Can poets make money?

August 11, 2008 3:40 AM

How much does a writer make when their work is included in a school book?

For instance, an Irish leaving certificate poetry book would contain roughly ten poems by each of the ten compulsory poets on the course as well as about forty individual poems by various other poets. Roughly 60,000 students do the leaving cert each year.

How much would one of the compulsory poets expect to make? What is the licensing structure for poetry in these cases?

posted by minifigs to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

Best answer: What do you mean by various other poets? Do the "compulsory poets" have agents or are they students? Are these also students or famous living or dead poets? In the US, these fees are called permissions. Student writers typically don't earn much or any money in a student publication. A literature anthology by a major publisher that includes work by say Seamus Heaney, might pay US $10,000 to reprint one of his poems, based on the print run and other factors.
posted by mattbucher at 9:43 AM on August 11, 2008

Response by poster: Sorry, a little more detail:

The Leaving Cert is can be taken at ordinary or higher level. At higher level the student studies ten or so poems each by a selection of the compulsory poets. They're the Irish big hitters like Heaney, Longley, Boland and other members of the canon like Bishop and Dickinson. At ordinary level, there are about forty poems from a selection of various poets, including the compulsory poets but also lots of one offs like John Donne or Carol Anne Duffy.
What I really wanted to know was how much would someone whose work is not in the public domain like Heaney make from an educational text book which features ten of his poems and sells 60,000 copies a year?
posted by minifigs at 2:08 AM on August 12, 2008

You will have to request permission to reprint Heaney's (or any other published poet's) poems. Each permissions agreement is different, but some of those heavy hitters like Heaney and Boland can command a great deal of money. I'd start by submitting a request for permission to Heaney's UK publisher. You can google around for sample standard permission letters. I work on publishing large literature anthology textbooks for the US educational market and a very large portion of our costs go towards permissions fees.
posted by mattbucher at 10:25 AM on August 12, 2008