What an odd piece, especially since it displays a total lack of understanding of the market dynamics involved in actually publishing a print magazine. Costs for things like ink, paper, storage and distribution have increased dramatically, which partially explains the shift to digital (i.e., out of necessity).
And, while I'm a proponent of print, we need to offer compelling counter-arguments for its primacy (or even just its co-existence) over digital, which is faster to produce, easier to distribute, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly. Appealing to a general reader or audience (whatever that means or however defined) says nothing.
Since the piece trades in generalizations, let's add another one: most editors are unpaid, i.e. free labor. It always astonishes me to hear writers bemoan submission fees (frequently nominal), while turning a blind eye to the legions of editors who work without pay to produce magazines. (And good luck getting "non-writers" to do this work pro bono publico.)
And speaking of submission fees, the writer might have a different view of said fees if he were aware of the exploitative nature of Submittable, which charges an arm and a leg AND takes a cut from each submission fee received. A subscription to Submittable will likely put a huge dent in any indie's budget, and the money is never recovered. The result is a loss on the annual PnL.
As for many of the other points, without any substantive data to support them, they're merely idle speculation in the guise of informed analysis.
you raise valid points. i’m an editor of an unpretentious literary zine myself, as well as a producer of unpretentious literary events. what i’ve noticed, though i don’t have any hard data to back it up, is that most of my audience is comprised of other writers. the writing i showcase is completely suitable to the general public, it is funny and accessible, but for whatever reason it’s always been a hard sell to get anyone outside of the literary bubble to take notice or show up. i don’t know why that is, though i could speculate that most people associate poetry and literary stuff with stuffiness and i’m not sure how to get around that other than getting them to see that it’s not
I have difficulty understanding why so many litmags maintain their expensive addiction to Submittable when cheaper alternatives in Duotrope, ChillSubs, Submission Grinder etc exist.
Some can't wean themselves off Submittable because of the complexity of migrating all of their content to another platform (especially the case if a mag has been using it for years). Some like the "curb appeal" and (perceived) legitimacy or professionalism of using it. Some find that it offers features unmatched by alternatives. Some just use it because many others do.
Thanks for the reminder about that discussion, J Bee. I responded, in part, this way:
'The element that seems to be a glaring omission in the litmag field is advertising. Whether that's because litmags are a bit sniffy about accepting filthy lucre from commerce, or because litmags don't deliver enough eyeballs to interest advertisers I don't know but I grow a little tired of the argument that some mysterious 'they' should be shelling out money from an inexhaustible supply shrouded in secrecy.
This where we need to heed Jessica Michael's earlier comments and have some deep conversations about who is actually reading litmags and re-think whether there has ever been a viable market for them or is ever likely to be. To do that we need to shift our thinking away from the wild west of the early internet and stop thinking everything online can and should be free.
PS - Just to get tongues wagging, here's a list of dreadful sell-outs who stooped to having their work published in Playboy to get an audience: Roald Dahl, Jack Kerouac, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Ian Fleming, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Norman Mailer, and Alice Denham. My point is that to get paid you need to go to where the eyeballs are and that's not litmags.
As someone whose first fiction sale was to Cavalier Magazine in the mid-80s... the same place where Stephen King published first... you are speaking the truth here, Brother. And although I've had close to 100 fiction publications off and on since, I've never topped that first check ($350, for those keeping score).
Submittable is also a source (a pittance, admittedly) of income for all the mags we send to but can’t afford to subscribe to. It’s not a good system but until lit mags develop healthy business plans with innovative marketing, most journals will continue forward in the wheel ruts. of those who went before them.
I've mentioned in another comment that while Sanad's observation is a good one, there are likely multiple, complicated causes for the decline in litmags. But I wonder if there was also a litmag "bubble" that burst (or fizzed out) and if we're merely experiencing the aftermath of that.
I'd like to note that I totally agree, this isn't the only reason, but the one I find most compelling, easiest to address, and most fixable.
About the litmag bubble, though, litmags have been around for a *very* long time (late 1800s), and they've experienced ups and downs in popularity as with any other long-lived media. The issue though is the length of the present down is surprising and drastic, and the reason for its continued presence seems to be an inability to capture the public's lasting attention. I'd like to be clear that in no way do I suggest that this is the only issue, merely a pressing one.
Lots of people used to read. Now they're watching videos or listening to podcasts. Our way of getting stories has changed. That has cut a lot of the audience for all of the publications that are out there.
I understand and appreciate the labor of editors like you to keep litmags alive, whether in print or online. Thank you for your commitment! Too many writers are indifferent to market dynamics of any sort of publishing.
Oh please. I can point to a raft of genre litmags that don't charge for submission. Maybe if you chose one of the cheaper alternatives to Submittable and looked for more appealing work you'd have more readers with less expense.
Another culprit is the plethora of MFA programs proliferating at every university and college in the US and maybe elsewhere. These programs provide a cash infusion to the academic bodies in which they reside, and they persist in churning out graduates, who then need to publish and/or become famous, to justify all that money and expense. So far, not too bad, but the problem is that these MFA programs are run largely by guest editors and academics, who mold their students into a kind of Frankenstein's monster - capable of life but artificially produced, and devoid of original thought. I have several friends who survived an MFA program but seem unable to get stuff published - they are constantly trying to get their work "critiqued" before submitting. Yet they shrink from true criticism, of the kind old-fashioned editors used to regularly mete out to their writers. So mediocrity and lack of risk-taking and a kind of "trendiness" takes over, and that, in the circle jerk mentioned, is what is getting published. The general public is nowhere in this circle (thank goodness), but also is not being thought of as a potential audience. The potential audience is other MFA students.
So true. The “trendiness” produces experimental pieces that all sound alike. Sometimes I scratch my head and ask, “WTH did I just read?” Frankly, it sounds like AI nonsense to me. It may have originated from a real person but it doesn’t sound original at all.
I'll argue that there is a difference between the MFAs that are charging students and the few that pay students a living wage plus tuition to attend; they aren't taking more a few students a year and while some do, most of those students do not go on to become famous or successful, anyway. It's tough out there and the most successful writers typically come from family money or at least enough money that they can spend their 20s and 30s not working, working light jobs, etc. I think what you are saying is true about places like Columbia or even NYU where most students are paying a lot, but not like Michener, Iowa, and Johns Hopkins.
I came of age as a writer in the early 2000s, so I can't speak to the period before. If lit mags once built real communities, the way Substack is doing now, I never witnessed it. However, before about 2010 I did feel that lit mags were places where cream rose. What was published was demonstrably good, and you could mine those pieces for craft and then join the ranks. Writers with a high command of craft could also reasonably contend for prizes.
Digital submissions and the widespread acceptance of simultaneous submissions made the process thoroughly transactional. Editors were flooded with submissions. Wait times increased. There was no space for any genuine relationship between writers and editors to develop. One of my early pieces appeared in The Gettysburg Review, and I had a very meaningful exchange with that editor before publication. Same for several others. I haven't submitted to lit mags in two years, because I didn't want to pay $150-200 in submission fees for what effectively became a vanity publication and because the waning acceptances increasingly felt like one-night stands. The editor and I immediately moved on to other things.
Then there is the question of craft. You can't reliably discover great writers in lit mags anymore. You can read The Paris Review and wonder how the hell THAT piece got in. No wonder people are tuning out. I now make a modest income on Substack and enjoy a rich conversation with my readers. I have no more need for the notch on the belt or the status games. So I am one of the many who has voted with his feet. And I have published in more than 50 magazines.
I envy the fact that you've gotten those notches on your belt at a period when litmags actually published good writing. Nowadays, I read Granta and The Paris Review and I'm just confused HOW that piece made it there. We still need those notches (or do we not?), so we're still hustling. Congrats for having made it out of the literary rat race.
Thanks. The only reason to keep publishing in lit mags that I can see is to hope for inclusion in a "Best American" volume or some such thing. But I'm mindful that few agents are looking for writers like me, so landing representation that way (which was once something you could do) is increasingly unlikely. By contrast, Substack offers direct access to my audience, real growth potential, and zero wait time. I never once heard from a reader who found me in a lit mag.
I'll check out your substack, which represents the next wave of publishing, huh? Though I'm guessing its more nonfiction type, quasi-journalism, rather than fiction. In which case, a question: are readers simply less interested in fiction these days, on a micro lit-mag level, and more interested in newsy stuff? Or, is it more a question of the medium/platform, the online ease of a Substack? Or both?
Fiction does seem to grow more slowly on Substack. I can't speak for the broader trends. Some people have successfully serialized novels on Substack and then found publishers later. But it's a long game, not a quick fix to anything.
Substack also privileges shorter work. I used to write longform essays 4,000 words and up. Now most of my pieces are 1,500-2,500 words.
I don't know about Granta, but I've heard that the fiction that gets published in the PR these days is mostly agented. That seems to be true of the New Yorker, (which is more a glossy general magazine than a litmag and where the fiction is sometimes by an author with a book to be marketed soon).
Having joined the literary fray in the 1980s, I’ve experienced many of the same things that you’ve observed over the last 10-20 years: increased wait times, waning acceptances, less meaningful contact with editors. Lately, I’ve focused more attention on submitting to lesser-known magazines with the hope that the editors are less overwhelmed with material. I can’t say that the strategy has worked especially well, which may point to the underwhelming quality of my work rather than any deficiency in the mags' editorial standards. I've come across a number of modest online journals that are very discriminating in what they present and where I’d be happy to be included. As to discovering fine examples of craft, the best-of anthologies can be a source (depending on the editor, of course).
Though I haven’t given up on litmag submissions yet, the route you’ve taken is tempting.
Re the second-to-last sentence in your comment: if you have a moment, I'd appreciate hearing which online journals those are, and whether they publish poetry (though I'd be happy to look them up and find that out myself). Thanks for your comment and have a good day.
Perhaps check out Cumberland River Review, Blackbird, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Summerset Review, Cortland Review (you can decide which of these are “modest”).
Beyond Submittable and Duotrope, my favorite list of pubs is DL Shirey's Short List. It includes dozens of small lit mags (most with online-only presence), sorted by the maximum length of what they publish. I've placed several pieces with pubs I discovered on this list. That said, I've never gotten an email, postcard, letter or book publication offer from any readers of my work. Which brings me to the question: Is anybody reading this stuff? Or is it all digital detritus? Anyway, check it out: https://dlshirey.com/the-short-list/
I recently sent a poet, out of the blue, an email about a poem I wrote as inspired by theirs. I felt like I would perhaps be imposing on them, like who is this stranger just emailing out of nowhere and why would I care to see the work that my work helped birth. But I did it anyway. Would you (or others) feel kind of a "?wtf wru?" moment if someone emailed you to tell you this? Or is it something you'd appreciate.
I think that's a great idea that more writers should do. It sounds like something that helps build community & it's not just another form rejection. It let's a writer know their work has been heard & that can be the difference between them continuing or dropping out.
Thanks. I'll take a look. Re not receiving expressions of appreciation from strangers who've read your work: I used to get those now and then but rarely in the last decade or so. And when I send one out myself, I don't expect to be thanked for it, though that used to happen also. I have never expected a book publication offer from anyone who may have read a few poems of mine online.
I agree with you, though I am too young to have had the experiences you have had. From my experience and my friends' experiences, most lit mag editors barely 'edit' anymore...they simply curate.
Rather than beating yourself up with "we're not writing stuff that people want to read", isn't it more likely that people just don't read? Mobile phones, Internet, short attention spans ... the modern world.
I've been looking for reliable stats to support your assertion. So far, just contradictions: poetry readership, for example, is either expanding or decreasing, per various surveys. My instinct is that you're right about mobile phones, etc. contributing to literary decline. However, I would think that short literary forms (especially poetry and flash fiction/nonfiction) will complement the dominant technologies quite well.
I agree, but people have to know where to find those short literary forms. Where is the school that is informing its students about literary magazines?
When I taught freshman comp, I required students to present poems they had found in lit mags (using a list I provided). No doubt other teachers do something similar. Otherwise, in this era it has never been easier to find content with a few clicks. This is not to say that some journals couldn't do a better job of marketing.
Great idea, Adam. I sincerely hope that other teachers are doing the same. One of the problems is that many (I'd venture most) people don't know that lit mags exist.
An article by Donald Clarke in the Irish Times of 27th July led me to "2024 What Kids Are Reading" report stating "The UK-wide study from Renaissance reveals a 4.4% decrease in the number of books read by pupils year-on-year." and also "The State of the Nation’s Adult Reading: 2024 Report" stating "The data reveals a large decrease in in the number of people reading regularly with only half of the nation (50%) now reading regularly for pleasure, down from 58% in 2015. Among young people aged 16-24, a quarter have never been regular readers, and 44% of this group are now considered ‘lapsed readers’." These are both UK reports. (I went no deeper than the opening webpages)
Yes. My grandson, during a recent visit, claimed that his near-constant attention to his phone is because "it gives me a sense of security." Parse that one.
What a candid and thoughtful assessment of the literary mag landscape. I've been writing for many decades and have been widely published in literary journals. I continue to submit, with some success, but frequently I see that journals state they're looking for storytelling that dares to "break new ground." I always read samples of what the journal has published and often I find it's not looking for storytelling at all. Instead, it contents itself with head-scratching, me-centered word salads. I don't see how these stories can touch the heart of the reader. For me, that's what a story has to do, whether I'm reading it or writing it.
"word salads." Great description and yes, that's what they are. Sometimes it seems to me as though a writer has grabbed every adjective they know and cobbled them together in a piece that makes little sense. I have the notion that the editors are dazzled by it.
Alright, I'll risk adding a couple of sacred cows in the room that are inhibiting writers portraying a world that the general reader can find approachable.
1. Fear of excommunication for writing about subjects that are controversial (the hand-wringing about Gaza is but the latest example) and daring to include characters who don't epitomise political correctness. (Goodness knows how Steinbeck would get a look-in today.)
2. With rare exceptions (like the followers of this esteemed newsletter), no-one is actually reading the work of others anymore in the rush to get their own work seen by at least one person, even if that's only the slush pile reader for a magazine whose raison d'etre is outlined in incomprehensible gobbledygook on their 'About' page. It's the literary equivalent of Noel Coward's line: ‘Television is for appearing on – not for looking at.’
Preach! So many “About Us” pages on lit mags seem to be infected with the same culture-worshiping obsessions with vetting writers and topics that are “inclusive”. I find myself throttled as a writer, less willing to write from my heart, especially if my heart is not bent in the same direction as these editors-turned-activists. Recently, I received a glowing letter of acceptance for a piece about rural living. The next day, I received a letter rescinding the offer of publication because they determined by their investigation of my beliefs (I assume on Twitter) that I don’t fit their agenda. No sleep lost over that, as honestly, I have no desire to trust my art in the hands of that type of publication. Another magazine picked up the same piece and I’m delighted to be working with these editors. Suppressing free speech and blacklisting writers for their political or religious beliefs is dangerous. And ultimately, it produces sub-par content and cheapens the value of our art.
I can relate-- much of my work has not a 'religious' but a spiritual sense to it--as in there is more to this world than just matter-- and I'm sure that's anathema to those who cannot envision any intelligence greater than their low triple digit I.Q.s. Still, as long as no fees are charged, I send out my poems anyway, for I too was once a materialist and anyone can awaken at any time.
Yes! And that’s why I submit to secular publications—to reach an audience of people who have maybe not considered their soul, focusing instead on their hedonistic lifestyles. If I “preach to the choir” what have I really accomplished?
Can you provide a link for your NDE piece? I’d love to read that!
Sorry Tracie, I just saw this [went from my PT swimming, then the mandatory nap after doing 1/2 a mile in the warm water pool-- not too bad for an old guy with arthritis from jaw to foot!]
If you Google THE DAY I REMEMBERED MY SOUL by Nolo Segundo it'll come up at various lit mags like Braided Way, Spirit Fire Review, Piker Press, etc. [My nephew, a Methodist preacher, also read it on You-tube, which surprised me.] Also, if you would like to learn any more about it, my email is: nolosegundo@aol.com [ I just cannot open any attachments by order of my nephew who works in IT security.]
Well, I agree with your 1st point: forget Steinbeck--the woke have railed against Shakespeare for [take your pick] his portrayal of Blacks, Jews, women, old men, young men, kings, princes, etc.
I recently participated in an online poetry book launch (because we all live in different states) and one of the writers said..."well, we all know that we're only writing for other writers anyway." It was such an uncomfortable, "elitist" moment and I felt terribly embarrassed for our whole reading group. I attempted to contrast that exclusive statement by reassuring the audience that poetry is for everyone, there is no right or wrong way to feel about it, and there is no need to autopsy the work in order to enjoy it.
My poems are considered "accessible" which seems to be a dirty word in the world of poetry but I embrace it because I'm reaching people and that's what I care about. Writers like Ada Limon, Billy Collins, Joy Harjo, and Mary Oliver are popular because they write profoundly well crafted poems that make a human connection. Academics often roll their eyes at some of these names but readers love them and there's no arguing that.
As for the lit mags, Rattle continues to be an innovative beacon and there are new-ish online journals like ONE ART (Mark Danowsky) and The Slowdown (started by former poet laureate, Tracy K Smith) that offer daily poems and exposure to excellent poets. I read these along with Poetry is Not a Luxury on Instagram EVERY DAY and am both fueled and motivated by the content. Which is to say, there are publications doing it right and there are lessons for struggling lit mags to take from these visionaries.
Whining about how all editors are volunteering and how the Submittable fees are so high isn't resonating with mostly non-paid writers. In fact, it's a total put-off. We are told to have thick skin or move on and I think the same applies to lit mags. Creative adaptation and audience invitation are non-negotiable must-haves.
I appreciate this discussion and wish all of us good luck.
"Whining about how all editors are volunteering and how the Submittable fees are so high isn't resonating with mostly non-paid writers."
What a terribly condescending comment, one that attempts to delegitimize concerns over the many existential threats faced by independent print magazines. Shameful, actually.
But please do continue to offer tough-luck "advice" to independent magazines with virtually no margins, while you enjoy your free daily shots of culture (all of the ones you cite are gratis).
Dear J Bee, I’m genuinely sorry that my comment came across as condescending. I am well aware that the poetry I’m receiving is gratis and meant only to make the point that there are innovative editors and journals working hard to advance poetry by inviting and enticing new readers who may not be writers. I also don’t want to delegitimize the struggles that journals continue to encounter and again, I apologize for my insensitivity. My point was that writers are also subjected to towering Submittable fees and are really relied upon as a financial support system when we ourselves are not getting paid. This is a no win situation for anyone and writers are often ridiculed for complaining about the financial hardships placed on us. I deeply appreciate journal readers and editors and am sorry if my comment was divisive.
I wasn't on your launch call, but is it possible that the author was saying, in effect, "our work will only be read by other writers -- those who are dedicated enough to track down a new poetry anthology" rather than, "our work is too inaccessible for anyone other than an author?"
Hi Dave, This particular writer did not say that our work is too inaccessible for anyone other than an author. She specifically said that in reality we are all only writing for other writers anyway. Many of my non-writer friends were tuned into the launch and they were bewildered enough by the comment to ask me about it. They also confessed that poetry sometimes makes them feel stupid because they don’t “get it.” I think that’s, at least partially, what Becky is getting at here. Thanks for asking.
Speaking only for myself, I didn't read that comment as "elitist," in the sense that the author in question didn't seem to have a desire to exclude anyone, or a belief that anyone should self-exclude or wasn't worthy to access the book or the launch.
The comment might have reflected a belief that nobody but writers tend to buy small, indie anthologies or collections, and only writers would be tuning into a launch for these.
I don't know much about the poetry or lit-mag space. I write what I believe is fiction with a mainstream bent (Speculative) and, even with stories in larger publications, my anecdotal sense is that nobody but other authors read my work -- as well as the friends and family members I, also, direct (some might say, "drag") to the stories that I write. :)
I would LOVE for a non-writer audience to be reading my work -- even a tiny one. Still, I might share the author in question's views that only other writers are reading it. I don't believe this view is driven by elitism but, rather, realism.
As someone who is fairly new (within the past year and a half) to writing and submitting stories to lit mags, this is kind a hard thing to read about.
I'm not trying to write the next great American Novel. I just want to be able to write. While I do publish some things here on Substack, I made the choice to go the pay route. I'd rather readers just enjoy my work.
And the submitting process can be so....snotty is probably not the word I'm looking for but it's extremely discouraging when you read the guidelines with a fine tooth comb and carefully pick the stories that you think will be a good fit and you get shot down again and again and again. I can think of probably 4 or 5 lit mags that I feel like I'm beating a dead horse with hoping to get them to accept my stories.
You REALLY have to have a very thick skin and a morbid sense of humor to keep hitting that submit button.
What the author of this article does not yet understand is that book sales are not what they were, so that literary magazines are actually the saviors of literature. They are independently run--their own gatekeepers--and as such can be agile. So what if few of them are in print? There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of them, and when they gets into trouble, they do kickstarters and subscription drives just like lots of businesses. You figure it out. The richness of literary magazines is astounding, and while submitting to them won't pay your bills, it is a way to build up your name and continue to evolve as an artist. It is absolutely the way to go in 2024.
Don't be discouraged! I've been doing it for a year. I am rejected liberally. But I have five published pieces, one in an anthology, two as the winner of a competition, and I've even been interviewed. Just keep it up!! You'll get there.
I like to add to this. There was an article a while back in either the Guardian or the New Yorker that many literary awards now get their picks not from the top 5 publishers but from an emerging group of independent publishers.
So I believe this trend is growing. Many collegially affiliated lit mags, have a publishing side that are producing short story collections and novels. Giving voice and a forum to many writers that otherwise would not fit the commercial demands of the top 5.
There are literally thousands of them (lit mags), and the possible readerships online dwarfs that of what those imagined great lit mags of the past could possible reach, especially when one adds in the ways in which the writer can send/post links to all and sundry.
They are leaving Substack. I'm a subsriber and just got the email:
'Well, we decided to leave Substack first. It's a fine enough platform, but they've transitioned from "What if your newsletter could be profitable?" to "What if you could be an email influencer?"'
Nah, rather the case is that I've seen more of the publishing world than you have and litfic is not the end-all, be-all of publishing. Once litfic went predominantly with paid submissions, it pretty much torpedoed itself. Money flows to the writer. Period.
There's plenty of prestigious and deep work being written within the confines of speculative fiction--take a look at the work of Premee Mohamed, for one, or Cathrynne Valente, or Jeff Vandermeer--but litfic won't acknowledge it.
No one is disputing that. You are an independent author railing against the gatekeepers, and I get that. There’s quality, yes, but there is also a lot of abysmal, horrendous junk. Lit mags support so many kinds of writing. This is essentially all I’m saying. It can sustain good writing of every type, and sometimes things that will tank in the indie book market or never be seen in the trad pub arena.
I think this gets to the heart of the matter, that what is being published is often not what people want to read, being, at least in terms of poetry, too obscure, experimental, even incomprehensible [one suspects even to the poet himself/herself]. And, I believe, for that we can thank the myriad MFA programs in our overpriced universities; for there, if a poem or story is accessible, it cannot be any good-- a perversion of the show don't tell theory. But as this article alludes to, nothing universal is being shown. The Bard, Blake, my beloved Emily-- many of the world's greatest poets never went to college.
The other problem is that our secondary educational system is a shadow of its former self: I graduated high school in 1965 and probably was in the last generation to get a rigorous and broadly based schooling. Ask high school kids today if they know who Frost, Chaucer, Teasdale, Faulkner, or Pearl Buck was, and you'll probably get a blank look. Where do people get their news? Twitter/X, Instagram, You-tube -- and so we are becoming a world of dummies.
Not hopeless yet though-- and this old man is proof. I only became a published poet and essayist in my 70's and in the past 6 years have been published as of this week in 211 lit mags in 16 countries, and that is without paying any submission fees. Only 87 of them did a print issue [some being both print and online] and I know there are far more readers for online than print--especially when the online version is free. But the main thing is to see your work gets read, though we writers seldom know its impact. But sometimes we get lucky: last year I called to check on some insurance coverage and as the rep had a Hispanic surname, I casually mentioned that I took the pen name Nolo Segundo as it blended the 2 languages I studied: Latin and Spanish. Then he said, "Did you write the poem 'When I Leave You'?"
I gasped and said yes, in utter amazement as my soul felt a warmth flooding in....
Respect! I’m pushing 60, and also just started publishing my nonfiction work in lit mags this year. I have 20 publications since January, some online, some print, and a couple of anthologies.
I want to be you when I grow up—flourishing in my creativity and enjoying the ride. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. Godspeed on your journey!
I just started sending out nonfiction the past 2 years, mostly essays and a 'mini-memoir' I wrote about the NDE I had a24 when I almost drowned titled 'The Day I Remembered My Soul' which has since been published by 11 online lit mags and another 4 in print.
I just read your essay, and I’m overwhelmed by the goodness of God. I’m so glad our paths crossed today. Your writing has been such an encouragement to me on a day when I really needed it. May God bless and multiply the good work you’re doing to make Him famous.
YES. THIS. What too many lit mags publish is stuff that people don't want to read. Accessible writing is what people desire--look at the success of Kindle Unlimited, for one. Or the various reading apps. Or even Archive of Our Own.
Thank you for voicing something that’s been on my mind for quite some time. I recently went to an expensive and well known writers conference and attended a lit mag panel. The panelists were two editors, one from a magazine that only takes 10% from the slush pile and another from one that took no unsolicited submissions the previous year! This was supposed to be to entice us emerging writers to submit our work? It does feel as you put it like one big “circle jerk.”
Obviously the Internet is partly to blame, but the timeline you note also includes the shift to overt moralism in curation, foregrounding authenticity, accessibility and a particular US MFA styling.
It's dull as dishwater. Cancelled my Paris Review sub for exactly this reason: interviews great, poetry, dreadful earnest confessional, fiction, one decent story an issue.
A similar journal that only showcased good art that has nothing to do with a writers deep reflection on who they are? Sign me up!
I know right? You have to wonder what's going on there. Surely someone must go 'oh wait, this is actually dire, it just fits a sociopolitical zeitgeist but has no craft, no joy and no interest.'
In the spirit of sanity, having said what I just said, I then went off and went right, go on give another a new go, so I've just subscribed to the Dark Horse in Scotland. Shall see how that goes :)
"Going from a relatively high degree of public acceptance into obscurity is not rare, but it is telling, especially when followed by chronic unpopularity over a long period of time. It suggests that lit mags today are publishing work which does not resonate with mainstream audiences. If they were, more people would probably read them." To me, this is an erroneous argument. The reason is attributable to the digital revolution. Reading in general has declined because of "brain-rot content" and its delivery vehicle, the cellphone, which have changed not only the way people gather information or consume 'culture', but also what people think about. And all this, even though exploited as subject matter in many author's writing, is antithetical to literary output.
Disagree. It's not a good idea to dismiss certain forms of writing as "brain-rot content." That label gets used too dismissively to snort at certain categories of commercial fiction for me to take it seriously when aimed at people who read on their phones.
I currently read magazines on a mobile device (my tablet). I read a lot of books on said tablet, some even that are considered to have "literary" value. Sneering at the digital revolution isn't the solution.
I wasn't sneering at the digital revolution. I was taking issue with the idea that writers aren't giving readers what they want. The thing is, if you read a steady diet of writing of the most accessible kind, you are ill-prepared for any other sort of prose and will probably reject it. "Word salad" is a new anti-intellectual insult used when someone can't process a complex text. Like the person who imagines that because someone uses "big words", they are deliberately being made to feel stupid, a lot of silly value judgements come into play.
I think the very issue is this idea that readers who enjoy things that are considered by the artistic community as unsophisticated are themselves stupid or incapable of appreciating something of greater tact and substance. I also think that at present what is being published is so concerned with being work of "sophistication," that it loses the basics, and the point, of storytelling. To elucidate beautiful concepts or emotions, while at the same time being interesting to the listener or reader.
If you fail to do that in order to prioritize what writing (or storytelling) should be in the abstract, I think you run the risk of alienating your listeners and telling your story only to people who are already interested in what you have to say. That is to say, create an echo-chamber.
I hate to tell you this, but this statement "if you read a steady diet of writing of the most accessible kind, you are ill-prepared for any other sort of prose and will probably reject it" *is* sneering. There's a difference between depth and navel-gazing, and too much contemporary work hasn't a clue about the difference.
I fail to see any difference between nineteenth-century sneering at "novels" and contemporary sneering at what is viewed to be accessible work.
I disagree. “Word salad” is not the inability to comprehend. It’s exactly what the term implies—a mixed up jumble of nonsensical language that is beyond comprehension. Just look at Kamala’s many examples of stumbling over words, never arriving at any intelligible point, making a complete fool of herself. Unfortunately, I encounter this type of writing in lit mags a lot. It’s always cloaked in descriptives like “experimental”, “poetic”, or “lyrical”. To pretend that it’s anything other than nonsense is to jump headfirst into the Orwellian realm of dystopia, where up is down and left is right. While I enjoy a good fantasy, I dwell in reality.
When Tolstoy wrote only 6% of Russians could read; and Moby Dick [for me the most profound novel ever written, including the Russians] sold only 3,000 copies and so depressed Melville he gave up writing.
But one doesn't write for recognition. That's usually secondary. You write because you want to see your thoughts, because you love words, because you have ideas about the effects of prose or because subjects light you on fire when you think about them. He gave up because he was thinking of it as a job, like any other form of labor, something that could pay his bills. That, in my opinion, is putting the cart before the horse.
I don’t think that the decline in readership is necessarily because the material published by literary magazines doesn’t “resonate with mainstream audiences.” I believe that the mainstream audience is, increasingly, an audience of non-readers, who turn, for entertainment, to visual electronic media. That huge world of electronic seduction didn’t exist in the past--magazines and newspapers were all that people had. The contemporary greater public isn’t looking at literary magazines to see whether or not writers are reflecting the human condition--it is looking at screens!
Sanad makes interesting points that are probably true. But there are multiple other reasons for the decline in litmags other than bad curation of content or marketing to a narrow readership. One is that people's reading habits have changed. It's also probably not a coincidence that the years that Sanad sees as the great divide are also the years when personal computers were adopted by everyday people and the Internet became popular. There are other likely causes having to with changes in the market and society at large, too.
This is so true! Once upon a time, I loved to read my mother’s magazines, REDBOOK in particular. Those magazines contained excellent fiction. Does the general public even know that online “literary “ magazines even exist? I doubt it. Thank you for telling us what most of us knew but didn’t dare to articulate.
I did find the essay's sweeping generalizations unpersuasive, and I applaud the comments below that talk about the economic demands of printing and of working with Substack.
However--and I say this as someone who does not have and does not want an MFA--some of the responses traffic in generalizations of their own. To say that an MFA program imposes some sort of bland, institutional "voice" on its students is, frankly, ludicrous.
(We've all heard the similar, equally unpersuasive argument about The New Yorker, as if Ben Okri's work were indistinguishable from Tessa Hadley's or Garth Greenwell's or George Saunders's or Mary Gaitskill's . . . each of us could easily add to the list.)
Also, I've subscribed to many literary magazines over the years. The subscriptions I keep renewing are to the ones that are consistently surprising and rewarding. For example, there is always something of interest to read in The Sewanee Review.
And there is always, always at least one piece in The Paris Review to enjoy. In the current issue, "Blue" by K Patrick is wonderful; so, too, is its interview with Elaine Scarry. I just got my copy last week; I'm looking forward to reading more.
I'm going to push back against that "shrinking population of serious readers" trope. They exist. However, in many cases, they're migrating to commercial fiction because they've tired of the repetitive, navel-gazing tropes reappearing in litfic.
Joyce, i’m with you. There are plenty of serious readers out there. I have non-writer friends and family members who are serious readers who do not read lit mags. Outside of people who submit to these mags, it’s not clear how regular people would even know about them. I only know about some lit mags because of “where to submit” lists.
No John, it's not ludicrous to see the power that profs wield over students in grad studies--speaking as both a former grad student and college teacher. The essential problem with 'creative writing' is that creativity cannot be taught--ever!
Your comment reminds me of a Matthew Salesses essay (posted, I think, on a blog he had with Pleiades).
Salesses wrote about the power of conventions about what "good" writing is.
He noted that those conventions (like the idea that "said" and "asked" are appropriate dialogue tags, while "asserted," "asseverated," "queried," etc. are not) are arbitrary.
However, they are also stubborn: they've been reinforced over the decades by a (largely) white, male, cis-gendered literary establishment with roots in the academy.
So, while the professors can shape (or discourage, or limit) the voices of the students in the room, those professors (I think Salesses implies) have been shaped (or discouraged or limited) themselves.
What an odd piece, especially since it displays a total lack of understanding of the market dynamics involved in actually publishing a print magazine. Costs for things like ink, paper, storage and distribution have increased dramatically, which partially explains the shift to digital (i.e., out of necessity).
And, while I'm a proponent of print, we need to offer compelling counter-arguments for its primacy (or even just its co-existence) over digital, which is faster to produce, easier to distribute, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly. Appealing to a general reader or audience (whatever that means or however defined) says nothing.
Since the piece trades in generalizations, let's add another one: most editors are unpaid, i.e. free labor. It always astonishes me to hear writers bemoan submission fees (frequently nominal), while turning a blind eye to the legions of editors who work without pay to produce magazines. (And good luck getting "non-writers" to do this work pro bono publico.)
And speaking of submission fees, the writer might have a different view of said fees if he were aware of the exploitative nature of Submittable, which charges an arm and a leg AND takes a cut from each submission fee received. A subscription to Submittable will likely put a huge dent in any indie's budget, and the money is never recovered. The result is a loss on the annual PnL.
As for many of the other points, without any substantive data to support them, they're merely idle speculation in the guise of informed analysis.
Signed,
An editor of an "unpretentious literary magazine"
you raise valid points. i’m an editor of an unpretentious literary zine myself, as well as a producer of unpretentious literary events. what i’ve noticed, though i don’t have any hard data to back it up, is that most of my audience is comprised of other writers. the writing i showcase is completely suitable to the general public, it is funny and accessible, but for whatever reason it’s always been a hard sell to get anyone outside of the literary bubble to take notice or show up. i don’t know why that is, though i could speculate that most people associate poetry and literary stuff with stuffiness and i’m not sure how to get around that other than getting them to see that it’s not
I have difficulty understanding why so many litmags maintain their expensive addiction to Submittable when cheaper alternatives in Duotrope, ChillSubs, Submission Grinder etc exist.
100%. But it's complicated.
Some can't wean themselves off Submittable because of the complexity of migrating all of their content to another platform (especially the case if a mag has been using it for years). Some like the "curb appeal" and (perceived) legitimacy or professionalism of using it. Some find that it offers features unmatched by alternatives. Some just use it because many others do.
A follow-up article focusing on Submittable alternatives would be useful for many. In the meantime, a bit of background reading: https://litmagnews.substack.com/p/can-we-talk-about-submittable/comments
Thanks for the reminder about that discussion, J Bee. I responded, in part, this way:
'The element that seems to be a glaring omission in the litmag field is advertising. Whether that's because litmags are a bit sniffy about accepting filthy lucre from commerce, or because litmags don't deliver enough eyeballs to interest advertisers I don't know but I grow a little tired of the argument that some mysterious 'they' should be shelling out money from an inexhaustible supply shrouded in secrecy.
This where we need to heed Jessica Michael's earlier comments and have some deep conversations about who is actually reading litmags and re-think whether there has ever been a viable market for them or is ever likely to be. To do that we need to shift our thinking away from the wild west of the early internet and stop thinking everything online can and should be free.
PS - Just to get tongues wagging, here's a list of dreadful sell-outs who stooped to having their work published in Playboy to get an audience: Roald Dahl, Jack Kerouac, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Ian Fleming, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Norman Mailer, and Alice Denham. My point is that to get paid you need to go to where the eyeballs are and that's not litmags.
As someone whose first fiction sale was to Cavalier Magazine in the mid-80s... the same place where Stephen King published first... you are speaking the truth here, Brother. And although I've had close to 100 fiction publications off and on since, I've never topped that first check ($350, for those keeping score).
And that would be because they had a paying audience and advertisers. ;-)
Exactly this.
Submittable is also a source (a pittance, admittedly) of income for all the mags we send to but can’t afford to subscribe to. It’s not a good system but until lit mags develop healthy business plans with innovative marketing, most journals will continue forward in the wheel ruts. of those who went before them.
I've mentioned in another comment that while Sanad's observation is a good one, there are likely multiple, complicated causes for the decline in litmags. But I wonder if there was also a litmag "bubble" that burst (or fizzed out) and if we're merely experiencing the aftermath of that.
I'd like to note that I totally agree, this isn't the only reason, but the one I find most compelling, easiest to address, and most fixable.
About the litmag bubble, though, litmags have been around for a *very* long time (late 1800s), and they've experienced ups and downs in popularity as with any other long-lived media. The issue though is the length of the present down is surprising and drastic, and the reason for its continued presence seems to be an inability to capture the public's lasting attention. I'd like to be clear that in no way do I suggest that this is the only issue, merely a pressing one.
Lots of people used to read. Now they're watching videos or listening to podcasts. Our way of getting stories has changed. That has cut a lot of the audience for all of the publications that are out there.
I understand and appreciate the labor of editors like you to keep litmags alive, whether in print or online. Thank you for your commitment! Too many writers are indifferent to market dynamics of any sort of publishing.
This is cogent commentary.
Thank you for the work you do
Oh please. I can point to a raft of genre litmags that don't charge for submission. Maybe if you chose one of the cheaper alternatives to Submittable and looked for more appealing work you'd have more readers with less expense.
Exactly.
I came here to say some of this!
Another culprit is the plethora of MFA programs proliferating at every university and college in the US and maybe elsewhere. These programs provide a cash infusion to the academic bodies in which they reside, and they persist in churning out graduates, who then need to publish and/or become famous, to justify all that money and expense. So far, not too bad, but the problem is that these MFA programs are run largely by guest editors and academics, who mold their students into a kind of Frankenstein's monster - capable of life but artificially produced, and devoid of original thought. I have several friends who survived an MFA program but seem unable to get stuff published - they are constantly trying to get their work "critiqued" before submitting. Yet they shrink from true criticism, of the kind old-fashioned editors used to regularly mete out to their writers. So mediocrity and lack of risk-taking and a kind of "trendiness" takes over, and that, in the circle jerk mentioned, is what is getting published. The general public is nowhere in this circle (thank goodness), but also is not being thought of as a potential audience. The potential audience is other MFA students.
So true. The “trendiness” produces experimental pieces that all sound alike. Sometimes I scratch my head and ask, “WTH did I just read?” Frankly, it sounds like AI nonsense to me. It may have originated from a real person but it doesn’t sound original at all.
I'll argue that there is a difference between the MFAs that are charging students and the few that pay students a living wage plus tuition to attend; they aren't taking more a few students a year and while some do, most of those students do not go on to become famous or successful, anyway. It's tough out there and the most successful writers typically come from family money or at least enough money that they can spend their 20s and 30s not working, working light jobs, etc. I think what you are saying is true about places like Columbia or even NYU where most students are paying a lot, but not like Michener, Iowa, and Johns Hopkins.
I came of age as a writer in the early 2000s, so I can't speak to the period before. If lit mags once built real communities, the way Substack is doing now, I never witnessed it. However, before about 2010 I did feel that lit mags were places where cream rose. What was published was demonstrably good, and you could mine those pieces for craft and then join the ranks. Writers with a high command of craft could also reasonably contend for prizes.
Digital submissions and the widespread acceptance of simultaneous submissions made the process thoroughly transactional. Editors were flooded with submissions. Wait times increased. There was no space for any genuine relationship between writers and editors to develop. One of my early pieces appeared in The Gettysburg Review, and I had a very meaningful exchange with that editor before publication. Same for several others. I haven't submitted to lit mags in two years, because I didn't want to pay $150-200 in submission fees for what effectively became a vanity publication and because the waning acceptances increasingly felt like one-night stands. The editor and I immediately moved on to other things.
Then there is the question of craft. You can't reliably discover great writers in lit mags anymore. You can read The Paris Review and wonder how the hell THAT piece got in. No wonder people are tuning out. I now make a modest income on Substack and enjoy a rich conversation with my readers. I have no more need for the notch on the belt or the status games. So I am one of the many who has voted with his feet. And I have published in more than 50 magazines.
I envy the fact that you've gotten those notches on your belt at a period when litmags actually published good writing. Nowadays, I read Granta and The Paris Review and I'm just confused HOW that piece made it there. We still need those notches (or do we not?), so we're still hustling. Congrats for having made it out of the literary rat race.
Thanks. The only reason to keep publishing in lit mags that I can see is to hope for inclusion in a "Best American" volume or some such thing. But I'm mindful that few agents are looking for writers like me, so landing representation that way (which was once something you could do) is increasingly unlikely. By contrast, Substack offers direct access to my audience, real growth potential, and zero wait time. I never once heard from a reader who found me in a lit mag.
I'll check out your substack, which represents the next wave of publishing, huh? Though I'm guessing its more nonfiction type, quasi-journalism, rather than fiction. In which case, a question: are readers simply less interested in fiction these days, on a micro lit-mag level, and more interested in newsy stuff? Or, is it more a question of the medium/platform, the online ease of a Substack? Or both?
Fiction does seem to grow more slowly on Substack. I can't speak for the broader trends. Some people have successfully serialized novels on Substack and then found publishers later. But it's a long game, not a quick fix to anything.
Substack also privileges shorter work. I used to write longform essays 4,000 words and up. Now most of my pieces are 1,500-2,500 words.
I don't know about Granta, but I've heard that the fiction that gets published in the PR these days is mostly agented. That seems to be true of the New Yorker, (which is more a glossy general magazine than a litmag and where the fiction is sometimes by an author with a book to be marketed soon).
Substack is the antidote to this heavy-handed gatekeeping.
Amen. The amount of crap being published by our top literary magazines is astounding.
Having joined the literary fray in the 1980s, I’ve experienced many of the same things that you’ve observed over the last 10-20 years: increased wait times, waning acceptances, less meaningful contact with editors. Lately, I’ve focused more attention on submitting to lesser-known magazines with the hope that the editors are less overwhelmed with material. I can’t say that the strategy has worked especially well, which may point to the underwhelming quality of my work rather than any deficiency in the mags' editorial standards. I've come across a number of modest online journals that are very discriminating in what they present and where I’d be happy to be included. As to discovering fine examples of craft, the best-of anthologies can be a source (depending on the editor, of course).
Though I haven’t given up on litmag submissions yet, the route you’ve taken is tempting.
Re the second-to-last sentence in your comment: if you have a moment, I'd appreciate hearing which online journals those are, and whether they publish poetry (though I'd be happy to look them up and find that out myself). Thanks for your comment and have a good day.
Perhaps check out Cumberland River Review, Blackbird, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Summerset Review, Cortland Review (you can decide which of these are “modest”).
Thanks, Adam.
Beyond Submittable and Duotrope, my favorite list of pubs is DL Shirey's Short List. It includes dozens of small lit mags (most with online-only presence), sorted by the maximum length of what they publish. I've placed several pieces with pubs I discovered on this list. That said, I've never gotten an email, postcard, letter or book publication offer from any readers of my work. Which brings me to the question: Is anybody reading this stuff? Or is it all digital detritus? Anyway, check it out: https://dlshirey.com/the-short-list/
I recently sent a poet, out of the blue, an email about a poem I wrote as inspired by theirs. I felt like I would perhaps be imposing on them, like who is this stranger just emailing out of nowhere and why would I care to see the work that my work helped birth. But I did it anyway. Would you (or others) feel kind of a "?wtf wru?" moment if someone emailed you to tell you this? Or is it something you'd appreciate.
I would be surprised, though.
I think that's a great idea that more writers should do. It sounds like something that helps build community & it's not just another form rejection. It let's a writer know their work has been heard & that can be the difference between them continuing or dropping out.
Thanks. I'll take a look. Re not receiving expressions of appreciation from strangers who've read your work: I used to get those now and then but rarely in the last decade or so. And when I send one out myself, I don't expect to be thanked for it, though that used to happen also. I have never expected a book publication offer from anyone who may have read a few poems of mine online.
I agree with you, though I am too young to have had the experiences you have had. From my experience and my friends' experiences, most lit mag editors barely 'edit' anymore...they simply curate.
Rather than beating yourself up with "we're not writing stuff that people want to read", isn't it more likely that people just don't read? Mobile phones, Internet, short attention spans ... the modern world.
I've been looking for reliable stats to support your assertion. So far, just contradictions: poetry readership, for example, is either expanding or decreasing, per various surveys. My instinct is that you're right about mobile phones, etc. contributing to literary decline. However, I would think that short literary forms (especially poetry and flash fiction/nonfiction) will complement the dominant technologies quite well.
I agree, but people have to know where to find those short literary forms. Where is the school that is informing its students about literary magazines?
When I taught freshman comp, I required students to present poems they had found in lit mags (using a list I provided). No doubt other teachers do something similar. Otherwise, in this era it has never been easier to find content with a few clicks. This is not to say that some journals couldn't do a better job of marketing.
Great idea, Adam. I sincerely hope that other teachers are doing the same. One of the problems is that many (I'd venture most) people don't know that lit mags exist.
An article by Donald Clarke in the Irish Times of 27th July led me to "2024 What Kids Are Reading" report stating "The UK-wide study from Renaissance reveals a 4.4% decrease in the number of books read by pupils year-on-year." and also "The State of the Nation’s Adult Reading: 2024 Report" stating "The data reveals a large decrease in in the number of people reading regularly with only half of the nation (50%) now reading regularly for pleasure, down from 58% in 2015. Among young people aged 16-24, a quarter have never been regular readers, and 44% of this group are now considered ‘lapsed readers’." These are both UK reports. (I went no deeper than the opening webpages)
Interesting data--thanks for posting it. Confirms what I sense about readers in the U.S.
Yes. My grandson, during a recent visit, claimed that his near-constant attention to his phone is because "it gives me a sense of security." Parse that one.
Stats suggest that people are reading more than ever. Just not within the literary genre.
FYI, I recently came across a couple of UK stats. They're in a reply to AdamT earlier in this thread.
Yes, exactly this!
What a candid and thoughtful assessment of the literary mag landscape. I've been writing for many decades and have been widely published in literary journals. I continue to submit, with some success, but frequently I see that journals state they're looking for storytelling that dares to "break new ground." I always read samples of what the journal has published and often I find it's not looking for storytelling at all. Instead, it contents itself with head-scratching, me-centered word salads. I don't see how these stories can touch the heart of the reader. For me, that's what a story has to do, whether I'm reading it or writing it.
You call it head-scratching, me-centered word salads. I called it navel gazing. So true.
"word salads." Great description and yes, that's what they are. Sometimes it seems to me as though a writer has grabbed every adjective they know and cobbled them together in a piece that makes little sense. I have the notion that the editors are dazzled by it.
A mystery for sure.
So true. Metastasized metaphor masquerading as a "story."
Alright, I'll risk adding a couple of sacred cows in the room that are inhibiting writers portraying a world that the general reader can find approachable.
1. Fear of excommunication for writing about subjects that are controversial (the hand-wringing about Gaza is but the latest example) and daring to include characters who don't epitomise political correctness. (Goodness knows how Steinbeck would get a look-in today.)
2. With rare exceptions (like the followers of this esteemed newsletter), no-one is actually reading the work of others anymore in the rush to get their own work seen by at least one person, even if that's only the slush pile reader for a magazine whose raison d'etre is outlined in incomprehensible gobbledygook on their 'About' page. It's the literary equivalent of Noel Coward's line: ‘Television is for appearing on – not for looking at.’
Preach! So many “About Us” pages on lit mags seem to be infected with the same culture-worshiping obsessions with vetting writers and topics that are “inclusive”. I find myself throttled as a writer, less willing to write from my heart, especially if my heart is not bent in the same direction as these editors-turned-activists. Recently, I received a glowing letter of acceptance for a piece about rural living. The next day, I received a letter rescinding the offer of publication because they determined by their investigation of my beliefs (I assume on Twitter) that I don’t fit their agenda. No sleep lost over that, as honestly, I have no desire to trust my art in the hands of that type of publication. Another magazine picked up the same piece and I’m delighted to be working with these editors. Suppressing free speech and blacklisting writers for their political or religious beliefs is dangerous. And ultimately, it produces sub-par content and cheapens the value of our art.
I can relate-- much of my work has not a 'religious' but a spiritual sense to it--as in there is more to this world than just matter-- and I'm sure that's anathema to those who cannot envision any intelligence greater than their low triple digit I.Q.s. Still, as long as no fees are charged, I send out my poems anyway, for I too was once a materialist and anyone can awaken at any time.
Yes! And that’s why I submit to secular publications—to reach an audience of people who have maybe not considered their soul, focusing instead on their hedonistic lifestyles. If I “preach to the choir” what have I really accomplished?
Can you provide a link for your NDE piece? I’d love to read that!
Sorry Tracie, I just saw this [went from my PT swimming, then the mandatory nap after doing 1/2 a mile in the warm water pool-- not too bad for an old guy with arthritis from jaw to foot!]
If you Google THE DAY I REMEMBERED MY SOUL by Nolo Segundo it'll come up at various lit mags like Braided Way, Spirit Fire Review, Piker Press, etc. [My nephew, a Methodist preacher, also read it on You-tube, which surprised me.] Also, if you would like to learn any more about it, my email is: nolosegundo@aol.com [ I just cannot open any attachments by order of my nephew who works in IT security.]
Well, I agree with your 1st point: forget Steinbeck--the woke have railed against Shakespeare for [take your pick] his portrayal of Blacks, Jews, women, old men, young men, kings, princes, etc.
I recently participated in an online poetry book launch (because we all live in different states) and one of the writers said..."well, we all know that we're only writing for other writers anyway." It was such an uncomfortable, "elitist" moment and I felt terribly embarrassed for our whole reading group. I attempted to contrast that exclusive statement by reassuring the audience that poetry is for everyone, there is no right or wrong way to feel about it, and there is no need to autopsy the work in order to enjoy it.
My poems are considered "accessible" which seems to be a dirty word in the world of poetry but I embrace it because I'm reaching people and that's what I care about. Writers like Ada Limon, Billy Collins, Joy Harjo, and Mary Oliver are popular because they write profoundly well crafted poems that make a human connection. Academics often roll their eyes at some of these names but readers love them and there's no arguing that.
As for the lit mags, Rattle continues to be an innovative beacon and there are new-ish online journals like ONE ART (Mark Danowsky) and The Slowdown (started by former poet laureate, Tracy K Smith) that offer daily poems and exposure to excellent poets. I read these along with Poetry is Not a Luxury on Instagram EVERY DAY and am both fueled and motivated by the content. Which is to say, there are publications doing it right and there are lessons for struggling lit mags to take from these visionaries.
Whining about how all editors are volunteering and how the Submittable fees are so high isn't resonating with mostly non-paid writers. In fact, it's a total put-off. We are told to have thick skin or move on and I think the same applies to lit mags. Creative adaptation and audience invitation are non-negotiable must-haves.
I appreciate this discussion and wish all of us good luck.
"Whining about how all editors are volunteering and how the Submittable fees are so high isn't resonating with mostly non-paid writers."
What a terribly condescending comment, one that attempts to delegitimize concerns over the many existential threats faced by independent print magazines. Shameful, actually.
But please do continue to offer tough-luck "advice" to independent magazines with virtually no margins, while you enjoy your free daily shots of culture (all of the ones you cite are gratis).
Dear J Bee, I’m genuinely sorry that my comment came across as condescending. I am well aware that the poetry I’m receiving is gratis and meant only to make the point that there are innovative editors and journals working hard to advance poetry by inviting and enticing new readers who may not be writers. I also don’t want to delegitimize the struggles that journals continue to encounter and again, I apologize for my insensitivity. My point was that writers are also subjected to towering Submittable fees and are really relied upon as a financial support system when we ourselves are not getting paid. This is a no win situation for anyone and writers are often ridiculed for complaining about the financial hardships placed on us. I deeply appreciate journal readers and editors and am sorry if my comment was divisive.
I wasn't on your launch call, but is it possible that the author was saying, in effect, "our work will only be read by other writers -- those who are dedicated enough to track down a new poetry anthology" rather than, "our work is too inaccessible for anyone other than an author?"
Hi Dave, This particular writer did not say that our work is too inaccessible for anyone other than an author. She specifically said that in reality we are all only writing for other writers anyway. Many of my non-writer friends were tuned into the launch and they were bewildered enough by the comment to ask me about it. They also confessed that poetry sometimes makes them feel stupid because they don’t “get it.” I think that’s, at least partially, what Becky is getting at here. Thanks for asking.
Speaking only for myself, I didn't read that comment as "elitist," in the sense that the author in question didn't seem to have a desire to exclude anyone, or a belief that anyone should self-exclude or wasn't worthy to access the book or the launch.
The comment might have reflected a belief that nobody but writers tend to buy small, indie anthologies or collections, and only writers would be tuning into a launch for these.
I don't know much about the poetry or lit-mag space. I write what I believe is fiction with a mainstream bent (Speculative) and, even with stories in larger publications, my anecdotal sense is that nobody but other authors read my work -- as well as the friends and family members I, also, direct (some might say, "drag") to the stories that I write. :)
I would LOVE for a non-writer audience to be reading my work -- even a tiny one. Still, I might share the author in question's views that only other writers are reading it. I don't believe this view is driven by elitism but, rather, realism.
As someone who is fairly new (within the past year and a half) to writing and submitting stories to lit mags, this is kind a hard thing to read about.
I'm not trying to write the next great American Novel. I just want to be able to write. While I do publish some things here on Substack, I made the choice to go the pay route. I'd rather readers just enjoy my work.
And the submitting process can be so....snotty is probably not the word I'm looking for but it's extremely discouraging when you read the guidelines with a fine tooth comb and carefully pick the stories that you think will be a good fit and you get shot down again and again and again. I can think of probably 4 or 5 lit mags that I feel like I'm beating a dead horse with hoping to get them to accept my stories.
You REALLY have to have a very thick skin and a morbid sense of humor to keep hitting that submit button.
What the author of this article does not yet understand is that book sales are not what they were, so that literary magazines are actually the saviors of literature. They are independently run--their own gatekeepers--and as such can be agile. So what if few of them are in print? There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of them, and when they gets into trouble, they do kickstarters and subscription drives just like lots of businesses. You figure it out. The richness of literary magazines is astounding, and while submitting to them won't pay your bills, it is a way to build up your name and continue to evolve as an artist. It is absolutely the way to go in 2024.
Don't be discouraged! I've been doing it for a year. I am rejected liberally. But I have five published pieces, one in an anthology, two as the winner of a competition, and I've even been interviewed. Just keep it up!! You'll get there.
I like to add to this. There was an article a while back in either the Guardian or the New Yorker that many literary awards now get their picks not from the top 5 publishers but from an emerging group of independent publishers.
So I believe this trend is growing. Many collegially affiliated lit mags, have a publishing side that are producing short story collections and novels. Giving voice and a forum to many writers that otherwise would not fit the commercial demands of the top 5.
There are literally thousands of them (lit mags), and the possible readerships online dwarfs that of what those imagined great lit mags of the past could possible reach, especially when one adds in the ways in which the writer can send/post links to all and sundry.
If you look at Chill Subs, they list over three thousand possible markets (as I recall from my last visit).
They are leaving Substack. I'm a subsriber and just got the email:
'Well, we decided to leave Substack first. It's a fine enough platform, but they've transitioned from "What if your newsletter could be profitable?" to "What if you could be an email influencer?"'
Literary magazines are the saviors of literature?
Um. I don't think so.
And p.s.--besides my self-published content, I've got plenty of tradpub short piece publications to my credit. And multiple interviews.
I rather think that genre...and not the pretentious division of prose/poetry etc but the commercial categories...are the saviors of literature.
You're missing my point.
Nah, rather the case is that I've seen more of the publishing world than you have and litfic is not the end-all, be-all of publishing. Once litfic went predominantly with paid submissions, it pretty much torpedoed itself. Money flows to the writer. Period.
There's plenty of prestigious and deep work being written within the confines of speculative fiction--take a look at the work of Premee Mohamed, for one, or Cathrynne Valente, or Jeff Vandermeer--but litfic won't acknowledge it.
No one is disputing that. You are an independent author railing against the gatekeepers, and I get that. There’s quality, yes, but there is also a lot of abysmal, horrendous junk. Lit mags support so many kinds of writing. This is essentially all I’m saying. It can sustain good writing of every type, and sometimes things that will tank in the indie book market or never be seen in the trad pub arena.
But Annihilation was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, no?
Ugh. I ment to say NOT to go the pay route. I don't have the time or engergy to deal with that right now.
I think this gets to the heart of the matter, that what is being published is often not what people want to read, being, at least in terms of poetry, too obscure, experimental, even incomprehensible [one suspects even to the poet himself/herself]. And, I believe, for that we can thank the myriad MFA programs in our overpriced universities; for there, if a poem or story is accessible, it cannot be any good-- a perversion of the show don't tell theory. But as this article alludes to, nothing universal is being shown. The Bard, Blake, my beloved Emily-- many of the world's greatest poets never went to college.
The other problem is that our secondary educational system is a shadow of its former self: I graduated high school in 1965 and probably was in the last generation to get a rigorous and broadly based schooling. Ask high school kids today if they know who Frost, Chaucer, Teasdale, Faulkner, or Pearl Buck was, and you'll probably get a blank look. Where do people get their news? Twitter/X, Instagram, You-tube -- and so we are becoming a world of dummies.
Not hopeless yet though-- and this old man is proof. I only became a published poet and essayist in my 70's and in the past 6 years have been published as of this week in 211 lit mags in 16 countries, and that is without paying any submission fees. Only 87 of them did a print issue [some being both print and online] and I know there are far more readers for online than print--especially when the online version is free. But the main thing is to see your work gets read, though we writers seldom know its impact. But sometimes we get lucky: last year I called to check on some insurance coverage and as the rep had a Hispanic surname, I casually mentioned that I took the pen name Nolo Segundo as it blended the 2 languages I studied: Latin and Spanish. Then he said, "Did you write the poem 'When I Leave You'?"
I gasped and said yes, in utter amazement as my soul felt a warmth flooding in....
Respect! I’m pushing 60, and also just started publishing my nonfiction work in lit mags this year. I have 20 publications since January, some online, some print, and a couple of anthologies.
I want to be you when I grow up—flourishing in my creativity and enjoying the ride. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. Godspeed on your journey!
I just started sending out nonfiction the past 2 years, mostly essays and a 'mini-memoir' I wrote about the NDE I had a24 when I almost drowned titled 'The Day I Remembered My Soul' which has since been published by 11 online lit mags and another 4 in print.
Vaya con Dios siempre, mi amiga!
I just read your essay, and I’m overwhelmed by the goodness of God. I’m so glad our paths crossed today. Your writing has been such an encouragement to me on a day when I really needed it. May God bless and multiply the good work you’re doing to make Him famous.
YES. THIS. What too many lit mags publish is stuff that people don't want to read. Accessible writing is what people desire--look at the success of Kindle Unlimited, for one. Or the various reading apps. Or even Archive of Our Own.
You're right on, Joyce!
Thank you for voicing something that’s been on my mind for quite some time. I recently went to an expensive and well known writers conference and attended a lit mag panel. The panelists were two editors, one from a magazine that only takes 10% from the slush pile and another from one that took no unsolicited submissions the previous year! This was supposed to be to entice us emerging writers to submit our work? It does feel as you put it like one big “circle jerk.”
100% agree.
Obviously the Internet is partly to blame, but the timeline you note also includes the shift to overt moralism in curation, foregrounding authenticity, accessibility and a particular US MFA styling.
It's dull as dishwater. Cancelled my Paris Review sub for exactly this reason: interviews great, poetry, dreadful earnest confessional, fiction, one decent story an issue.
A similar journal that only showcased good art that has nothing to do with a writers deep reflection on who they are? Sign me up!
Completely. Quality must matter. When you read absolute drek in The Paris Review, you lose faith.
I know right? You have to wonder what's going on there. Surely someone must go 'oh wait, this is actually dire, it just fits a sociopolitical zeitgeist but has no craft, no joy and no interest.'
In the spirit of sanity, having said what I just said, I then went off and went right, go on give another a new go, so I've just subscribed to the Dark Horse in Scotland. Shall see how that goes :)
Did you let the Paris Review know why you were cancelling? They probably need to know!
"Going from a relatively high degree of public acceptance into obscurity is not rare, but it is telling, especially when followed by chronic unpopularity over a long period of time. It suggests that lit mags today are publishing work which does not resonate with mainstream audiences. If they were, more people would probably read them." To me, this is an erroneous argument. The reason is attributable to the digital revolution. Reading in general has declined because of "brain-rot content" and its delivery vehicle, the cellphone, which have changed not only the way people gather information or consume 'culture', but also what people think about. And all this, even though exploited as subject matter in many author's writing, is antithetical to literary output.
Disagree. It's not a good idea to dismiss certain forms of writing as "brain-rot content." That label gets used too dismissively to snort at certain categories of commercial fiction for me to take it seriously when aimed at people who read on their phones.
I currently read magazines on a mobile device (my tablet). I read a lot of books on said tablet, some even that are considered to have "literary" value. Sneering at the digital revolution isn't the solution.
True! I loved print, but a poem is a poem no matter where it's housed....
I wasn't sneering at the digital revolution. I was taking issue with the idea that writers aren't giving readers what they want. The thing is, if you read a steady diet of writing of the most accessible kind, you are ill-prepared for any other sort of prose and will probably reject it. "Word salad" is a new anti-intellectual insult used when someone can't process a complex text. Like the person who imagines that because someone uses "big words", they are deliberately being made to feel stupid, a lot of silly value judgements come into play.
I think the very issue is this idea that readers who enjoy things that are considered by the artistic community as unsophisticated are themselves stupid or incapable of appreciating something of greater tact and substance. I also think that at present what is being published is so concerned with being work of "sophistication," that it loses the basics, and the point, of storytelling. To elucidate beautiful concepts or emotions, while at the same time being interesting to the listener or reader.
If you fail to do that in order to prioritize what writing (or storytelling) should be in the abstract, I think you run the risk of alienating your listeners and telling your story only to people who are already interested in what you have to say. That is to say, create an echo-chamber.
I hate to tell you this, but this statement "if you read a steady diet of writing of the most accessible kind, you are ill-prepared for any other sort of prose and will probably reject it" *is* sneering. There's a difference between depth and navel-gazing, and too much contemporary work hasn't a clue about the difference.
I fail to see any difference between nineteenth-century sneering at "novels" and contemporary sneering at what is viewed to be accessible work.
ok, Joyce.
I disagree. “Word salad” is not the inability to comprehend. It’s exactly what the term implies—a mixed up jumble of nonsensical language that is beyond comprehension. Just look at Kamala’s many examples of stumbling over words, never arriving at any intelligible point, making a complete fool of herself. Unfortunately, I encounter this type of writing in lit mags a lot. It’s always cloaked in descriptives like “experimental”, “poetic”, or “lyrical”. To pretend that it’s anything other than nonsense is to jump headfirst into the Orwellian realm of dystopia, where up is down and left is right. While I enjoy a good fantasy, I dwell in reality.
When Tolstoy wrote only 6% of Russians could read; and Moby Dick [for me the most profound novel ever written, including the Russians] sold only 3,000 copies and so depressed Melville he gave up writing.
But one doesn't write for recognition. That's usually secondary. You write because you want to see your thoughts, because you love words, because you have ideas about the effects of prose or because subjects light you on fire when you think about them. He gave up because he was thinking of it as a job, like any other form of labor, something that could pay his bills. That, in my opinion, is putting the cart before the horse.
Many of the writers of works we now consider to be classics wrote to pay their bills.
I don’t think that the decline in readership is necessarily because the material published by literary magazines doesn’t “resonate with mainstream audiences.” I believe that the mainstream audience is, increasingly, an audience of non-readers, who turn, for entertainment, to visual electronic media. That huge world of electronic seduction didn’t exist in the past--magazines and newspapers were all that people had. The contemporary greater public isn’t looking at literary magazines to see whether or not writers are reflecting the human condition--it is looking at screens!
Sanad makes interesting points that are probably true. But there are multiple other reasons for the decline in litmags other than bad curation of content or marketing to a narrow readership. One is that people's reading habits have changed. It's also probably not a coincidence that the years that Sanad sees as the great divide are also the years when personal computers were adopted by everyday people and the Internet became popular. There are other likely causes having to with changes in the market and society at large, too.
This is so true! Once upon a time, I loved to read my mother’s magazines, REDBOOK in particular. Those magazines contained excellent fiction. Does the general public even know that online “literary “ magazines even exist? I doubt it. Thank you for telling us what most of us knew but didn’t dare to articulate.
I did find the essay's sweeping generalizations unpersuasive, and I applaud the comments below that talk about the economic demands of printing and of working with Substack.
However--and I say this as someone who does not have and does not want an MFA--some of the responses traffic in generalizations of their own. To say that an MFA program imposes some sort of bland, institutional "voice" on its students is, frankly, ludicrous.
(We've all heard the similar, equally unpersuasive argument about The New Yorker, as if Ben Okri's work were indistinguishable from Tessa Hadley's or Garth Greenwell's or George Saunders's or Mary Gaitskill's . . . each of us could easily add to the list.)
Also, I've subscribed to many literary magazines over the years. The subscriptions I keep renewing are to the ones that are consistently surprising and rewarding. For example, there is always something of interest to read in The Sewanee Review.
And there is always, always at least one piece in The Paris Review to enjoy. In the current issue, "Blue" by K Patrick is wonderful; so, too, is its interview with Elaine Scarry. I just got my copy last week; I'm looking forward to reading more.
But you’re a writer. This article is asking how many non-writers are reading and subscribing to the Sewanee Review? Probably not too many.
Alexandra, thanks for responding to my post.
Like a lot of writers, I was a reader first. I avidly read fiction and plays decades before I even considered writing anything myself.
As another commenter wrote this morning, maybe the decline of the lit mag is due in part to the shrinking population of serious readers.
I'm going to push back against that "shrinking population of serious readers" trope. They exist. However, in many cases, they're migrating to commercial fiction because they've tired of the repetitive, navel-gazing tropes reappearing in litfic.
Joyce, i’m with you. There are plenty of serious readers out there. I have non-writer friends and family members who are serious readers who do not read lit mags. Outside of people who submit to these mags, it’s not clear how regular people would even know about them. I only know about some lit mags because of “where to submit” lists.
Alexandra, exactly.
No John, it's not ludicrous to see the power that profs wield over students in grad studies--speaking as both a former grad student and college teacher. The essential problem with 'creative writing' is that creativity cannot be taught--ever!
Nolo, thanks for replying.
Your comment reminds me of a Matthew Salesses essay (posted, I think, on a blog he had with Pleiades).
Salesses wrote about the power of conventions about what "good" writing is.
He noted that those conventions (like the idea that "said" and "asked" are appropriate dialogue tags, while "asserted," "asseverated," "queried," etc. are not) are arbitrary.
However, they are also stubborn: they've been reinforced over the decades by a (largely) white, male, cis-gendered literary establishment with roots in the academy.
So, while the professors can shape (or discourage, or limit) the voices of the students in the room, those professors (I think Salesses implies) have been shaped (or discouraged or limited) themselves.