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Anne Marie Wells Poetry Newsletter September 2023
Workshop/event Dates, Writing Prompt, Poetry Opportunities, and Reading Recommendations
Hey Poet,
I am back on the east coast after a fulfilling whirlwind of a summer. I traveled all over the Mountain and Pacific North West, reconnected with friends I hadn’t seen in years, fell in love with Washington State, and watched STRANGERS buy my book! Wild!
I’ve learned a lot about the financial realties of book touring, and I outline those insights in my latest article for The Poetry Lab, “Guide to Building a Book Tour Part 2: Selling on the Road 🤑” [Part 3 will come out at the beginning of October.]
I also learned the realities that I could spend three months bouncing between my partner’s apartment and sleeping in my car and the occasional hotel, busting my ass to promote myself at these events — half of which I performed at unpaid — in order to sell books, and selling on average 3 books per event, just to have one TikTokker, who isn’t even a BookTokker, but rather a baker who specializes in cookies, make a post about my book, and ended up sparking a skyrocket in my book sales through Amazon. Thanks to one TikTok video, I sold more books in three days than I did in three months. I feel both blessed and annoyed haha.
