Start with an underlying theme
Not all of your poems have to be about the same subject, but readers greatly appreciate having a throughline or undercurrent that reveals the topic in layers. That could be as simple as your unique voice, an emotional arc, or a season of life, even if the poems look different on the surface.
It's also entirely possible that you're looking at several dozen poems and none of them all seem to fit neatly into a single category. If that's the case, you may be looking at two or three future poetry books instead of just one!
How to order your poems
Most poets don't sit down and write a full poetry collection. Your individual poems might have been written over months or years, and maybe only recently you started asking yourself which ones belonged together. If you want to publish a poetry book, you'll need to keep these points in mind:
Open strong
Your first poem sets the reader's expectations for tone, voice, and topic. It doesn't necessarily have to be the "best" poem by itself, but it needs to give them an idea of what's ahead.
Keep the emotional weight varied
Two devastating poems back to back can numb a reader instead of moving them. Give them room to breathe and diffuse the meaning between the heaviest pieces, just like the wedding DJ spaces out the ballads.
Build toward something
That "something" can be resolution, escalation, or a poignant final note. The closing poem should feel like a true ending — not just a stopping point.
Consider white space as part of the design
Poetry formatting needs to give the words space to breathe on the page. If you're looking to publish a poetry book, proper formatting means enhancing readability, complementing the rhythm of the poems, and giving the reader a memorable experience.
It's also worth noting that once you've figured out an underlying theme that ties your poems together, the next step is to cut some out. Having a tighter, more tightly focused collection of a couple dozen poems will always outperform a padded collection of fifty, because every weak poem interspersed between the strong ones gives the reader another reason to put the book down and not look back.
Choosing the right trim size for your poetry book
Once the order of poems is locked in, you'll next need to decide how you want to handle the physical format. Trim size is one of the most "genre-coded" decisions in publishing. Your readers will form impressions about your poetry book before they even read the first page. BookBaby's own guide to book trim sizes recommends that poetry books be published in the Digest size or possibly the smaller Pocket Book size.
Both of these trim options make your book feel intimate and portable rather than bulky. This follows the way most poetry is read and enjoyed — a few pages at a time.
If you're curious about which trim sizes work best with which genres, we offer a guide for that. It's worth checking out before you finalize your file, since it lays out industry standard sizing by category. Trim size affects layout in practical ways too, which is particularly important for poetry books: longer lines need space to avoid awkward wraps, while shorter, more fragmented poems can sit comfortably in a narrower format.
Protecting your work while preparing to publish
Poetry has a habit of making the rounds without proper attribution, via screenshots, reposts and quote graphics on social media. This can happen long before the book ever comes out. Before you publish a poetry book and put it into production, it's worth taking the time to learn more about registering your copyright, especially if you're planning to build an audience and focus on wider distribution.
A series of impactful decisions
Publishing a poetry book doesn't just boil down to a single decision. When working with a professional self-publishing company like BookBaby.com, you'll walk through a series of decisions, each one of them building on the last.
The underlying theme determines which of your poems belong in the book, and the poem order tells you how much white space each poem needs. The white space, together with common genre conventions, directs you toward the best print size for a poetry book that will make it feel like it belongs on the shelf next to other great poets.
By themselves, none of these steps is complicated on its own, and with BookBaby's friendly, helpful support team, you never have to worry about being stuck. Numerous videos and educational articles also guide you step-by-step through the process. By working with proven professionals to publish a poetry book, you'll have all the knowledge and direction you need to turn that stack of poems into a professionally bound, ready-to-sell book.