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On Your Own

        You don't need anyone's permission to be publisher – i.e., to arrange to have books printed and then to offer them for sale or distribution.  Just do it.  Take your life in your hands.  If you want to make a business of publishing and selling your own books and books by others, it would be valuable for you to join COSMEP (address given earlier).  For a small annual fee you can keep up with what hundreds of other small publishers are doing – often in cooperative ventures from which you can benefit, for small pres publishing is more like belonging to a club than competing in business.  [As I stated earlier, COSMEP is out of business.  However, some organization must have taken its place – I'm looking into it.]  But most poets aren't really as interested in publishing as they are in having readable copies of their work, reasonably attractive, to sell at readings or, at least, to give away.  Do yourself a favor and satisfy that urge.  Nothing prevents your using the same poems again in a commercial book, should your name get around and the opportunity for more auspicious publication presents itself in the future.

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