I thought to myself that if I was to publish a book full of poems that it would be best to publish a chapbook. What’s a chapbook? A chapbook, which has been produced for hundreds of years, is a shorter book comprising only 50 pages or fewer. Many poets publish their first books, being chapbooks to display their work. 

The other reasons I decided to publish a chapbook are:

It’s Less Costly

Since there are only a certain amount of pages… the way I see chapbooks is that it’s the same way a mixtape is of music to albums. There’s a small amount of time towards publishing a chapbook versus publishing a full-blown book, so to speak.

I Wanted to Dip My Foot in The Waters First

I didn’t want to go full in when publishing an actual full-fledged book, for me I wanted to see what the process was, get an idea how a book is published, plus I had to take into consideration the cover page, spine, and back cover which are all important factors, and trust me I’ve learned a lot with the process. I had no clue what bleeding is on a page or what exactly a spine was, so it was an eye opener. So when I’m ready to publish a full-fledged book of poems, then I’m ready.

Quicker Results

With less amount of writing to do means less time to write the manuscript. I know some people may look down on that, but what I mean by this is basically what I’ve stated earlier, I wanted to dip my foot first, see what the process is of how publishing a book works and then work on any improvements that are needed when publishing a book that needs more time at hand.

It’s Suitable For Self-Publishing

Even though I still think that it’s vital to find a publisher, self-publishing for me was the best decision I’ve made, and I’ll continue to go this route. Here, I can afford to put a little of money into this because it’s a cheaper route to go. For me, it makes no sense to find a publisher for them to put in all the work, get no royalties just to conduct a 40 page chapbook, it just makes no sense. Plus, there’s more creative freedom, which I’ll explain further on the reasons I went into the direction of self-publishing.