Our Story
The Poetry Shop started with a hunch. The founders, husband and wife Katie and David, were waiting at the airport for a flight to Las Vegas. Katie was opining about how tricky it can be to find poetry books and wished for an easier way, "what if there was a poetry-only online bookstore that stocked the best contemporary poets?"
David, a designer and consultant, kept thinking about it long after their return from Vegas, and the two began discussing the idea on their weekly date nights. Amazon and Bookshop have all the books, but don’t promote poetry. Publishers don’t put marketing dollars behind poetry books. Libraries are already stretched thin and can’t stock a wide-ranging assortment.
They devised a plan: create a place for readers to discover new work and for poets to find new audiences. Six months later, in November 2025, The Poetry Shop went live. Now, with over 2,500 titles listed, a growing social media following, and a growing community of happy customers, David and Katie are hopeful the vision is coming to life.
Our Strategy
Brick-and-mortar stores, online retailers, and even public libraries at best carry a slim collection of poetry. Bookstores in particular are facing major headwinds due to high overhead cost of retail spaces and the inventory cost of carrying an assortment of books. This is even tougher for niches like poetry, whose audience can be very slim. And, with a retail business, we wanted to be mindful of the environmental impact of packaging and shipping. We knew we had to be selective in setting up our business model in a way that makes it easy to select your next poetry book with thoughtful, seasonal, and inspired curation of new collections of work.
We established a digital storefront and distribution relationship that allows us to:
- List a wide selection of contemporary poetry
- Highlight new releases on social media once a week
- Get recommendations from poets through interviews shared on our blog
- Minimize the impact of shipping and transit
Our Approach
To offer thousands of poetry titles in the most sustainable and efficient way, we operate as a professional boutique retailer, highlighting new books and recommendations from poets while utilizing the Ingram Content Group distribution network.
While we personally curate collections of books, authors, and literary movements that we promote, your orders are fulfilled directly from one of our partner's domestic US warehouses. This professional distribution model ensures your books arrive in pristine condition and reduces transit times by eliminating the cost of warehousing an inventory of books. This approach allows us to provide a catalog that rivals the poetry selection of any major retailers while remaining a small, family-owned business.