How long should a book of poetry be?

As the title says. To specify "long," I'd like to know what word count those of you who've read such books would expect to find. Answers in regards to the number of poems are also welcome, though less so, for there is a great degree of difference in poem lengths, thus lessening the value of the answer somewhat. Thanks in advance.

Please do refrain from saying: "however long it needs to be."

Strong opinions people! Strong opinions! Those are the ones of use

 

What does 40, 16, 15 and 4 poems equate to? Those might be thousands of words or dozens.

 

Thank you Mad Swede, that helps me out a good bit. The reason I ask is because I have sifted through my collection of written poetry over the years of writing them, and I was wondering how close to a publishable length my own work is so far. Of course, I could publish a book of 10 words, but I prefer sticking a bit closer to tradition than that. The total for now is 18 poems of a combined 3300 words. I've cut over 40 poems at least, but, so be it,

 

Ah, but we have this lovely new way of doing things called self-publishing For a short poetry collection, I feel the effort of finding a traditional publisher simply isn't worth the time and effort. But thank you! I will still use the good luck. Never enough of it.

 

Hey Maker. To jump straight into the answer: Nope, no Beta reader has influenced my decision in cutting the wheat from the chaff. Everything that I have cut is cut because either I don't believe they are worth reading, as a number of early poems simply aren't good, or because they don't reflect my thoughts as of now. A few that I would not include in this collection, are not included because they don't fit the tone of the collection as a whole. That said, I am still considering adding some more, if I can figure out how to include them within the whole.

Are you by any chance able to tell me how many words you estimate are on the individual pages of the works you are aware of? Font size can make an enormous difference. Oh, and thank you for the luck. Will take it!

 

Thank you Maker, this helps a good bit. My own poetry varies in length, though only one (which you might recognize from the challenges) reaches a length I would consider "Long." I will keep a general 100 words per page in mind.

 

To the contrary, I'm afraid it might be too short. As for magazines and such, I am not personally interested at the moment. I want to self-publish and I'm not expecting to make a big splash, a minor splash or any money for that matter. I wish to publish my poetry collection for the sake of publishing, getting some experience in on that front and having something to link to for people to read if they enjoy my work on other mediums. My platform will be Amazon, possibly Bol.com (Dutch) and maybe other online platforms if I can navigate them. Given my reasons for publishing, I am not intending to spend any money on marketing. Word of mouth will do. Mostly words coming from my mouth over an extended period of time.

 

It is a good tip, I will make sure to investigate the range of self-published poetry collections on Amazon. The current selection of poems I have are just short of 4000 words total, as I managed to include two other poems I wanted. The formatting ordeal is one I don't look forward to, but luckily for me, most of the poems I have, have a fairly simple structure. The line length will be an issue, but that is a problem for another day.

I will certainly let everyone know when it is published. All of the poems in this collection are in English

 

Would a reader go through the book all at once, or would they read the poems one at a time with perhaps a break in between?

I assume they would take breaks and I have collected the poems in smaller subsections, "chapters" if you will, but I don't know what poetry readers generally prefer, which is one of the reasons I ask for advice.

How many poems do you envision will provide a satisfying reading experience?

I have no idea. While I've read a good bit of poetry, I've never read a full collection.

How many poems are you comfortable sharing?

As many as I deem to be worth reading. So far, that's around 22-23 poems in English if I'm counting right.

Would you force yourself to write some additional poems just to add more content?

Force? No. But if people were to advise me to add more, I wouldn't mind waiting some more months to publish. By then I should have written more on my own accord.

 

Too bad to hear that about Bol.com, but thank you for recommending Draft2Digital. I've heard of it before, but had forgotten all about it. I'll look into it. I will likely focus on Amazon then. I can always add my works to other platforms at a later date.