Want to Get Published? Think Small. Think Chapbooks. Guest Post from Nadja Maril

Getting published can be daunting. This post is written for every writer who has felt the sting of rejection and it about to give up. Maybe you have dreams of publishing an important novel, a trilogy of Sci-fi adventures or a heart wrenching memoir; but your efforts haven’t gotten very far. Did you ever think that perhaps your first book might be something different. 

Sometimes you have to start small. A great place to begin is with shorter work. 

I’ve always written poetry, but I seldom sent it to magazine. My poetry was private. For me poetry is a form of shorthand, a way to express and record my feelings for later reference. My poems are usually written in free verse. 

Another type of short form writing I enjoy is flash. And when I think of flash, it has to be short, very short. I’ve published 50 -word stories, and 250-word stories and 700 -word stories. Much of my work is inspired by true life events and observations and thus is considered Creative Non Fiction (CNF). These pieces, written in prose, have sometimes been labeled prose poems. 

Definitions can sometimes be interchangeable. A poem can tell a story and often a piece of prose can be more about communicating a fleeting moment or emotion, than possessing a story arc which contains a beginning, middle and end. 

Maybe the pieces I’m writing are free verse poems, or maybe I’m writing in a hybrid form. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is the writing. 

Writers are writing because they have a compulsion to write. They want to be heard. More important to writers than money, is a following of readers. 

When I read someone’s work, I want to feel a sense of connection. And when I write, I want to create work that resonates with others. 

Every week or so, from my website at https://nadjamaril.com  I write a blog post. Most of the feedback I receive is from other writers. This is not surprising, because if you are sitting by yourself at a computer or pacing the house thinking about what you wrote, you’re eager to connect with someone else who might be going through a similar process. 

This is why writing communities are so important. Writing groups and professional organizations usually offer workshops and readings. These events, now frequently online as well as in person, enable writers to keep expanding their skills and also to meet other writers. 

At the beginning of 2023 I received an email from a small independent publisher, Devil’s Party Press (Now Current Words Publishing). One of the principals, Dianne Pearce, asked if I’d be interested in exploring the idea of being part of a Poetry Collective that would foster the concept of launching an imprint dedicated to publishing chapbooks. 

For anyone not familiar with the term chapbook, it’s defined as short book, shorter in page count than a traditional book and often referred to as a booklet. Traditionally, a chapbook contains poems, verse or a novelette. In recent years, with the increased popularity of flash fiction, it’s an excellent size book for an author’s flash collection. 

A chapbook is a very small book in terms of page length. Usually under sixty pages, it can be a great size book for a novelette, a group of short stories, poetry, or flash stories. I wondered where the name came from, so I did a little additional research beyond what I wrote about concerning chapbooks last month. The name comes from the name of the peddler who sold chapbooks, a Chapman. Chap comes the Old English or Saxon, meaning a bargain or cheap. And the suffix mann or man is literally what it sounds like. The German equivalent was Kaufman. The name came to describe a merchant or trader who travelled from place to place selling small wares. The small books, chapbooks were affordable, ie a bargain when compared with the cost of books owned by the wealthy class in the 1500’s. 

Chapbooks followed broadsides as early print products for people of lesser means. Broadsides represented print for the semi-literate because they contained pictures and often featured ballads. Many of the early folksong ballads, sung in taverns or while working in the fields, were shared in the oral tradition and changed with the addition of new verses, which were then sometimes reprinted again in chapbooks. So, chapbooks provided affordable reading material to the working class. 

Now in the twenty-first century, books are once again a stretch for some people’s budget. If you’ve ever purchased a book lately, you are aware a paperback can cost between ten dollars and thirty-five dollars, depending on page-count and size. Libraries are wonderful places because you can borrow books, enjoy them and return them for someone else to read. However, their selection of titles can be limited. And sometimes you just want to own some books you’d like to reread and travel with and share with friends. 

A chapbook, with a lower page count, can sell for as little as eight or nine dollars. Some publishing houses are intentionally limiting the number of chapbooks they print, in order to make them the collectibles of the future. Other presses are printing their chapbooks on better paper and adding hand stamped embellishments to make their small books unique. 

In a literary collective, writers proofread each other’s work, provide leads for performance/reading venues, and help spread the word about upcoming publications. They can also recommend editors, publishers, and publications that might be interested in their colleague’s work. 

By helping others to achieve their goals, you can learn a lot about the process, and grow personally and professionally unanticipated ways. 

Curious about prose poetry? Here is one, Menudo (audio reading available) published by Full House and included in my very first chapbook published by Old Scratch Press in September 2024. 

I decided to make my chapbook a combination of short essays, poems, and flash CNF. Much of the content was inspired by my reflections on nature, family and the earth during the 2020 pandemic. If you’d like to check out my book Recipes from My Garden, here is the link. https://rb.gy/olqjwe 

About the author

Nadja Maril’s chapbook Recipes from My Garden, a compendium of poems and short essays centered around herbs, a kitchen garden, and family memories was recently published by Old Scratch Press in paperback and kindle editions.(https://shorturl.at/eWlZu)  Nadja is also the author of two reference books on American Antique Lighting, two children’s books, Me, Molly Midnight, done in collaboration with her father, the artist Herman Maril and a third children’s book she illustrated titled Who Is Santa? Maril’s prose and poetry has been published in literary magazines that include, Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Review and Across the Margin, and she has been nominated for both “Best of the Net” and “The Pushcart Prize.” A former journalist and editor, Nadja has an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. To read more of her work and follow her weekly blog posts, visit Nadjamaril.com.