I'm new to this type of exposure - the Internet, but I've made my living as a poet and artist for 30 years. I could not have done that had I followed the conventional style of marketing, which is a very weak publishing industry for poetry. Also being an artist, I displayed my poems in artistic forms and produced my own books. I literally built my business by hand. To print my first books, I rented a print shop at night and printed 500 copies. I made the plates, ran the sheets, collated each book and cropped them. For art shows I had to produce an incredible amount of work just to display plus backup work, and then I made all the display cases and even made my own tent to offer shade in outside art shows. I loved every minute of it. I was creating my life as I wanted it. This was the adventure of my choice.
The trouble with pursuing the adventure of your choice is that friends and family will discourage you - especially if you decide you are going to make your living as a poet and artist. When they tell you that you are crazy as hell and you can't seriously be thinking of making your living as a poet, what they are really saying is that they could never do that, so how could you? My response was, Maybe not, but I will never know if I don't try. That ended up being my driving philosophy through my life. If I have an idea, I have to at least give it a shot. Sometimes they work - sometimes they don't, but they're all great adventures. I don't believe in failures. Failures are nothing more than trial runs to get the kinks out. Okay, I'm drifting off subject.
I started selling my art work when I was 12. That and mowing lawns made me the richest kid in school. At 21 I was writing poems for an artsy late night show on TV in San Francisco called Evening Tide. I put in my military time, and then went to Alaska where I published short stories in the Alaskan Vega about my adventures in wilderness.
Purely because there were hardly any women in Alaska, I moved to California. Deciding on less dangerous pursuits, I started doing art shows, and then galleries and boutiques - anywhere that would display my work. By the time my third book was completed I also had a number of independent book stores carrying my books. By the completion of my fifth book I had won two awards and been quoted in psychological publications on self-esteem and publications on self-realization. My mailing list was so large, I sold the entire first printing just through my mailing list. Had I been selling them conventionally, I would have been a national best seller just by the volume sold. But, I could care less about that. I got seventy-five percent of the book sales and was comfortably supporting a family doing what I loved. Life just doesn't get much better than that.
After 2000 art shows, I thought it might be worthwhile to try other avenues. Times change and so do the things we do. Art shows have been hurt by the times, and it seems I've been travelling all my life, as I did art shows across the country. I've been called the gypsy poet a few times, which I'm not sure is an endearment. I keep threatening to change that, but the road calls to me now and then.
I'm settled at the moment. I'm even working a normal job, using what I actually went to school for. I teach people with learning disabilities. I'm dedicated to my job, but I miss the road - travelling with other artists and living our unique life style. It was fun.
I have two books coming out on Amazon and Kindle. We're just setting them up for Kindles unique type of publication. They should be out before the end of April. One is inspirational - introspective. A story of searching in poems and prose. The other is a love story told in poems. Both books contain some of the most popular poems from my previous books. Both of these books, printed by me, have already sold in number that would make them best sellers in the field of poetry, which, actually doesn't take a lot of books. I think it's something like 2000 copies. But, it sounds good, doesn't it?
I'm writing a third book right now, which is quite a bit different than most of my books, at least in format. I'll talk about that when it gets more interesting.
Thanks for checking me out.
IAll content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.
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