The Guardian newspaper, in the UK, sites declining overall revenue from sales of poetry books in an already sparse market. The publishing world as a whole is swimming toward new territory as more people turn on smart phones, tablets, and electronic devices for news, information, and interactive entertainment. Competition for the reader is fierce. News and literature publishing is swimming in a declining tide. Eventually, both will by necessity, be portioned out to the public in tiny pieces enveloped by a sea of advertising.. Like an hour long football game that takes three hours because of the 2 hours of commercials, or the 30 minute news show with 15 minutes of advertising.. Art will have to be embedded in someone's commercial message in order to make it in the marketplace. Imagine, this collection of poems brought you by Multi-Corp. Z,, included in the purchase of Z's fabric softener, or given away with a book of coupons by participating sponsors. Or buy 5 kids meals and receive this ebook of the latest by a new children's poet. Or just visit the website of fast food conglom X to enter a contest to vote on poems and win a prize, after a short survey. The artist/poet gets paid on the back end. As popular and useful as facebook and google are, we don't pay them a monthly fee (sorry, I don't want to give any ideas) to use them. Their money comes from advertising., not the user. We didn't pay upfront for broadcast television in the beginning, and so it will be with the publishers of literature. Merit will be vetted by number of views, hits, retweets, and likes. Intellectual property will become profitable only to the degree it becomes viral. The internet/advertisers will bring more art/poetry to the masses, and for art to get any attention at all is really the intention of the artist and the advertiser. So rock on with the live poetry performance on youtube, uploading to your artist facebook page, producing the video trailer of your book, the Amazon ebook listing, the poetry prize entries, tweeting your itinerary, the magazine submissions, writing to the swelling group of followers and friends, eventually we could see your poems on a cereal box, in a GM commercial, on the napkins at Mickey Dees, or even printed in a real book that someone wanted to pay the retail price for. But keep writing those poems for the only reason that matters, because you can.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books