Is publishing in a magazine's online arm the same as publishing in the magazine?
"Do they count that as a win, no matter what?"
Welcome to our weekend conversation!
A reader wrote to me last week with a question. L. is wondering:
…how writers feel when a piece of theirs gets accepted to a journal, but not the print version, the online arm. Do they count that as a win, no matter what? Do they feel like they've made the minor leagues, but not the majors? And how do they talk about it on their CVs, websites, etc? Do they claim that they got published by the overall journal, or only claim the online title? I'm not just thinking about a journal that goes under the same name both in print and digitally, but also thinking here of something like North American Review which has their print version, but also has their online issues which go under the name Open Space. If your acceptance letter comes from NAR, do you say you've had a piece accepted by NAR, regardless of which arm of the organization it will be published in?
This question has several important parts, so let’s try to break it down.
First, let’s talk about the “online arm” of lit mags. This looks different from journal to journal.