PD30 Day 29: Creating Your Own Chapbook

As you near the end of PD30, you may be wondering what to do with all of the poems you have written. You can submit them to contests and publications, or course. You can also create a chapbook. Chapbooks are very common among self-publishing poets and small presses because they are both easy to create and inexpensive to produce, especially if you have some desktop publishing skill.

A chapbook is a book that created by folding standard 8 1/2 x 11 (The size varies outside of the United States) paper in half so that you create a shape close to that of a common paperback book. By folding the sheets of paper, a single sheet yields four pages of a chapbook. These pages are well suited to the length of a fifteen to twenty-five line poem. Once the pages are printed and folded, you bind the multiple pages together by stapling along the crease of the sheets of paper. Using this method, eight sheets of paper can create a thirty-two page chapbook. Because of the limitations of the stapling and folding process, chapbooks tend to run about thirty-two pages and rarely more than sixty-four pages. In addition to standard sheets of paper, you may wish to create a cover using thicker (and perhaps glossy) cover-stock paper.

Chapbooks can be created cheaply using a computer, a word processing or desktop publishing program and a printer. Once the pages are set up properly, you can produce as many or as few books as you want. You can give them to friends or even sell them at poetry readings, open mike nights or through your web site. Poetry chapbooks are accepted in the poetry community and many book-length poetry competitions accept chapbooks as entries. Because of the low cost, you can afford to charge very little or even to give the chapbooks away.

The primary disadvantage of a chapbook is that most retail bookstores will not sell it. Because chapbooks do not have spine wide enough to print a title on, they cannot easily be found on the bookshelf. Also, if you wish to produce a chapbook, you will have to write, edit, design, print, and bind the book yourself. Many people lack the skill or the motivation to do these things themselves. It is possible to have a professional print shop produce the chapbook for you, but that will add to the expense and you will have to order a set run of books. You are better off finding a friend with more desktop publishing knowledge than you.

A poetry chapbook should follow the basic design rules of any book of poetry. You can pick up just about any published book of poetry and follow the example. Include a title page, a copyright page, a table of contents and your poems. Your poetry pages should have wide margins (At least an inch and a half) and include a page number in either the bottom or top outside corner. Copyrights, by the way, can be self assigned. You don’t have to file it anywhere. Just use the date of publication (month and year) and your name and city. If your poetry has appeared anywhere else (such as the comments on this site) you might want to make note of those publication dates as well. If they were in a formal publication, you should make sure you have the right to reprint. If they appeared here, don’t worry about it, your poems are your poems. I make no claim to their rights.

I hope you give chapbooks a try. It is a nice way to keep a record of your poems and to share them with others.

Today’s Poetry Prompt

Include the word right or rights in your poem.

Related links

• 30 Poems in 30 Days set for September (1.000)
• All About 30 Poems in 30 Days (1.000)
• PD30 Day 1: I Believe in Poetry (1.000)
• PD30 Day 2: Generally Be Specific (1.000)
• PD30 Day 3: A Review of Meter (1.000)

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