Poets Online has been a free site since it started in 1998. Free to use, free to read the issues and free to submit. That doesn't mean it doesn't have bills. All of us (mostly me, Ken) who read the poems, do some editing and then format the web versions and promote all of it through social media and our blog are unpaid. It is a labor of mostly love.
We need to pay for the hosting and for the domain poetsonline.org and through the years the only source of income has been by having Amazon.com links to books and occasionally other items
At the end of 2023, Amazon is going to stop allowing image links (like a book cover) and many of its banner and box ads that we have used on the website and blog. Poof. They will disappear and sometimes leave behind an ugly white block in their wake on the screen. We received about a two-month notice about this and it will be quite impossible for us to fix all those links easily. It also means people are less likely to click on a link and possibly make a purchase.
Each purchase made through our links sends a few pennies (literally) into our account. There are months where that income doesn't even hit the Amazon $10 minimum so it just gets held over.
I don't know anyone who went into poetry to make money. I certainly did not, but I'd like to see Poets Online at least break even for the year.
People have suggested adding one of those Patreon or some such donation link but that feels wrong. To charge a fee to submit, as many poetry publishers do to cover costs, would require some fancy setup or using a service like Submittable (which would cost us more than we would probably take in). And I know that a fee would stop many people from submitting.
Poets Online began amongst some poet friends and grew and was always meant to be open to a wide range of poets by age and experience. We would like to keep it that way.
So, if you shopping online for books or whatever, you can help us by using our general Amazon link link (You can bookmark the short version https://bit.ly/poetsamazon) or by clicking on any of our poetry book links for our featured poets and their books and making a purchase. Anything purchased through our general link counts - buy that engagement ring there! Using the links does not affect your price.
Thanks for reading this post, and for using the site whether you only read the poems or submit your own poems for consideration. We hope to still be here at the end of 2024.
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To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org
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