Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/seattle-poetry-publisher-finds-method-to-adapt-to-changing-cultural-times Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Copper Canyon Press, a Seattle area poetry publishing firm, started out as a small enterprise where employees bound books by hand and sold them out of their cars. Today, government and foundation grants allow the press to bring lesser-known poetry to a wider audience. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, from our occasional series on poets and poetry, the ups and downs of the poetry publishing business. Jeffrey Brown has our story. JEFFREY BROWN: It's no surprise that there's not much money to be made in poetry, so how in a commercial culture like ours does so much of it get published? One answer can be found here in a beautiful setting at an old fort a few hours outside of Seattle, where Copper Canyon has been putting out books for 35 years. MICHAEL WIEGERS, Copper Canyon Press: When the press first started, we would do all the printing by hand, the binding by hand. And there was even — the sales were done out of the trunks of cars. JEFFREY BROWN: They don't sell books out of their cars anymore, but Michael Wiegers and his colleagues still have one thing in common with their predecessors: It's all about the poetry. MICHAEL WIEGERS: The poem is something to be shared. It's a gift from the poets to the reader. And so we wanted to make certain that that gift was being received. POETRY PRESS STAFF MEMBER: The poems are all listed and all marked up to be in lower case. JEFFREY BROWN: With a million-dollar budget and a staff of eight, Copper Canyon relies on foundation and government grants and private donors to publish about 20 poetry books a year. In this business, 5,000 sales is a bestseller, but every so often, there's a blockbuster that brings in real money. MICHAEL WIEGERS: Ted Kooser, "Delights and Shadows," is probably one of our best. But to give you an example, I think the initial print run on that book was around 2,500 copies. Then he was named the poet laureate, and we had to go back and print 20,000 copies. And then he wins the Pulitzer Prize, and suddenly we're getting closer to having printed 100,000 copies. JEFFREY BROWN: Those kinds of sales allow Copper Canyon to publish lesser-known names, as well. It brought to a wider audience Taha Muhammad Ali, a Palestinian poet we met in Nazareth earlier this year. MICHAEL WIEGERS: Has everybody seen Valerie's mock-up?