Peter, the league table went
1. Hughes 172,174
2. Heaney 34,690
3. Duffy 22,364
4. Ayres 19,054
5. Cope 18,011
6. Hegley 15,274
7. McGough 13,929
8. Armitage 12,889
9. Milligan 9,123 [that's Spike, by the way; volumes of verse by other
ex-Goons, if any, apparently don't sell so well]
10. Motion 5,995
11. Zephaniah 4,439
12. Jennings 2,804
13. Murray 2,718
14. Shapcott 559
15. Adcock 200
The article distinctly says Adcock came in at 16 but I base this on the
line-up of portrait photos & although I know I'm not as good at sums as
I used to be I've recounted twice & there are only 15 faces. So either
something strange has happened (we could all play Cluedo & find the
missing poet - T.Harrison, maybe, sold more than 200 last year?) or it's
just another example of the article's carelessness & unreliability. The
figures are based on high street sales from Whitaker BookTrack. I agree
with Richard's comments & your own. Since we know from our own
experience that poetry sales are not this bad - though lordy lord
they're bad enough - all the statistics show is that poetry is no longer
mainly bought from the high street bookshops, or that high street
bookselling has become from our point of view largely irrelevant. It's
not, by the way, a Guardian survey but an account of a 156-page Arts
Council report written & compiled by the literature officer John Hampson
who 'said the report delivered "a cry from the heart" about the gap
between publishers and bookshops. "We will be looking to see if we can
bridge this - perhaps through a conference, or providing a permanent
forum".' There speaks an administrator. The cost of giving direct help
to those who _do_ know how to sell poetry would no doubt be minuscule
compared with that of conference or 'permanent forum' ... but what's
new.
Best, Alan
In message <v01530502b60206ef716d@[194.112.55.82]>, Peter Riley
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>The no-reviews probem is not restricted to small press publishing. I don't
>think that Doug Oliver's A Salvo for Africa has been reviewed anywhere, for
>instance. The Selected Poems of Nicholas Moore I edited in 1986 got no
>reviews. I think the majority of poetry books from big and middling
>publishers are not reviewed.
>
>Speaking of which (i.e. the "false commercialism" of so-called successful
>poetry) yesterday was National Poetry Day which I failed to notice, and I
>believe that in the (?) Guardian was an article giving some interesting
>statistics on actual sales of books from "top poets". A top 20 list was
>given with sales figures - this information has not previously been
>available. I heard that the message was that about 4 poets actually sell
>commercially (i.e. five thousand copies upwards) after which the numbers
>plummet to below 1000 and No. 16 or so in the best-seller list sold 200.
>
>This is interesting because 200 is below the expectations and achievements
>of many "small-press" / experimentalist/ cult/ niche-market poetry
>publishers.
>
>Can anyone confirm this and even, if it's not too much trouble, copy out
>the list and figures?
>
>
>
>
>
>/PR
>
>
--
Alan Halsey
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|