E-Publishing & Literary Journals

For some literary journals, at least, e-publishing has become their lifeblood. Just two years ago, the idea of mailing out submissions was exciting and couldn't compare with sending an e-mail. There was something about the tangibility of an envelope, prose or poetry on hard copy, and a 40-some-cent stamp. Now, it is just as exciting -- or I'm made to believe it is exciting -- that submissions can be transmitted online, saving that envelope, printout, stamp, trip to the post office, etc.

It seems like more and more literary journals are certainly heading in the direction of online submission managers, tiny and simple albeit effective powerhouses that enable editors to sort and weed out a slush pile with a few clicks of the mouse rather than opening physical envelopes, labeling submissions, and separating cover letters from manuscripts to yield blind submissions. Some journals, such as the prestigious Black Warrior Review (http://bwrsubmissions.ua.edu), allow only online submissions. Others highly encourage it.

I bring this up mostly because as we become more and more imbibed by the digital and electronic age, there is, similarly, more and more of a focus on doing everything via the Internet, kind of like how e-mail is almost always preferred to "snail" mail (as it is now the term to describe letters sent by the U.S. Postal Service).

This is kind of like the book "versus" e-book discussion we'd had in class. The question, then, is, will certain forms stop existing, eventually? Will regular books stop being published? Probably not. But the way the term "book" is perceived will likely evolve -- ABC books for children might show an image of a Kindle or iPad under "B" for "Book" (or, better yet, under "K" and "i," respectively, for "Kindle" and "iPad"). How do we resolve the co-existence and tug-of-war between e-books and print books?

From the perspective of someone having recently exited the creative writing field, those few literary journals that are online only were largely looked down upon (at least when I was in the program at ND). The high-end journals that had a print issue are what everyone vied for when sending submissions. A print version was equated with substance, with value, with something that can be brought to readings and panels rather than a printout of, say, a PDF.

In light of all that, I wonder whether certain entities need to exist first in print to build a foundation of initial value and credibility (such as a journal shifting from publishing actual copies versus publishing online only) before it can just exist online only. Given that so much is published online (any John or Jane can publish a blog, or Tweet, or whatever, that it's sometimes hard to separate out quality material from hogwash). Fromthefishouse (http://www.fishousepoems.org), for example, only appears online, and it is regarded as a valuable resource for oral poetry, but then again, most of the writers who appear on the Web site have appeared in prominent print journals. If the names of the big-name journals were omitted, would it still retain its esteemed status?