I am a poet and I am looking for a publisher. Does anyone know of a good & credible publishing house?

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Buy a copy of Writer's Market and Literary Marketplace, where they list hundreds of publishers. I reccomend gettting an agent first, it makes it so much easier.

You will find it is next to impossible to publish poetry. It is not a big seller. Prove it to yourself. Go to the biggest bookstore you know and ask to see the poetry section. After you dust the books off, count them. There won't be many and most of them will be from established and old poets. Now go to the New Fiction section and see how many books are there. About 50 times as many as poetry. Because they SELL. Stores cost money to rent. A bookstore has to ration its selling space accordingly to what they can sell to meet their overhead. They simply cannot devote a lot of square footage to books they aren't going to sell rapidly. A high body count Dean Koontz thriller sells. Poetry doesn't. As for selling poems to magazines, let me explain it this way. Recently the Poet Laureate of the United States sold a five line poem to a magazine. He got a check for 25 dollars - 5 dollars per line. If that is all the Poet Laureate can get, how much do you think you could get? The answer is probably nothing. They would be published free. If you want to self publish, you need to understand Uncle Jim's Law "The money should flow TOWARD the author, not away from him." In the case of Lulu and other self publishers, the money flows AWAY from the author and at a rather large clip. It will cost and cost and cost you. You will pay and pay and still your books will not be for sale on shelves in any bookstore in America. Unless you pay for an ISBN number, they won't even be for sale on Amazon. And now, Amazon says they are removing all BUY buttons from books that aren't self published by their subsidiary BookSource. They will only carry your book for sale if you pay them 29.99 annual fee, plus 55 % of your cover price, plus you have to purchase the books yourself from your own self publisher and mail them at your expense to Amazon so they will stock them. That will put most self published books in the red REAL fast. Especially if the average sales for a self published book is 100 copies - or roughly 2/3 of your family and friends. You will lose money big time. And the question is, without paying for publicity and promotion, how is anybody going to know the book is out there to buy it? Nobody actually surfs Amazon looking for interesting books. You can't. There are millions there. I know that is not the answer you want to hear, but that is the cold, hard truth. Poetry is not a big seller. No major publishers are reading poetry so no agents are interested. They won't bother with something they can't sell. Sorry, but true, and a visit to your local bookstore will prove it to you. Pax-C And by the way Steve, Literary Marketplace costs 300 dollars a year. I doubt many here can afford that. Use the copy in the library's reference section. And Steve? I do not know of a single reputable agent that handles poets. There is no money in it for them. It just doesn't happen.

As most people have said, get a copy of Writer's Market and Literary Marketplace. For a poet, I would suggest Poet's Market and Literary Marketplace. But if you want to start off with some help is you are a new poet, get an agent. Do not give money to them for reading it. Hope you get it published!

www.lulu.com is a good selfpublishing site that works pretty easy to figure out too

Poetry by an unknown poet is almost impossible to get published in a book. However, I do have a couple of suggestions. You might look into greeting card companies. They constantly need new material, though it would have to be short. You could also consider switching from poetry to song lyrics, and then connect with musicians in your community. Another possibility is in the advertising business. Getting your work in a book isn't the only way to get published. In the meantime, I suggest that you check out the Writer's Digest Annual Competition. They have categories for rhyming and non-rhyming poetry. If you win anything, it will be a credential that you can can cite when approaching an agent or publisher. You better hurry, though, the due date is coming up soon.

I can't name one off the top of my head, but here is a list of links to publishing houses. Find one that suits your needs and send them a query letter(most of them have websites and guidelines for submissions). There has to be someone out there that will at least look at your work, without an agent. Here is the link: http://www.lights.ca/publisher/db/formats/Books.html Also, once you are ready to find an agent you can look at this site for one. http://www.litmatch.net/ Good luck!