I Am Cranky
7/27/09 4:54pm ~ UncategorizedI have to get this off my chest.
I’m excited about Electric Literature. I’ve submitted a story to them. I bought the first issue. I will buy their next issue and the one after that. Their ad campaigns are fucking sexy. The first issue is quite good.
BUT.
I really really REALLY resent the ways in which they talk about themselves. Their rhetoric implies that they’ve come up with something that everyone else in the literary world hasn’t already considered or attempted. Every magazine would love to pay their contributors $1,000 a story. Or any amount, for that matter. We aren’t not paying writers because we’re sitting on some cache of lucre (except maybe Narrative). The Electric Literature crew had a small five figure investment to get their magazine off the ground. That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money that most of us don’t have lying around. And to pay five contributors $1,000 every two months will cost $30,000 a year. I think you could offer five stories from the biggest names in fiction and struggle to raise that kind of money, not to mention the money to pay for printing, maintaining the website, promotion, etc. Anyone can do what they’re attempting for this first year. The true test is if they are able to sustain their pay scale for five years. Furthermore, there are magazines who don’t charge reading fees and are still able to pay their writers quite handsomely.
They offer their magazine in multiple formats but again, they have not invented that. Many many magazines, PANK included, offer their issues across platforms.
They say that they offer strong content, again, as if no one else out there believes in offering bold, innovative writing. Maybe they’re only reading the old guard of lit mags but I can think of many many magazines offering some really exciting writing. Have y’all read the Summer 09 issue of DOGZPLOT? It is one of the finest issues of any magazine I’ve ever read.
It’s okay to be proud of your venture (and they should be proud, they have a great product). It’s okay to highlight the ways in which you stand out and the ways in which you are new and different, but to do so without acknowledging the contributions of other publications that have made your rise possible is a little insulting and dismissive. And to do so, while implying that other literary magazines aren’t paying their writers because they don’t want to is just plain short sighted.
Most editors agonize over their inability to compensate the extremely generous writers who share their writing with us. I know I do. I can’t speak for other publications but at PANK, we currently have grant applications out that we busted our asses completing. You don’t know annoying paper work until you ask the federal government for money. The sole purpose of these grants is to get money to pay writers. When there are budget cuts at the university, projects like ours are the first ones to take the hit. When our current, meager budget runs dry, we pay for shit out of our own pockets and we don’t need acknowledgment for that. No one forces us to put out a magazine. It’s a pleasure and a privilege. But still. You didn’t invent the wheel. You put a nice tire on it.
Nicely, nicely put Roxane. It needed to be said and I’m glad you said it.
Thanks, David!
Great post! You are the queen of rants, a position for which I was in the running. May I be princess? Maybe duchess?
Thanks for the many shout-outs on the summer issue of DOGZPLOT. I was lucky to work with amazing contributors. You know how it goes, woman who puts out both stellar web and print editions every single time!
Lauren, you can either join me in my queendom, or I would be happy to grant you a duchy.
I always think that marketing language like Electric Literature’s is meant for people who are elsewhere on the Internet awareness spectrum. Kinda like a goodly chunk of AWP!
Another possibility, following a model that’s elsewhere on the Internet: perhaps EL aspires to be a categorical gold standard. If there’s *any* room to argue that one hasn’t been established, then the game’s still on. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that a slice of EL’s startup budget includes time with a marketeer…and that faction points with the online litmag community is not an immediate priority on the business plan. After all, Google didn’t have to acknowledge their debt to the eleventy million search services that came before them. Doesn’t make it right, though, which is why I’m so glad you posted this.
I also wanted to throw in a great big nod on asking the federal government for grant money. Anyone who does that paperwork and doesn’t get paid for it deserves a medal and a pony and a backrub. Holy god.
Erin, I definitely think they have a marketing consultant/budget and that person is earning their keep. The most frustrating thing about EL is that they’re putting out a great product (though the writing in the first issue is surprisingly traditional). But you’re right. They definitely don’t have to acknowledge the rest of the community. I suppose that’s the nature of new now next. It just saddens me that they don’t give some credit to some of the more established print journals. (I don’t include PANK in the pantheon of those whos hould be acknowledged. We’re a zygote. We’re a speck. We know it.)
I’m glad you feel me on federal grant applications. This was my first go round and um. Not fun. I did the verbiage and filling out the forms and writing the supplements. It sucked. Matt did the number crunching and university-related stuff and that seemed to suck too. It’s all pretty horrible. And then we don’t find out for 8 months. November is so far away.
Eleventy million? Name one that had even a third of the innnovation that google had. Bad example, good point.
I don’t agree. It didn’t need to be said. It sounds like old-fashioned envy. We can only pray that the likes of Electric Literature and Zoetrope and the Paris Review stick around for another twenty years.
You do a nice job of only reading what you want to read. You’ll note that I begin by saying I’m a fan–one who actually buys their product. Do you?
Yes. And Zoetrope and the Paris Review and A Public Space and One-Story and all the other magazines that pay writers fairly. Because I feel screwed in coming into this game so late, and only pray that one day, by some miracle, I’ll get my five minutes of fame. That’s all you really need is to get your foot in the door the once.
Well then, good luck to you.
Also, I don’t mind disagreement, not in the least, but you could at least sign your name. I hope it’s not too hot in Tigris.
That’s at least ten minutes you took out of reading 400 submissions, I won’t be dealt with this way, and I don’t owe you my name.
LOL. Be well.
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Your posts about the editor’s POV are quite interesting.
“To love means loving the unlovable.