Why the slow burn matters more than the sell-out launch in small press publishing.

Success is a slippery thing in indie publishing. If you ask a large publisher what success looks like, the answer is usually straightforward. Full market coverage from independent bookshops to online via the chains and the supermarkets. Copies sold and rights deals. Reviews in the big papers and celeb or two mentioning it on their podcast. A prize if everything aligns. There are numbers that can be measured and compared. Don’t get me wrong, it would be fun to see something I’d been involved in publishing on the shelves in Tesco, but we’re not aiming for that.

In the world of poetry pamphlets and small presses, the numbers are smaller and the definitions become a bit more complicated. A pamphlet print run might be 150-250 copies. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. In the context of big publishing that sounds tiny, almost quaint. But within poetry publishing it is a fairly normal scale, especially for presses with design, editing and the physical object of the book at the heart of the process. Those 150 copies represent a real investment of time and energy. Someone has pored over the manuscript (often me!). Someone has edited it (sometimes me, more often a poet with whom we’ve worked before). A cover has been designed and the pages have been typeset (by Duncan). Money has been spent on printing, marketing and time on all else. The pamphlet now exists in the world, which is always a small miracle.

So the question quietly appears. What does success actually look like for us at that scale? It is very tempting to answer with the most obvious metric: sales. Imagine a launch where the poet’s entire network turns up. Parents, cousins, colleagues, old university friends, the writing group, perhaps a neighbour who once saw them carrying a notebook and feels they ought to be supportive. The room is warm and lively. Copies sell quickly. At some point someone says the words “we might sell out tonight”.

From the outside this looks like a perfect result, in many ways it is. Having people who want to celebrate your work is a deeply lovely thing. Writing is solitary for long stretches, and publication is one of the rare moments where it becomes communal. That said, there is also a quiet truth that most small presses know well. Friends and family buy the book because they care about the poet. They want to support them, have a signed copy for the shelf, be part of the celebration, take the poet out for a drink after the event. All of which is entirely natural. We love supportive friends and family. We rely on our own friends and family to cheerlead us too (shout out to my husband & kids!).

What it does not always do is build a readership beyond that circle. Once those enthusiastic early sales have happened, the pamphlet can hit a plateau. The people who love the poet have bought their copies. The wider audience has not yet discovered that the book exists. So from a social perspective the launch was a success. From a publishing perspective the real journey may only just be beginning.

There is another version of success that looks quieter at first. The launch happens and the room is comfortably filled but not overflowing. The publisher anxiously counts chairs at the back of the room. A few dozen people attend. Some copies sell. The poet reads beautifully. There is a good conversation afterwards. The chairs are stacked and everyone goes home feeling content but not necessarily triumphant. Then, slowly, the pamphlet begins to travel.

A review appears somewhere thoughtful. A magazine perhaps, or an online journal where the reviewer has clearly spent time with the poems. Another poet mentions the book in passing. Someone posts a photograph of it beside their coffee. A small independent bookshop orders a few copies. A reading invitation arrives from another town. None of these things are dramatic on their own, but together they create momentum. Copies sell gradually over the following months. Readers appear who have no personal connection to the poet at all. They have simply encountered the work and been curious enough to follow it.

That kind of readership is different. It is not built from loyalty but from interest. Those readers are often the ones who stay. Critical attention plays an interesting role here. Poetry reviews rarely move large numbers of copies, but they do something else that matters. They signal that the work has entered the conversation. Someone has taken the time to read the pamphlet closely and respond to it in public.

For emerging poets that signal can travel further than the review itself. It tells editors, festival organisers and other writers that the work has been noticed. It tells the publisher that their instinct about the manuscript was worth trusting. Sometimes a thoughtful review will reach readers who might never have encountered the book otherwise. In a small literary ecosystem, that kind of attention circulates quietly but persistently.

Launch nights sit in an odd position within all of this. They are celebrations first and foremost. A launch is the moment when a book arrives in the world and the people who helped bring it there gather to mark the occasion. It would be a strange literary culture that did not celebrate those moments. At the same time, launches can create slightly misleading expectations about what success looks like. A packed room can feel like proof that the book has already landed. A more modest gathering can feel like a disappointment.

Anyone who has organised small literary events knows how unreliable those signals are. Rain can halve an audience. A train cancellation can empty a row of chairs. Sometimes half the people who planned to attend simply cannot make it out of the house that evening. The chairs tell you something about that particular night. They do not necessarily tell you how the pamphlet will live afterwards. Some of the most interesting small books travel quietly long after the chairs have been stacked away again.

From the perspective of a small press, success is always a balancing act. Printing pamphlets is not wildly expensive compared with producing full length books, but it is also not negligible. Design, editing, printing and distribution all require time and care. A print run of 150 copies represents both a financial decision and an editorial commitment. Most presses are not publishing pamphlets because they expect large profits. We do it because they believe the work deserves to exist in that form.

Still, belief needs to be sustained by something tangible. Steady sales help. Reviews help. Invitations for the poet to read help. Conversations about the book help. Each of these signs suggests that the work has moved beyond the immediate circle of its launch and begun to find its own readers. For poets themselves, the definition of success often shifts over time. The first publication carries enormous emotional weight. Seeing your work printed, bound and placed on a table beside other books can feel extraordinary. For many writers it is the first time their poems have existed as a coherent object rather than scattered pieces in magazines.

In that moment success may simply mean that the book exists. Later on, other measures become more meaningful. Being invited to read somewhere new. Meeting a reader who discovered the work independently is one of the most exciting things. I’ve had a couple of emails from people who read my novel that I’ve never bet. That was wild. Seeing the pamphlet mentioned in a place you never expected. So here I’m going to shoehorn in my general appeal: if you have read something, novel, non fiction or poetry, or heard music, seen some art that you have enjoyed, tell people, recommend it, especially if it’s by smaller artists or writers. Shout loud about it: it really counts.

Publication also creates momentum. A pamphlet becomes a kind of calling card. It shows editors and organisers that the poet has already stepped into print. It demonstrates that the work can sustain itself across a sequence of poems rather than appearing as isolated pieces. In that sense the pamphlet becomes part of a longer trajectory rather than a single achievement.

Small scale publishing operates on relationships. Readers discover a press because they liked one pamphlet and become curious about the others. Writers submit work because they admire the editorial attention given to earlier books. Festival programmers invite poets whose work has circulated thoughtfully through the scene. None of this happens instantly. A pamphlet that sells slowly but reaches the right readers can create connections that last years. Those readers may become collaborators, reviewers, editors or audience members at future events. The network expands gradually, almost invisibly.

A single sell out launch rarely creates that kind of network on its own. None of this is an argument against enthusiastic friends and family. Quite the opposite. A room full of people who care about the poet is the perfect welcome to the world for a pamphlet, and those early supporters deserve enormous credit for cheering the writer on long before publication was even a possibility.

The ideal situation is a mixture. When that combination happens the book develops two kinds of energy. There is the warmth of immediate support and the slower current of wider readership. Small presses thrive when both are present. Perhaps the healthiest thing small scale publishing can do is broaden its definition of success. Instead of asking only how many copies sold, we might ask slightly different questions. Did the pamphlet attract thoughtful attention and reach readers beyond the poet’s immediate circle? Has the poet moved onto the next step with their work?

These questions recognise that publishing exists within an ecosystem rather than a marketplace alone. Books circulate through communities in complicated ways. Their influence is not always visible in the first set of numbers. Working at a small scale also allows something that larger publishing sometimes struggles to maintain: intimacy.

A print run of 150 copies means that each book is likely to reach an actual reader rather than disappearing anonymously into a warehouse. The press often knows where the copies are going. Independent bookshops, and sold at festival tables or the back of an event, often by the poet themselves. Online orders from people who care deeply about poetry, posted on the school run by the publishers.

The audience may be small but it is often attentive. For poetry that attentiveness matters more than volume. Poems thrive when readers spend time with language, when they are curious about form and voice and the quiet shifts of meaning inside a line. In that context success may be measured less by numbers and more by attention. A pamphlet read carefully by fifty engaged readers may do more cultural work than one that sells quickly and disappears. Over time, small presses build catalogues. Each pamphlet becomes part of a larger story about what the press values and what kinds of voices it wants to nurture. Readers begin to recognise the editorial sensibility behind the list. Writers submit because they want to be part of that identity. I think we’re building that well with Stewed Rhubarb Press, no matter the challenges.

Success then becomes something cumulative. It is not simply about individual titles but about building trust. When readers trust a press they are more willing to take risks on unfamiliar names. That trust allows editors to keep supporting emerging voices and unusual manuscripts. In the end, is what small-scale publishing exists to do.

150 copies can be success: from the launch where the room feels warm but not overwhelmed, followed by a thoughtful review or two that shows the work has been read carefully. A handful of readings where new audiences encounter the poems. We see copies leaving the box slowly over the course of a year, a small book finding its way through the world, reader by reader. For a poetry pamphlet, that quiet journey is often a kind of success worth hoping for.