The minimum page count for a P-O-D book from Lightning Source is 80 pages, which means you need 70 pages of poetry to fill a book. As P-O-D has also made pamphlet production seem uneconomical, the result has been that poets find themselves having to bulk out collections in order to get them in print. I can't be the only one that's noticed that some collections seem padded with less-than-excellent work. Of course I'm far too diplomatic to name names...

Before print-on-demand technology a standard poetry book from, say, Faber, was 64 pages. With title pages etc, this meant that there may only have been around 50 pages of poetry. It was common for collections to be even shorter. I have a copy of Lee Harwood's 'Landscapes' (Fulcrum) from 1969: 37 pages of poetry. Larkin's 'High Windows' (Faber), 1974: 33 pages. None of W.S. Graham's collections were anywhere near long enough to fill a P-O-D book, except possibly 'Implements in their Places', which runs to 60 pages in the Collected.

Conclusion? Well, I was only making an observation; but one thing that occurs to me is that pamphlets are more important than ever, as they allow poets to get work out during the five years or more it might take to put a full collection together. If that sounds self-congratulatory (as a pamphlet-publisher) I can only say that I've only brought out two pamphlets (by Kelvin Corcoran and Carrie Etter) in the last 3 years, which isn't really good enough. But there's good stuff coming from Oystercatcher Press, Barque Press, West House and others, all of whom need our support.