Over at Poets and Writers magazine, Joseph Bednarik has caused a stir with an essay entitled "The Law of Diminishing Readership." Bednarik runs the poetry publishing house, Copper Canyon Press, and he has some unnerving thoughts about the business of poetry (and writing in general).
"In a statistical mood, I once estimated how many "good poems" were being produced by recent graduates of MFA programs. Keeping all estimates conservative, I figured there had to be at least 450 poets graduating nationwide each year. If each MFA graduate wrote just one good poem a year for ten years, at the end of a decade we would have 24,750 good poems—not to mention 4,500 degree-bearing poets, each of whom was required to write a book-length manuscript in order to graduate."
Basically, there are 42 million more writers than there are readers in the world. If we're talking about blogs, there are 42 bazillion more writers than there are readers. Fledgling writers of all stripes will have to deal with this for the rest of their lives.
Check out MFA guru Tom Kealey's spirited discussion of these issues. Are we doomed?
Creative folks have always been doomed when it comes to finding and audience.
Historically it's been difficult to reach an audience because of the costs involved in production and distribution.
Now that it's cheap and easy to publish, it's hard to reach an audience because there is so much clutter.
Posted by: Andrew | May 26, 2006 10:43 AM | Permalink to Comment