Carcanet tour

I was lucky enough to get a place on one of the rare tours of the offices of Carcanet Press. So, this evening, a few of us were shown around by
Michael Schmidt who used to be the head of the Writing School at MMU
prior to his move up to Glasgow University. Michael gave us a tour of
the offices themselves and gave us a talk on the business of publishing
poetry.

As a novelist, I found this a pleasant change of pace. The conversation was
all about an industry I am interested in, but, not directly involved in.
I was surprised how little money a poet actually makes from their work,
and that is of course if they manage to get it published in the first place!
As an example, say a book of poetry you see on the shelf of
Waterstones costs you a tenner. A fiver of that goes to the retailer
(sometimes up to a whopping £7.50 depending upon the deal the publisher
has done with the retailer). There are other costs incurred along the
way which I can't recall, but, the poor poet ends up with, on average,
75 pence of that tenner cover price. It's a scandal. It made me wonder
why they do it. They must love what they do I suppose otherwise they'd
starve huh.