I write Poetry and Lyrics/Songs...How do I get my work published and out there to be used/purchased?

Question

I love writing songs, poems, lyrics, anything. I believe myself to be very creative lyrically. How do I go about breaking into that type of work? Publishing a book, writing songs for artists...things like that?

Answer 1

The first thing you must do when finishing a composition is to copyright it. Contact the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and submit your work. For a nominal charge, they will assign you a copyright number and your work is secure.

Secondly, it appears that you are a writer; I am a musician. If you want to have your lyrics put to music, you must find a music writer such as myself. When you connect with a musician, your lyrics are (in this case) already protected and the musician copyrights the melody. In a collaboration, the finished song can be submitted either by a written work of lyrics and musical notes or more commonly protected by what is called a "sound recording".

The two people who are collaborating agree to the finished song and it is recorded onto a disk. The lyricist and the musician agree to each rights and the disk is submitted to the Library of Congress as a "Sound Recording". This protects both the author of the song poem and the musician as the one who put the words to music. It is typically a 50/50 agreement between the authors of words and music and that any monetary gains will be split equally.

Allow me to further extrapolate on other details. Aside from the lyrics and music, there is a vocalist. In my situation I am a music writer who sings the lyrics. It is possible that your lyrics and my music would be sung by you. In this case, it would take a contract to determine who would have the rights to sing the song and would be registered when the sound recording was submitted. I would suggest that in this case that either of the artists be able to sing the song, because it would allow either of us to do that without infringing on the copyright.

Contractually, it could be written that if either artist performed the song, each would receive a share in the monetary value. This, in my opinion would be the best contract. However, if I sung your song 100 times and you only sung it 50 times, then I would receive twice the revenues of the "performance", but not twice the amount of the revenues of the residuals of having the right to sing the song for money.

It is kind of complicated. I have introduced you to the way it can happen and the variables. As far as royalties or money, it would be fair to share them equally as a song poem cannot be put to music without a musician to assist you. As a musician, I cannot sing a song without the lyrics as I am not a writer.

Answer 2

The first thing you must do is to promote your work as much as you can. No matter where you can. If you get an agent they won't necessarily promote you because you haven't established your name. Try the various publishers, and leave a sample of your work there with them. Also try the community radio and television stations, as they will be mostly looking for music for their programmes.

Answer 3

From what I read publishers don't really look at unsolicited manuscripts. They probably don't even get to all the hundreds of ones pushed by professional representation, or agents. I'd think an agent would, besides having contacts and more industry pull, know which publishing house would be most suited to your work. Overall, this - choosing an agent - would seem to be the move, especially for someone new or unknown - especially in this day in age, where there is so, so much art and information out there available to readers.

Answer 4

find an agent, pay him good money, and he'll get ur name out there with the big ppl or else just go to the Jimmy Kimmel Live Talent Showcase and hopefully you're good enough that he'll put you on TV