[Mark Allinson]

More and more lately, I prefer to publish in pixels rather than on paper.

Why?

Because I believe that electronic publication is the way of the future, and e-zines are becoming even more aesthetically pleasing than print mags.

The first edition of The Shit Creek Review is a good example. For a start, the art work on the mag is astoundingly good. How expensive would it be to print a poetry mag with all this design and colour?

And there is nothing like a well-fonted, back-lit poem on a nice big screen.

Laziness and lack of patience are big factors, for me. I like the easiness and quickness of electronic publication, with e-mails for submission and editorial discussion.

Once I discover that I have to print-off poems (from a wobbly old printer) and lick stamps and buy international post-coupons and visit post offices to submit to a mag, and then wait on the postman for six months, I lose interest.

Another commonly heard advantage of paper – its portability – is soon to be overtaken by electronic means.

Check out this Wikipedia link re the latest innovation Electronic Paper

This will mean that one day soon, you will be able to unroll your sheet of electronic paper wherever you are, and call up any text from anywhere. Storage systems (like iPods) will soon disappear, and all information will arrive wirelessly.

And the commonly-heard argument that paper “lasts” longer is also under threat – a present-technology optically encoded cd will now last for centuries – perhaps even longer than acid-free archival paper. In other words, the stuff you publish electronically today will have a much better chance of surviving than on paper.

In fact, all of my best-loved books are now starting to fall apart through constant attention, and I can no longer afford to replace them. So if I want to read say, a 17th C. poem, I now read it online from a site like the gorgeous Luminarium . Everyday the amount of material on the web is growing, and one day it will possible to find most of the (older) poems you are looking for.


So, do you prefer paper or pixels, for reading or for publication – and why?




[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited November 02, 2006).]

[Max Goodman]

>a present-technology optically encoded cd will now last for centuries

Perhaps. Though not all such claims on behalf of tech storage have proven to be accurate. How can we know?

More importantly, centuries from now, how many people will own the technology necessary for reading that optically encoded cd?

The transfer of records from paper to electronic media is beginning to be recognized as a step toward cultural suicide. Remember those wide, flimsy, square floppy disks in use at the time the transfer started? A poem stored on such a disk might technically last for centuries, but now, only a generation later, few (if any) of us would be able to use the disk to read the poem.

[Mark Allinson]

Thanks, Max.

The obvious thing to do is to keep updating the electronic storage technology as it evolves.

When I first starting using a word-processor (as computers used to be called), it used the old 5" floppies. Then came the smaller 3" disks, and now CDs, which are continually evolving.

It doesn't really matter that you can't find machines these days to read those old 5" floppies, since the information on them has probably gone by now anyway. About 20 years, they last.

So you need to keep transferring the material to new storage systems as they appear.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks, Mark.

>So you need to keep transferring the material to new storage systems as they appear.

which contradicts your claim that the stuff lasts for centuries.

A poem on paper can survive for several generations to be discovered by someone. A poem on (in?) an electronic medium survives a technical innovation only if it is already important enough to someone that it is saved.

It might (or might not) be a good thing if we had to decide every ten or twenty years which of the books and magazines on our shelves were worth the time and expense of their transfer to a new medium, but we wouldn't argue that the innovation had increased the longevity of the material stored in our books.

[Mark Allinson]

Max,

longevity was only one of the reasons I offered in support of pixels, and I only gave that one because it is usually the reason people give for preferring paper - that electronic publication is ephemeral.

And the point about the enduring nature of pixels today, is that they can be preserved longer than print on paper - not merely by virtue of being recorded on any one particular electronic medium (like CDs), but by virtue of being digital information which can be transferred and preserved infinitely as the technology evolves.

One of the other reasons I gave for preferring pixels was cost. I cannot afford to buy more than a fraction of all the poetry books and chapbooks released, but e-books and e-mags give me a chance to read new poems.

And if I had the choice to buy new books in the form e-books at a cheaper rate, I would do so.

[Max Goodman]

I hope my attempt to clarify that one claim doesn't distract others from responding to your initial question, Mark. I'll go first (or second).

I like both, but I prefer paper. I don't have a strong argument as to why; it's a feeling. Print mags feel more permanent, more real.

Just as the hassle of submitting by mail makes a poet less likely to bother an editor with a poem the poet feels iffy about, the hassle of producing and mailing a physical magazine encourages a certain level of care. (I don't say it's impossible for the same level of care to be devoted to an online magazine.)

As I think about it, I realize that I see online publication as part of a larger objectionable trend toward ease. There are strong reasons to prefer cooking a meal to eating in a fast-food joint, riding a bicycle to driving a car, writing a letter to sending an e-mail message.

Difficulty is good.

[Rose Kelleher]

Some people claim that reading online is just as physically comfortable as reading a book. It isn't for me. Sitting up in bed with my laptop is just not the same. I like the way a book feels in my hand. I like turning pages better than scrolling or pressing Page Dn. I like the way I can open a book directly in the middle. And I like the way print looks on the page - the crispness of each letter, and the overall shape of it. I even like the way the print sort of gets sucked into the inside margin when the printers don't leave quite enough room, and the funky small fonts on the yellowed pages of my old books, and the little notes previous readers have made on the pages of my used books.

How does an author autograph an e-book?

I don't like the crumbs and little bugs you sometimes find in old books, though, and I hate when the binding wears out and you have these whole sections of the book that you have to hold onto so they don't fall out. And when you read online, you can search the text, which is really nice, and you can can easily look up words on dictionary.com as opposed to reaching for a heavy print dictionary - and you can google things you want to learn more about. So reading online is fine in small doses. But there's just no way I'm going to read Dickens online. Even long poems, I prefer to print out.




[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited November 03, 2006).]

[Mark Allinson]

Yes, of course not Dickens online, Rose.

You would be cross-eyed before Pip was grabbed by Magwitch.

I am talking POMES.

Not TOMES.

Of course books will always have their place. As objects they are still indispensable. Even with their broken backs and crumbling glue.

No, I am just talking about the publication and the reading of poems online, in e-mags.

I like the idea that a poem on the web can be read from anywhere in the world. And that it can be reproduced so easily and e-mailed.

The possibility that someone learning English in outer Mongolia might stumble over one's poem and (given the poor state of their comprehension) really enjoy it, is much more likely with a poem published online, than it is with a poem published in a small-run print-mag.

It allows for a much greater potential readership, you have to grant. It is POSSIBLE for anyone in the world with a computer to read it, as compared with a few thousand at the most with a print mag.

Nearly all the poems being published in Poetry will remain a total mystery for me, but I can see ALL poems published in the online mags.

I love 'em.

[Tim Love]

I work with computers, but until recently I didn't use them to write drafts, and I didn't use them for extended reading sessions. A few factors are beginning to tip the balance[list][*]light, big-screened WiFi broadband laptops are cute[*]the visual quality of e-publications is improving rapidly and in some cases is overtaking that of paper publications[*]e-publications no longer merely imitate the paper versions. Increasingly they offer video, audio, unobtrusive notes, and the chance of providing feedback. They're also good for people with poor eyesight.[*]It's getting harder to browse poetry books. One has to take a gamble when one buys them, and they're not cheap.

[Rose Kelleher]

Mark, it's true anyone can google your poem when it's online. That includes your in-laws, prospective employers, family court judges, religious zealots, and so on. If you're in a custody battle, or needing a security clearance to work on some government contract, etc, some idiot who can't the difference between fiction and reality (and they are legion ) can easily find your poems and use them against you. That is, unless you use a pseudonym, or only write about nice things in polite language. Granted, anyone can subscribe to a print zine, but the reality is that when you publish a poem in a print zine, at most a couple hundred poetry nerds are going to read it, and if it's about smoking hashish while having illicit sex by the flickering light of a pile of burning flags, that may actually be preferable.