers. This has proved particularly difficult for poetry presses recently, with the increased resistance of large booksellers to stocking unproven or minority-interest books and the drop in price of mainstream titles following the collapse of the Net Book Agreement. We have been collaborating with local publishers in Yorkshire on an independent thinker?s book club, Thirst. This direct relationship with the audiences is one of the best means of promoting small press publications, offering, as it does, a reduced risk for readers by allowing them to sample new and diverse titles and genres with a three for £10 offer.

When you?re encouraging people to engage with literature that they don?t know, it?s important to reduce the fear as far as possible. That means not only reducing the risk, but giving them the same things that we as marketers need: the know-how, the information and the opportunity. If they stalk us back, who knows where it might lead?

Oliver Mantell is Editor of The Yorkshire Word at Audiences Yorkshire. t: 0870 160 4400;
e: [email protected];
w: http://www.audiencesyorkshire.org.uk