Iambic pentameter 2.0

Victor Keegan writes on the GuardianUnlimited ArtsBlog about what cyberspace can do for poetry, permitting publication in the virtual world.

His project resonates with my planned S&D&P venture.

Poetry has been given huge opportunities by the growth of self-publishing websites (where a book can be published extremely cheaply) and the parallel growth of print-on-demand presses.

You don't have to order (and pay for) 500 or 1,000 copies in advance any more, because with digital publishing nothing is printed until it is ordered from a website. There are dozens of self-publishing sites whose charges depend on the services they provide (editing, proof checking etc). I chose lulu.com because if you prepare the text yourself on a Word or Open Office document and design your own cover then it costs almost nothing.

The first copy of my 100-page book cost me only £3.40. Indeed if I'd been confident enough not to need a proof copy sent to me (to check for errors) it would have cost nothing. It will now just sit contentedly in digital form in a computer until someone is brave enough to purchase it for the cover price of £6.96. Incidentally, authors get 80% of the difference between the basic price and the selling price, a far better royalty deal than anyone gets with real-life publishers.

One is still left, of course, with the mammoth problem of marketing. So where better than Second Life to launch it: a virtual book published in a virtual world. And I can tell you the room rents are a lot cheaper than central London.