The first push for members will come in July, when the Academy will mail its offer to 50,000 poetry lovers. The initial catalog of books will have 50 titles to choose from, and the Academy hopes to offer up to six catalogs per year to members. A recent panel on National Poetry Month questioned the event's ability to promote book sales. Poets House, a poetry library and advocacy group in Manhattan, hosted the panel, which featured small press publishers and booksellers. The unsold inventory is then returned to the publishers.
Returns can cause serious cash-flow problems, especially for small businesses.
The collapse of Commonwealth Publishing, an Edmonton, Canada-based subsidy publisher, has resulted in much higher losses than were first reported by independent sources. Commonwealth allegedly did not fulfill many of the contracts, and will soon face a class-action lawsuit by authors.