Just finished reading Reb Livingston's tips for publishing online journals, and it's nice to know that I at least thought of and tried to implement some of the things she listed (whether I did any of it well is another story), which is why it took me about a year to get Spoonful out. It did make me realize how big (re: unmanageable) this could become just for the very fact that I'll be potentially receiving submissions not just from people from the local Stone Soup scene, but poets from all over as well. Makes me hope that I get more people on the bandwagon to help put this out. Hence the # 0 issue to generate interest.
Because the nature of this journal forces me to act in my local "scene" more than most other online projects would, I found it hard to generate interest in anyone beyond submissions. Furthermore, since starting this, I received more questions as to when the print version is coming out (even from a couple I asked submissions from, telling them point blank that it was for the web). It's aggravating when Stone Soup's history means that there's a fraction of its regulars unready for the idea of internet publishing.
At least there has been a ray of hope or two. Carol Weston came up to me after a recent Stone Soup reading and hugged me, excited that her husband had googled her and found the web page I just linked (this is someone who had no idea what reality TV is when I mentioned it in passing to her a couple of years ago; hopefully, she still really doesn't). She thanked me over and over. She'll have more reason to be excited in a day or so.
2 comments:
Carol Weston is generally far more interested in what crawls along the ocean floor than through cyberspace.
It sounds like there may be an appetite for a print edition of issue #0-- why not do both? The website announces the scene to the rest of the world, the print edition is for the people who are local.
Chad answers my question here.
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