Poetry Book Sales in the United States

The latest figures and trends in the genre

Every year in the United States, about 300,000 new books are traditionally published. Penguin House alone publishes 15,000 titles per year. Other major publishers are similar: HarperCollins (10,000), Hachette (2,100), Simon & Schuster (2,000).

From nonfiction books like The Anxious Generation to fantasy novels like The Atlas Six, there are endless choices of books for readers to choose from. However, poetry tends to get lost amidst the endless categories. Of the 800 million books that are sold in the United States each year, only 3 million of them are poetry books. Below are the most popular categories of books:

Image Source: Wordsrated

Poetry isn’t shown in this graph, as it’s too small to be included as its own category. It’s unclear where poetry sales are even being considered. If it were its own category, Poetry would probably be a tiny speck between Adult Nonfiction and Adult Fiction.

As the Wordsrated article talks about in the reference for the image above, poetry was actually the fastest growing category in terms of sales from 2013 and 2017, with about 12 percent of people in the United States reading poetry. But compared to other genres, poetry is still microscopic in terms of sales, regardless of its growth rate.

Matthew Zapruder

To get a better idea of poetry sales, let’s take a successful poet like Matthew Zapruder as an example. He has won some of the biggest poetry awards in the country, most notably the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America for his 2007 collection The Pajamist. His poems regularly appear in top literary magazines and Best American Poetry anthologies.

His 2010 collection Come on All You Ghosts has 27 reviews on Amazon (The Pajamist has 6 reviews) and most likely sold a few thousand copies, which would be abysmal for any major fiction book. Yet for the average poetry publisher, this would be considered a high number. Meanwhile, Matthew Zapruder’s nonfiction book Why Poetry has 243 reviews on Amazon as of this writing and has most likely sold up to or even more than 10,000 copies, which shows readers’ preference for nonfiction over poetry (To be clear, I do not know the actual sales figures. I am guessing based on typical sales-to-review ratios — which is usually 1 to 2 percent).

Copper Canyon Press

To add some more insight, we can look at Copper Canyon Press. This publishing company actually published three of Matthew Zapruder’s poetry collections — The Pajamist (2006), Come on All You Ghosts (2010), and Sun Bear (2014).

In an interview with the Peninsula Daily News, Copper Canyon Press co-publisher Joseph Bednarik said the average book sells between 2,000 and 5,000 copies. That figure is astronomical compared to most poetry publishers but still low compared to top fiction books, which can sell into the tens of millions of copies over time.

And Copper Canyon is one of the most respected publishers of contemporary poetry. Their titles are regularly nominated for major awards like the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. In 2017, Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong won the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2020, Jericho Brown’s The Tradition won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Those are just a few examples of awards that Copper Canyon Press has won. Yet if one of poetry’s main publishers is struggling to sell similar numbers of copies as fiction and nonfiction publishers, clearly poetry isn’t matching most readers’ appetites.

Instapoetry

As mentioned in the introduction of this article, poetry is the fastest growing genre of books, and that is mainly due to the rise of Instapoetry. The term “Instapoetry” comes from poets like Rupi Kaur and Lang Leav, who gained millions of followers in the early days of Instagram for their short poems posted on the platform, often accompanied by simple drawings. Here is an example from Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey:

Image Source: Odyssey (from Milk and Honey)

The topic of Instapoetry has its fair share of skeptics, mainly among people who believe in more formal verse. Some critics have claimed that Instapoetry isn’t real poetry because it lacks a certain quality of “true” poetry. This 2019 Medium article does a good job of explaining the complexity of Instapoetry vs. what I’m calling contemporary poetry.

Regardless of what people say, the numbers don’t lie. People buy Instapoetry books much more than other poetry books. Milk and Honey has sold over 3 million copies and is now on the Top 10 leaderboard of the top-sold poetry books of all-time. There are constantly new Instapoets who are selling tens of thousands of copies of their books. Most recently, Whitney Hansen became a poetry star when she started uploading videos of herself reading her poems on TikTok then self-published her book Climate in 2021.

Rupi Kaur vs. Billy Collins

Compare Rupi Kaur’s sales to former Poet Laureate Billy Collins, whose 19th poetry collection will be released in the fall of 2024. Billy Collins typically sells around 25,000 copies per book at this point in his writing career. Over his lifetime, he has sold over 200,000 copies of his books, less than 10 percent of one of Rupi Kaur’s books.

To be fair, most writers would be happy selling that amount of books over their career. But for one of the bestselling poets ever, 200,000 copies is pretty low compared to the top Instapoets.

Why isn’t Poetry Selling?

It seems Instapoets have unlocked the secret formula of publishing, and their success can hint at what other poets need to do to be successful.

Here’s a few bullet points of why Instapoets have been successful:

• They build an online platform and gain millions of followers (Whitney Hansen has over 3 million followers on Instagram. Rupi Kaur has over 4 million followers)
• They have taken the complexity out of poetry that most people get taught in school by reading Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, etc.
• They write about common experiences and trauma and focus on how to heal from those experiences. In this way, they have not only written a poetry book but have also written self-help/inspiration
• And lastly, Instapoetry book lengths are usually closer to what the average novel is (readers get a better deal for a 150-page Instapoetry book vs. a 70-page contemporary poetry book)

I think the first bullet point is the most important. Nothing beats a large fan base. Even if your book isn’t as long in terms of pages but you’re able to market it to tens of thousands of people — or even millions of people — for free on social media, you’re bound to see success. Especially when they are following your social media page for the sole reason of reading your work.

Spoken Word Poetry

A discussion on building a fanbase online would be incomplete without mentioning spoken word poetry. Button Poetry is the most well-known platform where spoken word poets get their start. Competitions such as the National Poetry Slam are another common way for spoken word poets to gain popularity.

Image Source: Button Poetry

This is how poets like Rudy Francisco and Sabrina Benhaim became famous — by racking up millions of views on YouTube then publishing their books through Button Poetry. Rudy Francisco’s Helium sold 50,000 copies less than two years after it was published. Similar to Instapoets, spoken word poets sell more copies of their books by acquiring a massive online audience.

The Bottom Line

Overall, poetry is way less popular than other book genres, only selling about 3 million copies of books per year. The top poetry presses that publish more traditional poetry typically sell a few thousand copies per book, whereas the top Instapoets sell tens of thousands of copies. This shows the power of marketing and suggests that other poets could sell more copies by building their online platforms. If poets spend more time building their social media profiles and gaining an online presence, poetry will continue building its momentum as the fastest growing book genre and may become a larger percentage of book sales as a whole in the United States.

Thank you for reading this article. Let me know what you thought or if you have any insight in the comments.