Defunct E-pubs
 

Per Contra's server seems to have vanished, and with it, all the poems published there. What would you call the status of a poem that was published, but only electronically, on a site that no longer exists? Should it be considered "previously published"?

That’s an excellent question, Martin. At least half a dozen E-pubs which had poems of mine are now defunct. I sometimes wonder if I can find homes for those poems again. Also, I’ve been putting together a manuscript and wonder what I’m supposed to say on the acknowledgments page about those poems.

I hadn't noticed. But not only is the site gone, but my poems don't show up in Google.

I suppose the poems are previously published, but as a practical matter you can claim they weren't.

But Martin E, I think when it comes to a manuscript you would want to include the acknowledgements just to show that your poems have been recognized by other editors as worthy.

Roger (Bob) - Yes, that makes sense.

I just plugged http://percontra.net into the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/ and retrieved a bunch of issues.

I doubt an editor would bother doing that, since it's not searchable.

I would just be upfront about the situation to the editor, and let them decide.

It's really a shame that Per Contra didn't keep its old issues online. The cost of doing so is negligible, and if you are willing to accept an assigned domain name, it is literally free. As a general matter, the potential of perpetuity always struck me as the main selling point of online publication over paper.

I'm sorry to hear this. Per Contra published a number of my poems a few years back & the editors were kindly & dedicated.

I particularly remember their tribute to Daniel Hoffman which appeared shortly after he died.

If it helps: I've started saving on-line appearances in PDF format so that, if they do disappear, I have a permanent record of their existence.

Just thought I'd share the option, since it's a risk faced by anyone who publishes on line.

Useful link, thanks Julie. Not searchable? I stuck my name into Contributors' and it went to the bio with a live link to my only contribution some years ago.

(Sorry, I meant not searchable via external search engines like Google.)

Sometimes, and I hope this is one of those times, an online pub's disappearance is temporary. For example, I thought kaleidowhirl had disappeared into the ether, but I saw recently that it's back online, though not active.

A sadder thought: Prompted by this thread, I poked around my Duotrope records and found that about a third of the places I've had poems are closed, "on hiatus" (which often in practice means dead), or "believed defunct." It's hard to keep journals going, and I'm grateful to editors for their work.

I just emailed the Per Contra editor at her Drexel University email address. If she responds, I'll let you all know what she says.

She responded in minutes:

I don't know about this particular journal, but, in general, i just wouldn't bother with some online journals to begin with. A little block party of poetry. If you value your work, treat it with a little respect. Secondly, be honest about it. There's a poem for sure i'd like to take back. That's the way it goes.

Roger/Bob,
Thanks for the news--if you hear more from Miriam, please let us know!

Martin

Another email this morning. It seems she had no idea it had vanished, and she now has her web guy working on it.

I want to echo what Maryann said about the debt of gratitude we owe to journal publishers (I know we have a few around here). I've seen, just tangentially, some of the effort required to get a journal out regularly, and it's heroic.

So, thanks to you editors!

Just a reminder--if we want to keep our favorite venues in operation, subscriptions and other donations are helpful.

*cough* Eratosphere *cough* Able Muse Review *cough* *cough*

Per Contra is now back. Miriam didn't realize it had somehow fallen off the internet since she is no longer publishing new stuff and therefore hadn't been checking. She was glad I let her know.

She indicated in her email that she would eventually like it if someone would take up Per Contra in the future. I'm not sure what that would entail, but if any would-be editors are intrigued by the notion, I suggest you contact her.

Roger/Bob,

Thank you! Great news! Did she mention why she stopped?

Thanks again,
Martin

Thanks, Ned. How do you do that?

I sometimes save as html, and sometimes take screen shots, but both can be awkward. Saving PDFs might be ideal, but I don't know how to.

Max, if you get yourself an Evernote account (the free one will do just fine) you can install a plug-in on your browser that allows you to "clip" any page or portion of any page to your Evernote account. I find this to be hugely convenient for many things, including making copies of zine pages where I appear.

Thank you, RogerBob. I'll look into that.

If it weren't for the fact that I have no interest in reading or publishing fiction, I'd be interested. I've been really interested in working as an editor for a while.

Of course, I'm sure she'd have had people more qualified than me given the history of the journal.

If you want to be Per Contra's poetry editor, Andrew, why not contact Miriam? She might be okay with it being revived as a poetry-only publication, or there may be someone out there who would be interested in editing Per Contra if it weren't for the fact that she has no interest in reading or publishing poetry.

Just a nanosec to drop in on this interesting thread. I've had about three publications online, with two sites still readily available although no longer active, and a third that's cached and sort of hard to get to. Despite the tidal rush to digital everything, molecules at present are more permanent: hardcopy I can wave at people and could shoot into space on a space probe and can hand around at soirees. I think dual publication is my choice for online publication: (A) online, then (B) in a book (or two books: Book One, etc., and Collected or Selected). Ostraka and palimpsest are other possibilities for the long game.

Max,

Thanks for the encouragement. I reached out to Miriam and told her I would ditch the fiction but keep the poetry and non-fiction.

It's unlikely she* would let me be editor simply because of how green I am, but you're right that I really don't have anything to lose.

EDIT: "follows through" was the wrong phrasing there. I simply meant nothing will likely come of this. But, nothing comes of nothing, so this is okay.

It might be good to use the members-only area of Eratosphere called "Eratosphericals" for certain conversations about editors and publications, out of public view.

That forum uses the same password as the Deep Drills do.

Allen, as I see it the sole advantage of print publication is that the most prestigious venues still are print. There's nothing online that compares to being published in Poetry, The Hudson Review, The New Yorker, etc., in terms of one's reputation and credentials.

But print publication in most journals is often just a credit you can claim with hardly anyone actually reading your poem. An example. Years ago, when I used to publish a fair amount in the print Light Quarterly, I believe they had something like 1000 subscribers. Once or twice I went to lunch with about six frequent contributors, and it was my distinct impression that even they had not read each other's work in Light. But even if we assume that all 1000 subscriber read and cherished every word in every issue, flash forward a year, or two years, and I think it's fair to say that literally no one is reading any of those issues.

Now flash forward a lot more years, and Light is now an online magazine. Unlike the old print issues which have basically disappeared from the face of the earth, every poem in the new Light remains available to every member of the human race who has an internet connection. If you Google the name of a poet, their poem in Light comes up. Countless other sites and blogs post links to those poems. In all likelihood, far more people will read the poem for a far longer period of time than would have read it back in the print-only days.

Per Contra is another example. Miriam has stopped publishing, but now all back issues remain once again online and can be read by anyone in the world.

So if you publish to be able to list a given venue on your CV, go for the print. But if you publish because you like the idea of your work surviving indefinitely and being available for anyone in the future to read, then go online.

Rogerbob, I read every dang poem in the hardcopy Light issues, including my own for good measure.

I'm not saying one mustn't publish online. Were I to be accepted by The New Yorker, Poetry, or the HR, I'd be "stoked" As to the HR, I must compound something with as much gravitas as osmium. Then I will try the HR again. I have an actual and, yes, perhaps somewhat seemingly invisible hardcopy publication record that I won't adduce here, with many in classical translations or contemporary pieces inspired by Greco-Roman metrics that didn't ignite at Measure or a lot of other places where they weren't understood (not the fault of the poems or the editors), although The New York Times was weak enough to do a "modernistic" one in a chiastic structure pioneered by Kingsley Amis. I've often been less prolific than I'd like, but I've been hammering away and submitting my manicured gems and sometimes posting on Eratosphere - though less frequently than at first except for sprucing up Paleozoic troglobytes. On the other hand, I have a life outside of art. When I reach the Pearly Gates, I hope the doorman will say, Hmm, kept at it and kept the lid on life too, that's ok.

It's a little more complicated than that. I'd be happy for all of my poems (or, well, a lot of my poems) to survive and be available, but there are poems I consider my best, and I want those to be the first ones people find. The more of my stuff is online, the less likely it is that people curious about my writing--few enough in the first place--will find what I most want them to find.

I've recently started loosening up about submitting to online venues, but I'm not positive I'm wise to do that.

(Like Allen, I read everything in the hard copy Lights, and even bought all the back issues (and photocopies of the three that were out of print).)

Max, I won't name names when I say there were people at the lunches (which you also attended) who didn't seem to know any of the poems in the latest issue but their own.

RogerBob,

I haven't contradicted you. I only pointed out that some people did read hardcopy Light cover to cover.

(I'm probably old fashioned, but I find it easier to do that with a hardcopy publication than one on the internet. For one thing, I've mastered the use of hardcopy bookmarks, but not the online types.)

Living on the other side of the country, I only attended one of those lunches, and I didn't know--or if I knew, I'd forgotten--that it was one of a series. My memory is that when I learned I'd be in town, I arranged with Bob M. and Ed to meet with them, and was surprised and touched that other East Coast light versers--you among them--also showed up. (It's possible, now that I think of it, that Bob and Ed did tell me they were inviting others, but I specifically remember getting to meet people I had not been expecting.)

It's possible that, in the busyness of travel and work, I had not yet read the current issue, but I didn't put it on my shelf until I had.

Re: PDFs
 

Hi, Max ~ To save whatever's in your browser as a PDF, just click on "File" & scroll to "Print." Depending on your browser (I have a Mac & browse with Safari or Google Chrome), try the following:

Google Chrome: offers the option "Open PDF in Preview"; after it does, go to that window &, from File, select the "Export as PDF" option.

Safari: From "File," you can either "Export as PDF" directly, or you can choose a "Save as PDF" option from the "Print" window.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, Ned! It works a little differently on my PC, but your instructions helped me figure it out. I feel I've taken a big step toward understanding (a part of) the internet.