Thread: Defunct E-pubs
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Unread 03-01-2019, 04:53 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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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.
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