If you want to buy, I'm your chap!

Unless you are a poetry lover, you’ve likely never heard of a chapbook.

Almanacs, history, myths, stories and folk songs were all preserved in small, crudely made chapbooks.

Those familiar with the term probably have romanticized visions of a duty-bound, literate few from the middle ages peddling their rag paper wares from village to village.

The peddlers weren’t just hucksters. They were disseminating information. They were bettering the lives of people, and not just the upper crust who could afford to have book collections of their own, but also the common man.

In an era when paper was expensive, chapbooks were sold for a penny or ha’penny. They were cheap and they were necessary.

“These old Chap books [sic], sold by the Chapmen, have given us most of our old nursery rhymes, English ballads, folklore and old legends," states the article “Chapbooks and the Nursery Rhyme.” at rhymes.org.uk.

"If you want to buy, I'm your chap,” the chapmen would yell as they went from door-to-door.
Also referred to as "merriments," they were pocket-sized and cheap.

“The Nursery Rhyme began to be printed in England as early as 1570! Chapbooks were also popular with people who could not read as they contained pictures," writes rhymes.org.uk. “The content and material of the Chapbooks expanded in the 1700s to include children's stories like Robinson Crusoe and various versions of Perrault’s Fairy Tales.”

The popularity of chapbooks dwindled in the nineteenth century in the face of competition from newspapers.

Chapbooks are still preserving culture. They are still on the side of the underdog. In today's world, the paupers are the poets and poetry lovers (both in reality and for the sake of this analogy).

Low-cost, low-production chapbooks are one of the few avenues available to the art with the lowest returns—poetry.

Because they are cheap, publishers are more willing to take a chance and produce a book that isn't expected to sell in high quantities.

Readers of this column probably know where I am heading with this. One of my favorite pastimes is writing poetry. And yes, a chapbook of my poems was recently published.
It's called "Twitter Poems and Other Small Gems." It was published by a poetry blog—World Class Poetry Blog—and that seems apropos.

Bloggers work in the true spirit of the chapbook, using the Web as the new rag paper. The book, by the way, is available free at genemyers.com.