PoetrySpeaks is a new online community and store that sells text and audio downloads of individual poems for 99 cents each. The site was created by Sourcebooks, a publishing company run by Dominique Raccah. From an article at Publisher’s Weekly:

PoetrySpeaks.com will sell individual poems for 99 cents for an audio or print download, $1.49 for a combination of text and audio and $1.99 for video.

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The site is offering poetry from more than just Sourcebook material. Tupleo Press, Naxos Audiobooks, and Marick Press have already signed on, and Raccah expects to reach deals with other poetry publishers—both large and small—in the near future.

I tend to think that any experiment with publishing poetry online is good — and audio sales might have legs — but it’s hard for me to imagine paying for the text of a single poem. The basic problem is thus: Since the only way for me to know that I like and might want to buy a poem is for me to have already read it, and since it must already be available somewhere in order for me to have read it, why would I pay to download it?

PoetrySpeaks is obviously based on the iTunes model, but poetry isn’t like pop music. Most of the music I buy from iTunes I’ve already heard — either from friends or Pandora or the soundtrack of a movie — so they only need to give me a 30 second preview. It’s just enough to confirm a particular song is indeed the song I’m looking for. And even though that hypothetical song is available elsewhere for free (streaming services, etc), I buy it from iTunes for sheer convenience, because I intend to listen to it over and over again, and because decent audio quality is guaranteed.

With the text of a poem, there’s no qualitative difference between downloading the file, or just copying the text straight from another source — even if that means retyping 14 lines from a print journal. In this case, PoetrySpeaks allows you to read the full text of the poem, but a javascript prevents you from selecting and copying the text. (Although anyone who knows how to view page source in a web browser can easily get around this.)

Also, what am I going to do with the text of a single poem that I’ve downloaded? Print it out and set it on the coffee table? The greatest practical use I have for single poems — as opposed to books of poetry — is to share and discuss them with my friends. That’s most easily accomplished with a link to a web page that offers the full text of the poem, not with a downloaded file that I presumably don’t have permission to digitally share. Happily, you can link to individual poems on PoetrySpeaks, and then read the full text in your browser. That’s wonderful, and it guarantees the site a good amount of traffic from my web browser, but, again, it raises the question — what are you buying when you buy the text of a single poem?

What say you, Dear Readers? Let’s kick it around in the comments.