Writing Problems: Who Reads Poetry?

Merwin, Lerner, Moore, Wright

Poetry needs more and better readers. There is a stack of thousands of poetry books behind all of our doors, and if we don’t know what to read this avalanche will tumble out and crush our spines. There are more manuscripts and books than there are readers. The surplus of manuscripts and the narrow chances most of them will be published belies the fact that there are probably more poetry books published now than in the past.

WordsRated tracks and gathers data related to the publishing industry, and their findings are surprising:

• Over 10,156 poetry books have been published each year since 2013.

• From 2002 to 2013, over 121,108 poetry books were published in the United States, or just over 10,090 per year.

• From 2013 to 2017, unit sales of poetry books increased by 21%, making it one of the fastest-growing categories during this period.

• From 2004 to 2007, over 12.2 million poetry books were sold in total. This means that, on average, over 3.06 million poetry books were sold between 2004 and 2007.

• During the same period, the top 10 poetry books accounted for over 22% of all sales in the category.