It’s the inaugural post of the column you’ve decided to write about running a lit mag, and you’re trying to think of the best possible way to start. Here’s your first idea:

WHAT TO KNOW WHEN DECIDING TO START YOUR OWN LIT MAG

You run with this in your head for a while, plotting what you might say, and then you look up other similar columns. There’s one up at The Review Review that catches your eye. It seems to be the standard format, though of “here’s a few reasons why not to start lit mag, and then if you’re still interested, here’s the rest.” There’s another up at Hazel and Wren, and even The New Yorker has a recent article about the proliferation of lit mags. You think, this article already exists. Why write it?

Here’s your second idea:

HOW AND WHY I STARTED MY OWN LITERARY ARTS JOURNAL

Now we’re getting personal, now your audience is getting to know you, but would *you* want to read that article? Maybe. Maybe if it were from a prolific journal with decades of longevity that somehow managed to stay funded and relevant, yes. Gigantic Sequins isn’t there quite yet, though, so you go on to idea number three, and four, and you don’t even get to five before you have to call your Production Editor about final edits on your latest issue and it takes an hour and a half, after which you field a Facebook message from a fellow editor who booked a space where your journal can read at this year’s AWP conference in Los Angeles in conjunction with the journal he edits, but now you’re having second thoughts about it because you also found a space, you’re just waiting to hear back from the venue’s owner to confirm, and you’re negotiating that with him and thinking about contacting the other editor who runs a press who’s interested in co-hosting the event.

In the midst of this, you have it, you’re there, your column:

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A LITERARY ARTS JOURNAL EDITOR

You wish you had more time to read. That’s every day, and also specifically, today.

But you’re in the middle of production. You run a print literary arts journal, and you try to always call it that instead of a “lit mag” because you value the art you publish equally with the writing and revel in careful attention to detail. You think this is part of what makes your journal unique, but you only think this because you’ve been answering this question (“what makes your journal unique?”) continually since you started the journal, with your Production Editor, who you could not have started the journal without. See: earlier comment about how articles on starting a literary journal often tell you not to do so.

As the Editor in Chief, you’ve gotten to know a lot about the production side of things, but even though you took a Book Publishing class at Emerson College (where you and your Production Editor graduated from), you never realized how much really went into the publishing of an actual, physical literary arts journal until it was something you had to do. You still probably don’t know everything, but you know so much more than you did when you started.

But back to production. “Production” is when you’re working on getting the actual physical book perfect so that it can go to print. Usually you’re not also open for submissions during production, but the schedule you’re on is a bit wack and needs to be changed for next year. You note this in your book and send emails to your editors reminding them to remind you at your online spring editors meeting to remember how hectic things were and how the submissions schedule needs to change to move production up.

Right now, as you mentioned, it’s time for final edits, and the following things were discussed: whether or not to be consistent and spell out state names in contributor bios or let contributors decide whether they want them spelled out or not; whether or not an orphan that a poet did not intend to be an orphan in an already oddly formatted poem could be fixed by left-justifying text that is centered in the original; how/where/whether to add mention of an online feature that’s not specifically related to the actual physical book that you’re printing but is worth mentioning; how much money the journal would have in its account if the printer who normally prints it prints it and how that’s not enough and how we have more pages than we said we did in the original request for an estimate to said printer—the list goes on.

Production time is busy. Production time means learning new things, like about orphans. An orphan occurs in a print publication when a single word appears at the end of a paragraph in a line of text. Open the book closest to you. Scroll through a few pages, paying attention only to the last line of text in each paragraph. Are any of them only one word? In a copy of Rough Magic: a biography of Sylvia Plath by Paul Alexander after skimming eight pages with many paragraphs on each, you only find one orphan. Sometimes, you guess, there’s nothing you can do about an orphan. You wonder if online publications care about orphans. You make a note to ask an online literary journal editor.

Today’s life as a print literary arts journal editor is different from every other day as one, but the same as every other one. There’s rarely a day you don’t do something for Gigantic Sequins. Some days you’re the one whose skills and attention are needed; other days, you’re learning something new, delegating something, or checking in on whether or not someone else did something. You can’t think about what it would be like not to be the editor of a literary journal, having spent much of your adult life as one. You can’t imagine what it would be like not to worry about getting the book to print on time, about reading and posting calls for new submissions, about soliciting pre-orders and subscriptions. You’re happy to be an editor, and you’d never want to write a piece telling someone not to start one, though you understand why pieces like that are written.

You welcome your readers to your new column. You promise them you’ll write it in first person next time.

The post A Day in the Life of a Literary Arts Journal Editor appeared first on Real Pants.

The first fellow editor I’ve decided to speak with for Real Pants is Katie Raissian, Editor in Chief of her own print literary arts journal, Stonecutter. Katie and I decided once, during a previous conversation, that Gigantic Sequins and Stonecutter were like the journal each of us would put together if were weren’t producing the ones we’re currently producing.

Lafayette, Louisiana has six sister cities; its first acquired in 1967 was Le Cannet, France. GS and Stonecutter are, for sure, sister publications. Though the two publications’ differences most likely outweigh their similarities, I wanted to pick the brain of someone else who also produces an indie print journal. Like GS, Stonecutter is an all-volunteer effort not funded by anything outside of itself/its makers, and like GS, Stonecutter‘s issue debut in the physical sphere rather than the digital one.

Stonecutter is an arrestingly beautiful journal. Seeing it IRL is like seeing a gorgeous woman walking down the street and thinking, she must be a model; then she buys an ice cream cone or does something equally as mundane and you can’t stop looking because the journal looks so good, even if she’s doing she’s supposed to do–eating an ice cream cone or printing some delicious poems.

Putting together a print journal, to me, sometimes makes me feel like a scientist trying to resurrect a triceratops. Thinking about GS as an art object has helped, and I wondered if Katie and the Stonecutter crew thought about their journal similarly:

RP: To me, the value of a specifically print literary journal is in its production. Of course the art and writing it publishes have to be superb, but just as importantly, it has to be a beautiful object. You and I have sat down over a beer (or two) and had an emphatic conversation about textured covers and French flaps and offset printing versus digital printing. Can you talk a little about the importance of Stonecutter as a physical object?

KR: I could talk about this for days! When I started Stonecutter, I had an idea that I wanted it to look like an old-school art and lit journal. I wanted it to feel amazing in your hands. One of the most important parts of the reading experience for me is the smell and texture of the book. It really can enhance the way you absorb the work. So I wanted Stonecutter to be an almost luxe experience to read and flip though—a book containing important and dazzling art and writing, of course, but also an objet d’art in and of itself. I was very inspired by journals like A Public Space, Granta, trnsfr, Tin House, The Paris Review, Fence, and old issues of Grand Street. But I didn’t know how to make an actual book.

Someone who really helped me hash out my airy ideas in a pragmatic way was Kate Abbey-Lambertz. After I told Kate what I envisioned for the physical object, she put it all down in a very concrete manner in the form of a bid sheet and helped me think of trim sizes. I talked to friends at magazines and in publishing who gave me names of various printer reps. I met with several who were exceptionally helpful and who talked me through the pros and cons of digital versus offset and how each would look. Even though it’s the pricier option, I settled on offset printing; it made more sense for how I wanted to journal to look. I didn’t want something super glossy and slick and modern. I wanted Stonecutter to feel timeless.

Along with Kate and founding editors Ava Lehrer, Zara Katz, and Anna Della Subin, I carved out the ideal aesthetic. Anna Della and I spent many a night laying out the first issue and making it look exactly as I wanted it to. Chris Young, our printer rep, has been with us since the start, and he is truly an indispensable part of the process. He helped me pick the paper. French flaps were a bit of a no-brainer for me—I love them. Maayan Pearl advised us on fonts and typesetting and assisted with designing the cover of issue one. Putting it all together was very collaborative, which is the kind of process I most enjoy. Everyone who weighed in in on those initial decisions was equally passionate about books and visuals. It took a while to get issue one there, but it was worth it. It looked exactly as I’d imagined when I had first expressed my vision to Kate.

As you know, making a journal is always a work in progress, and changes happen with each issue—masthead-wise and layout-wise. After our second issue, production turned over to Kayley Hoffman, who is also a full-time production editor at Simon & Schuster. Kayley has really fine-tuned and augmented how the journal looks. When she came onboard, she changed up our running heads and made some vital tweaks to the layout. She took over production completely and doesn’t let me touch the InDesign document (which is great because the way I used to lay poetry out was a bit painstaking). She’s very patient with me and is an integral part of the journal. I literally can’t do it without her.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the order of contents and how each piece will relate to the one before and after it. We don’t have themed issues, so content curation is tantamount to me to provide the reader with a particular experience, one that I think would be lost (or strongly diminished) if Stonecutter were an online publication. I hope that in the way we put the issues together, subtle connections between each piece and contributor emerge. We have to carefully consider layout and think about how a particular artist’s work might print on our paper. Our aim is to represent each contributor’s work exactly as they want it. Getting that physically right is part of the challenge and joy of creating the journal.

With every issue, our production choices get bolder. Our covers reflect this boldness, I think, as does the content. Our visual art (especially our full-color art spreads) increases with each issue, as does the balance between US-based writers and international writers and work in translation. Actively seeking out and publishing voices from diverse backgrounds is fundamentally important to me as an editor (I’m half Irish and half Iranian, so that’s what I grew up with,) and I love seeing how those elements strengthen from issue to issue.

RP: So much of what you’re saying here resonates with me, it would be insane to point out every moment where I was vigorously nodding along, but I will say Shereen Adel, the GS Production Editor, is my Kayley Hoffman. There’s such an important lesson here that I keep learning and relearning: knowing my strengths and weaknesses, being able to say, here’s what I don’t know. I feel so lucky to have found someone who does know and who’s willing to work on GS. Shereen also helped build (and helps me maintain) our current website—not one of my strengths at all, which kind of brings me into my next question.

Stonecutter, like GS, is a print journal–as in, the content is printed on paper with ink– though we have one slight difference: After an issue is published, none of the work from Stonecutter is archived online, and at GS we do archive a few select pieces on our website. I’m curious about why you’ve chosen to remain a strictly print journal and also about any conversations you’ve had with your masthead about doing so—or not doing so.

KR: Oh, yes—our online presence has been an ongoing conversation for a while now and has been the source of some heated discussions at various junctures. I’ve tried and failed on numerous occasions to reinvigorate the website with content, and each time we publish an issue I promise myself that “this one will be the game-changer.” I had an idea for a long time that I wanted to upgrade our current website and host online original works that we loved but which hadn’t necessarily made it into the print issue. Also I was excited by the fact that, in doing so, we would have a place to host multimedia content and video art. For a long while our art editor, Zara Katz, was a driving force behind trying to get someone onboard to manage the web stuff full-time. We came close to finding someone but it just hasn’t worked out. It’s tough to find a willing and able soul who would want to take that responsibility on– and for no money. I get it. It’s tough to do any of this.

All of the team at Stonecutter work full-time—some of us in more than one job. We’ve had Facebook and Twitter accounts since we launched, but it has taken me years to really understand how they work and get the hang of regularly posting and staying on top of them. I’m just now getting into social media and making concerted efforts to regularly post to them and our Instagram. It’s sad to admit that I’m so many years late in getting there, but it’s true—I always had a “life’s too short to spend it on Facebook” attitude. Friends of mine know how opposed to Facebook I am, in concept and practice, but it’s a necessary evil if you want to reach an audience and promote the writers and artists. And championing the work of our contributors is the most important part of this whole endeavor—that’s why I do it.

RP: We also had a (failed) grand plan to host an online aspect of GS with strictly online content—again, what we maybe couldn’t “fit” into the print issues and also things that aren’t printable—music, video, art with color, etc.! It just… never happened. Regardless of how excited we were about it, putting together a print journal with an all-volunteer staff is already time consuming enough.

One of the hardest things for me is packing and mailing and distribution in general–keeping GS in stock at the various bookstores that carry us. How do you deal with the fact that Stonecutter is a physical object and must be transported through time and space to the places that stock it?

KR: To be honest, that part of the process gave (and still gives) me numerous panic attacks and bouts of hysteria. I remember issue one arriving from the printer and all of these boxes strewn about my tiny studio apartment and thinking, Oh shit! What the hell am I going to do with these? Of course, at the start, I had somewhat naively optimistic notions—primarily that people would buy the thing. Don’t get me wrong, I work full-time in book publishing so I am under no delusion as to books being a road to untold riches and fortune, but I did think maybe more than a few people would purchase it. My friend Owen Roberts kindly set up our Paypal and added the buy buttons to the website. Some folks did and do order it directly online. But the website has never been the key way to get the journal into the world. Our subscription model totally failed after the first two issues. Then we lost control of our domain name and had to change it, which caused problems.

Though we do still get online orders from time to time, independent bookstores have been the major channel of support for us. Our booksellers are AMAZING. They are patient with us, kind to us, and they keep us visible and in stock. I’ll never forget the first time a bookstore found Stonecutter. Ames Gerould from McNally Jackson e-mailed me and requested copies. It was thrilling. I brought them to the store myself and was asked if I was an intern. I told them I was the publisher and editor and they responded, “Wow, that’s how you know it’s a small operation.” McNally, Greenlight, St. Marks, and Book Culture have all been constant supporters. We are also stocked in wonderful stores across the country and in Ireland and Australia, thanks to Mieke Chew, publisher of Higher Arc, and Will Heyward, who brought Stonecutter to several Melbourne bookstores. Being “found” still happens from time to time. Stephen Sparks recently discovered us on Twitter and to my glee now stocks us at Green Apple Books in San Francisco. And last week I brought copies to my favorite magazine shop in NYC (Casa Magazines, on 8th Ave), and they stocked us right away. My husband, Chris Russell (who does our contributor illustrations and is also an art editor at the journal), is currently our official distribution manager. He took over the job from me during issue three, I think in a bid to keep his home life a bit more peaceful. Chris stays in touch with the booksellers, handles online orders and mailings, and schleps each issue to and from the stores. We love our booksellers and they are incredibly good to us. 

Did I mention that Chris and I pay for this ourselves? We save our pennies and fund the magazine. We can’t pay our contributors (yet,) but they are so amazing and generous that they understand. I have to say, without them and the booksellers and readers, we wouldn’t have the strength or sanity to keep going. Our stonecutters make it all worth it. And we’re a bit like the mafia—once you’re in the family, you’re in. You’ll have our undying support and love forever.

RP: Yes! We actually call all of the GS contributors/contest judges/masthead folks our “Shiny Family” and they are, for sure, what makes everything worthwhile. Oh, and those contributor illustrations that Chris does are… I don’t want to say they’re my favorite part of Stonecutter, but they’re the tipping point– as in, if someone I knew was like, “maybe I’ll buy this issue of Stonecutter…” I would flip to those contributor illustrations–in any of the four issues that exist in the world thus far– and be like, “The time for maybe is over.” And if that didn’t sell them, we would no longer be friends. I think it’s awesome that you have them on each page that advertises the issue. See! You do have some digital content! Everyone in the world should be so lucky as to hold in your hands a copy of any past or the forthcoming issue (Spring 2016!) of Stonecutter. I mean it.

The post Paper and Ink: A Conversation with Katie Raissian of Stonecutter appeared first on Real Pants.

There are a million things no one can explain to you about being a writer–and similarly a million things no one can explain to you about being a literary journal editor. Everyone has advice for each, and we’ve heard all the “you should write about…” clichés before. Even those of us that are close with our parents, if they aren’t writers themselves, explaining what we do can be impossible. The same goes for friends or even spouses. And the same goes for being an editor.

Folks outside of the small press world often suggest I try to monetize Gigantic Sequins, frustrated that I put so much time into something that makes me zero dollars, sometimes less. I try to explain how it doesn’t work like that, how I’m happy that our subscription model, pre-orders, contest fees, and donations help the journal pay for itself most of the time. All kinds of people offer ideas, how to make it more desirable to a wider populace, how to start earning from it. “Sell ads!” (…did that with issue 1.1–wound up giving away the ad space pretty much–and, technically, you can’t send merchandise as media mail through the USPS if it contains ads–) “Publish a really small percentage of submissions!” (…we already do, so I hear from Duotrope users and so I can see via Submittable stats, and not on purpose– and I’m not sure making this percentage any smaller would make GS more desirable to buy–perhaps more desirable to be published in, but still then only perhaps–) “Use this job to get one with a magazine that will pay you!” (…entirely missing the point of why I do this.) I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are websites out there explaining how you can make money off of your literary journal (–kind of the opposite of sites that tell you how you’re never going to make money off of your novel. This one advises: “marry rich.”) But again, that’s not the point. The point is that being an editor, being a writer, is my life. Not my job.

It’s funny, when people ask me “What do you do?” I always tell them I teach college. That’s my job. But what I *do* is more than that. I’m the leader of a small, semi-organized group of people across the country who help produce a print literary arts journal biannually. I’m a manipulator of words and a listener for music in language. I’m an envelope-stuffing, handwritten-addresser of hundreds of packages of mail–and I am every post office clerk’s worst nightmare during a busy shift. I’m a beggar–subscribe! submit! can we get this up on the website today? I really need to know what you think! donate! smile! I’m a reader of signs and symbols and characters and skies and pages and puzzles and stars and books. I’m a hawk, a curator–I will scoop in after a reading and ask someone I’ve never met before, “has that piece been published somewhere already?” or cold email you to say, “I really love your art–I run this magazine thing. can you send me something for us to consider printing?” etc. And I do this all because it’s my life, it’s who I am, it’s what I love doing, it’s what I do.

I don’t think anyone trying to monetize any aspect of the small press world from an editorial position is doing something wrong. That’s definitely not what I’m saying. With different resources and more time, maybe I would read and take seriously the advice within that guide to monetizing a journal. In fact, I would love for GS to be able at least to pay its contributors– but as it barely sustains itself, that’s still a pipedream for now. I would love to pay our Production Team and our Guest Designers and our editors for all their hard work. I would love to put together a conference/website/residency program something, anything, that would make funding GS easier and allow me to pay everyone I think deserves to be paid. But then I step back and it all gets silly. I already spend so much time on this thing that matters and what matters is that it matters to me and to other people and we make it happen– not that it pays me or anyone else dollars. The value in being a part of what a literary journal like GS does, from any angle, is not financial.

We had a Post-Publication meeting, a video chat with most of the Production Team for issue 7.1 (that just dropped last Tuesday!) During the meeting, Shereen Adel, GS Production Editor, asked meg willing, her lovely assistant, if she had any thoughts on improving the process for upcoming summer issue. meg kind of laughed and said something to the effect of, “I’m just always impressed—with all these moving parts—that it actually happens.” We laughed, but Shereen pointed out that I’m kind of the one that makes sure it happens. And I don’t do it because I’m getting paid or hope to someday get paid or any other reason except I love doing it. “I nag a lot,” I said in reply, after we finished laughing.

I hate that I used such a gendered word to describe what I do, now that I look back at it, so in rethinking this, I realized the reason GS always happens is not because I bug everyone who graciously volunteers or sends over their time and effort and talents to make this thing happen, but because it’s a part of my life–and a part of their lives too. Being at the helm again and again for various consecutive voyages, some smooth sailing and others through rocky waters, means realizing that every next time we can do better, every mistake is one that shouldn’t happen again, and there’s always something we can improve on. And that’s okay. It’s okay because part of life is realizing that every day, we can do a little better, be a little better, than we were the day before.

Being an editor has taught me so much about my own strengths and weaknesses and limits. And I probably do too much already, but the “too much” I do feels so important: emailing venues about reading spaces for contributors and listening to their podcasts and being thrilled by their latest work in a different journal and reading articles about diversity and publishing and motivating those I need to make GS happen to do things, uncompensated. I spend so much of my time, when I’m not working or reading or doing GS work, trying to give back to the community a little of what it gives me. We sustain each other. We hold each other up. Literary journals are homes for writers whose voices need homes. We keep each other under shelter, inside.

The post It’s Not a Job: It’s My Life appeared first on Real Pants.

Next up for JOURNAL JOURNAL, I decided to explore something I know little about—university literary journals! And particularly those run by students at universities that accept work from people outside of their school. These types of journals are typically also associated with a graduate program, though not always.

I wound up having a lot to say considering the variety of responses I got from the editors who were generous enough with their time to respond, so we need a sort of cast of characters before we begin. Here’s to whom I spoke & the journals they help to staff:

• Justin Brouckaert, co-Editor at Yemassee, University of South Carolina (submissions open year round)
• Marty Cain, Senior Editor at Yalobusha Review, University of Mississippi (submissions open now)
• Joel Hans, Managing Editor at Fairy Tale Review, University of Arizona (submissions open until May 1st, 2016)
• Patrick Holian, Co-editor-in-chief at Rougarou, University of Louisiana at Lafayette (submissions open year round)
• Dalton Kamish, Web Editor at Symbiosis, University of Pennsylvania (online edition submissions open until March 25th, 2016)
• John Taylor, Poetry Editor at Redivider, Emerson College (open for entries to its Beacon Street Prize until April 30th, 2016– and general submissions)
• Laura Theobald, Editor in Chief at New Delta Review (NDR), Louisiana State University (submissions open through late April)
• Janet Towle, Co-editor-in-chief of Sonora Review, University of Arizona (submissions open until May 1st, 2016)

HOLY VARIETY

Something I noticed immediately about the journals whose editors who filled out my questionnaire was how each one carves out a particular space for the type of writing it features. While some of them fill this space more traditionally, others have a very specific aesthetic. I’ll tell you about two that look for a more specific type of work.

Fairy Tale Review founded by Kate Bernheimer, came to be because she “felt the literary world lack[ed] a place for all the writers of fiction that didn’t quite belong in the more mainstream, storied journals,” Managing Editor Joel Hans says. Thus was born a journal whose aim was to focus on work of any genre’s take on fairy tale themes.

On a different spectrum, but equally unique, the newest journal in the bunch is Symbiosis, and they publish work that explores where the visual and textual intersect. Originally, they only accepted collaborative pieces from fellow Penn students, hosting workshops to encourage this collaboration. However, Dalton Kamish, Web Editor, says that now they’ll be “accepting work by a single person as well as work by people other than Penn students. Work we’ve published in the past has often taken the form of two separate pieces (visual and written) that were somehow collaborative, but this year we are pushing for more integrated, inseparable, or even indistinguishable visual and textual work.” The journal began as an undergraduate journal and has now branched out to encourage anyone outside of Penn to contribute– and the specificity of the type of work that it seeks to publish makes that branching out logical.

PRINT V. DIGITAL

Way back in 2009, it was a super big deal when Triquarterly went digital, so much so that The New Yorker wrote a piece about it. I wondered how the controversy surrounding their change affected the trajectory of other lit journals at universities, considering the price of printing a journal and the economic meltdown that occurred around then—but also considering how internet-centric reader attention has become. Was Triquarterly going digital like Dylan going electric?

Turns out that many university lit journals that were once print and are now digital moved in that direction post-Triquarterly’s announcement—the New Delta Review published its last print issue in 2010, and in 2012 Yalobusha Review went digital. What went against my hypothesis was the founding of university-affiliated online journals prior to the Triquarterly decision—Rougarou‘s earliest issue can be traced back to 2007, and though since then has been an online production, Patrick Holian, co-editor-in-chief, says that they “hope to produce one print edition, either during the summer or next fall,” and specifically one that will feature the best of the two web editions they traditionally put out.

The changes that some of these journals have made since their inceptions have often been the editors’ decisions rather than the programs’. With younger, hipper-to-the-net students coming in, opting for digital formatting is the most noted change, but there’s still something about the kinesthetics of a print issue that appeals to students running lit mags. Some university journals traditionally print-only now have both online and print presences.  Yemassee and Redivider both publish a biannual print edition and a few select works from each issue online and have been doing so for awhile. Symbiosis just this year will be putting out a new online as well as its traditional print edition. Then there are those that are strictly print, Fairy Tale Review, founded in 2005, being one of them and also Sonora Review—both of these are run out of the University of Arizona MFA program.

MISSION CONTROL

I anticipated that the most major difference between running an indie journal and being part of a university journal would be twofold: the turnover of the staff and the funding (which we’ll get to.) The staff turnover is obvious: once you’re no longer associated with the program, you have to step aside for incoming/current students to takeover. Therefore, the taste of the journal often will change with its editors. For example, Co-editor Justin Brouckaert says:

“It was important for the founding editors of Yemassee to carve a niche in the tradition of Southern literature, but we’ve moved away from that aesthetic in the many years since then. We still get a lot of those kinds of submissions from folks who think realist Southern lit is what we do, but one of my efforts as fiction editor & now as an editor with a hand in both fiction and non-fiction selections had been to debunk that label.”

While Yemassee’s flouting of its traditional background pushes it towards being like rather than differentiable from other MFA-student-run publications, the move likely helps to extend the reach of the journal, allowing a larger variety of writers to send in work—and therefore, creating the opportunity for a broader range of submissions to choose from and attracting attention from a wider group of potential students/future-editors.

Another journal that has moved towards a change in aesthetics is Yalobusha Review. When the journal, founded in 1995,  rebooted as a purely online journal, the staff then rewrote the its mission statement. It now reads:

“We seek to showcase work that alters or subverts mainstream forms of expression–work that is, in a broad sense, experimental, though that takes many forms. We believe the reading experience should be a kinetic one, and to that end, we favor art that has its own source of energy, drawn from tonal individuality, linguistic texture, and above all, a sense of exploration.”

Marty Cain, Senior Editor, talks about how the staff today he’s a part of stands by this re-envisioning of the journal’s role:

“The other editors and I still very much identify with this mission, and we’ve done our best to strike a balance—to publish work that is non-normative, adventurous, and challenging, while resisting monolithic notions of what ‘experimental writing’ has to look like. For me, personally, this has grown into an interest in veins of experimental writing that don’t reject the somatic in favor of the intellectual; those that do not wish to abdicate identity or transcend the body; those that utilize ‘experiment’ as a way to combat structural inequalities.”

While some journals change for aesthetic purposes, others make changes that help showcase something unique to the journal or aim to offer a wider variety of opportunities to grad students in the affiliated program. Holian says of Rougarou:

“We want to continue to publish the highest quality prose and art we can, but one new point of emphasis is to produce more content on the website itself. We have two blogs, one dedicated to the Writer’s Life, pieces about process, publishing, teaching, and all things writing, and a second dedicated to life in The Gulf, writings focused on the diverse music and culture of Louisiana, and more specifically south Louisiana. In this latter forum we hope to produce work that shows an engagement with and contribution to the community and our surrounding environment.”

Thinking about the ideas behind what the journal you run helps to publish, then, allows editors to consider what’s important in the literary world right now–and what they can do to support that work  coming up that might not have a home in a strictly traditional literary journal either in print or via its online presence.

WHO’S THE BOSS?

Not only do the constantly swinging doors when it comes to masthead affect the aesthetic of a university publication, but different editors will lead and delegate in different ways and expect different things from their supporting staff. There’s more to running a lit mag, many of these editors discover, than choosing and publishing the best and most important work that comes through your slush pile. Moving into a position at a university journal might feel like having to reinvent the wheel. Not only are editors expected to maintain the prestige of the journal they run and/or expand its reach, but they’re often in positions to decide the direction of the journal, to make choices that will affect editors down the line for years to come.

However, not one editor came close to what I would call complaining about the levity of their positions considering their brevity. At Yemassee, Brouckaert admits that the experience can be both frustrating and rewarding:

“The frustrating part is that you’re only passing through–I’ve got three years to make my mark, and then I’m out. The rewarding part is that there’s a lot that can be accomplished in those three years–in one year, even.”

Staff roles at Yemassee read much like that at Redivider—those at the top figures out their strengths and how they want to utilize the support from the other positions to fill in any weaknesses— and the journals happen from there, growing when and where they need to grow. John Taylor, Poetry Editor, says:

“We are provided with some financial stability and an unending workforce of readers and people willing to donate time and energy to keeping Redivider running. However, because MFAs are typically in the program for anywhere from 2 to 3 years, there is an enormous turnover. It takes an incredible amount of work to keep Redivider’s central structures and processes in place as editors, readers, production, and management filter in and out. We are also often full time students, have full time work outside of Redivider, and often work in some capacity for other journals. But under the right leadership (and our current EiC, Paul Haney, is an incredibly engaged leader) Redivider draws on this multifaceted workforce and produces a complex, interesting, and important literary journal engaged with contemporary poetry, art, nonfiction, and fiction.”

Sometimes changes for a journal, though, are larger than just how-do-we-define-who-does-what-this-time: Kamish of Symbiosis felt so strongly that the journal needed to go digital that they would only “accept the position of Blog Editor contingent upon changing it to Web Editor and publishing an online issue.” As they’re an undergraduate at Penn, I was jazzed to discover that publications like Symbiosis are redefining the undergraduate journal’s role in a variety of progressive ways: publishing unique hybrid work, engaging with the world outside of the university, hosting workshops, etc. Kamish “lead[s] a workshop on using Snapchat to collaboratively produce image macros.” I can’t help but think five years ago a sentence like that would have made little to no sense, and this impresses upon me the importance of university journals at all levels—as students in higher ed, you’re often being asked to think about the world differently than you ever have before, and what results from it can be an astounding and essential newness that is critical to our engagement with and making of literature.

While most known university journals don’t utilize undergraduates necessarily, I was glad to talk to a burgeoning one staffed by them in Symbiosis–and another that does involve their participation. Fairy Tale Review “host[s] roughly 15 editorial assistants a year, who are undergraduates at the University of Arizona, via a course that’s part of the newfangled publishing track in the English Department—we help give them meaningful experience in publishing, mostly by allowing them to create projects based around FTR and then execute them,” Joel Hans tells me.

When it comes to staff, I was glad to hear that some editorial positions were funded—in that, editors received money for the important work that they do. In a literary climate that seems to want to charge rather than pay writers, editorial positions are more often than not unpaid. NDR pays its Editor-in-Chief, always a second- or third-year MFA student, in the form of a stipend that covers tuition. But positions like this are few and far between—and often first of what gets slashed when a university must implement budget cuts.

STACKS OF CASH

When I edited the undergraduate literary journal Gangsters in Concrete (now an online publications: Concrete literary magazine,) our print issues were funded by the department, and we gave them away for free on campus. As that was a long (though we’ll not say how long) time ago– and as GIC was an insular undergraduate journal– I was curious about the funding for graduate university journals and those that publish work outside of their own student body. And I was surprised. Really surprised. By some of the answers.

Two different journals I talked to said that they received no funding at all from the university they were affiliated with. And even those that do get funds don’t receive much or are never sure how much is coming their way or are only granted money for certain things. For instance, Sonora Review doesn’t “get regular/guaranteed financial support from the department or the MFA program, though they donate funds to help with production when they can,” Co-editor Janet Towle tells me. Rougarou and Yalobusha Review get no money—but Cain believes this is because YR hasn’t had a massive amount of submissions yet to require any more than a free Submittable account and also because the website is hosted by the university—though, he says, for the journal’s launch “as an online journal… the MFA program paid for a web developer.”

Other journals were luckier when it came to funding: Symbiosis, at Penn, has its efforts funded and its workshops hosted by the Kelly Writers House. New Delta Review gets money from LSU for AWP and the aforementioned stipend, but not for the journal itself’s daily operations. Redivider is funded “in part” by Emerson’s Writing, Literature, and Publishing program. And Yemassee has an account that was set up by a “founding benefactor” that helps keep them afloat.

So what do journals do to raise funds if they don’t get enough or any at all to meet the cost of their yearly expenditures? They charge submission and contest fees; they encourage subscription and journal sales; they hold fundraisers and accept donations; they apply for grants, and they hope for generosity from other literary organizations on- or off-campus.

I will say, overall, the amount of financial support from the universities that sponsor these journals was not as much as I’d expected it to be—especially considering how more popular, well-run, good-looking literary journals are a great way for creative writing programs to attract attention to their program and therefore entice future students. Am I biased (because I run a literary journal that’s seemingly always in desperate need of more money to stay afloat) to think that at least every graduate-level creative writing program should have a stellar, well-funded literary arts journal? Maybe.

WHY WHY WHY

So why do creative writing/English departments have literary journals, anyway? Many might take for granted that a university with departments like these should sponsor a literary journal. Cain super honestly admits, “I’m not sure why we have the journal specifically, but it does provide good experience for folks interested in small press stuff, and the fact that we have a good, relatively well-known journal might make the program more appealing to prospective students.” This was right on the money with how I expected the university–and therefore the students who run the journal–to feel. Sponsoring a literary journal should help place the university’s name on the creative writing map (–hence my surprise at the paucity of funding suffered by some of them.)

There were a variety of answers from specific editors that could most likely be applied more widely to the others. For instance, Laura Theobald, Editor in Chief of NDR, says:

“There’s lots of reasons why this type of experience is important for students: it helps us learn more about our craft; it gives us access to a larger network of our peers and their work; it teaches us about the process of publishing from an insider’s perspective; it gives us ‘real world’ experience that we can use on job applications; it gives us a space to build a community; it brings us joy.”

Some MFA journals exist more specifically to fill the space between a journal historically affilated with the university and the aesthetics, taste, and potential for opportunity and experience for MFA students. Redivider is one of these, and Taylor says:

“While Ploughshares is an incredible literary magazine that draws on Emerson’s graduate students for readers and other positions, Redivider offers positions in all areas of the journal to MFAs and MAs in the program. This locates the editorial power within the MFA and gives Redivider the flexibility to publish daring writing and focus more attention on emergent writers.”

In addition to directing attention towards the sponsoring/affiliated program and giving those within it needed experience, Brouckaert points out that Yemmasee exists in part as, “a way for students to collaborate in an art which is so often solitary.” And simply and pointedly, Kamish says of Symbiosis, “Penn has a rich tradition of and commitment to literature.”

CONCLUSIONS

University journals are not just a great starting point for the careers of the students that run them, but an important part of the literary culture and tradition of the United States. I thought I would be able to speak more generally about university journals, as I thought they would be diverse in content but otherwise similar in practice. I was wrong. I easily could have written eight different articles highlighting the histories, changes, funding, and reasons for existence behind all of the journals whose editors I spoke with to patch this piece together. Some of the best-known journals in America are affiliated with and/or sponsored by universities. Yet with budget cuts and the state of higher education becoming more and more corporate every day, that tradition is under siege.

Hans would agree:

“In the past, I would have said that a university helps provide stability to the journal’s future (less emphasis on making a profit), but now I’m not so sure. In an era of trying to maximize profits from out-of-state undergraduate admits and offering the most direct school to job experience, I worry about the health of our beloved journals, and those who operate them. We should all be planning for emergency—what would we do if our university were to cut support? How would we survive, and sustain? …I wish I had good answers. I hope others have some ideas.”

The post The Academy and the Literary Journal: Great Expectations and Hard Times appeared first on Real Pants.

When I was in high school, the editors of our lit journal, Demogorgon, would copy submissions into submission “packets”. They would have cool collaged covers, and each piece would be anonymous. Literally, the submissions were photocopies of paper submissions that student writers put into a cardboard box in the library, so the font chosen sometimes lent itself to the conversation. We would talk about each piece at length (one time, it was a transcription of Radiohead lyrics?) and then after our conversation, we would vote. “Who would like to accept this piece for publication?” Hands would raise–or not–and we’d take count. “Who would like to respectfully decline?” Hands would raise–and we’d take count. (Radiohead was respectfully declined.) If the piece had been accepted, we’d then vote on whether it would appear in the more professional literary journal we would put together, Demogorgon, via Perfect Printing (now Perfect Communications, and where Gigantic Sequins is usually printed) OR the photocopied “other” zine-style journal, which looked much like the submission packets, but came with each piece illustrated by our members and was freely distributed, called Space Available.

I wonder how Demogorgon does things now–certainly, I hope the term “Respectfully Decline” has carried forward. It leant such a nice touch. But I’m sure that in the years after I left Demo graduated from the cardboard box in the library to accepting submissions online.

Gigantic Sequins, at first, accepted submissions via email. I did things fairly similarly to Demo for awhile, sans cardboard box in a library, holding meetings and discussing each piece individually. But as submissions grew, our staff grew out of New York, our genre editors were spending too much time building packets, sending them out, and consolidating reader votes. We met the Submittable folks at an AWP conference in DC, back when they were Submishmash– and we were converted.

I decided for this post to put together some Submittable tips. Since we’ve been in the Submittable game for 5 years, GS has grown up with them. Ideally, these tips will give editors ideas to implement into their own processes and writers an inside scoop on how things might look from the editorial side.

Submittable has always been super attentive to making their service the best of its kind. If you email them, they email you back, quickly. If you go to their table at AWP with a comment or question or complaint, they’ll field it in a serious manner. They take what they do–and therefore what we do–seriously. They’re constantly updating and improving the system–and in increments so that you’re never too overwhelmed with the amount of changes. They send emails when they make these changes, letting you know what you can now do that you couldn’t before or how you can do something better. For instance, in their January newsletter, I found out that you can “randomize” assignments to your readers. Can’t wait for the monthly newsletter? The Release Notes section of their blog lists “in real time” all of their updates.

THINK TANK

One of my favorite Submittable features is their new ideas think tank, where users can put forth ideas, and other users can vote/comment on these ideas via Submittable Feedback. So many of the updates that have been integrated into the system have come from users telling the company what they want–and other users saying, yeah yeah yeah that! Depending on your account, you get a certain number of votes on these feedback items, which really makes you think “what here would be the best?” If what you see isn’t there, you can propose an amendment to the Submittable constitution–and then encourage people whom your idea might benefit to vote it up! I spoke recently with a Submittable employee on the phone, and they said that even though they haven’t been utilizing the think tank as much lately as they were in the past, they’re planning to start using it more again soon.

LABELS

GS uses the site’s labels system probably more than anything else it offers. We have labels for everything and an intricate document that we share with each new editor to familiarize them with the labeling system. While I understand those with free or limited accounts might not have access to as many labels as we do, I still wanted to share with you some successful labels.

When a piece is withdrawn, we no longer need our readers to read it, so a WITHDRAWN label goes on those pieces. We have labels for whether a piece is a YES, NO, or MAYBE for the upcoming issue–again, this helps the readers know what to read and what not to read. We try to encourage our readers to read and vote on the submissions marked MAYBE because they’re the ones we’re not sure about. We also tell them to “ignore all other labels” except the ones I’ve mentioned, which I’m sure is impossible, but it’s the best we can do short of coming up with a code for the remaining labels, or asking Submittable to make certain labels visible to only a certain level of staff (HEY THAT’S A GOOD IDEA; I’m putting it up on the think tank! Okay, it’s already there… Let’s vote it up!) So we also have labels for… when someone deserves a personal reply, when we’d like to ask someone to resubmit in the future, when something has been submitted in the wrong category, when a submitter should be emailed because we have a specific question/request of them, when someone has committed the sin of submitting work in multiple submissions for the same genre rather than all in one. We also have labels reserved for use by each level of editor, labels just for art, labels that are used only for contest submissions, and labels that refer to submitter subscription orders. Phew!

LEVELS

Speaking of levels for staff access, that’s a really helpful thing, too. Admins can give people access to just read and vote on submissions without them seeing the names of the people who are submitting–and I can give myself “blind” access to certain submissions via the category builders. For instance, we read blind during our contests, so I blind those categories to everyone until we’ve chosen the finalists to send to our judges. So the levels in and of themselves come with certain permissions, but then there are certain things that you can manipulate based on what level everyone is on, like the category blindness.

ARCHIVED/ACTIVE

We’re still, at GS, trying to figure out when we should move all submissions over into the ARCHIVED file out of the ACTIVE list. We used to wait until all final decisions had been made to move everything, though recently we switched over to moving things over into archived during the open period, to clear up the clutter that the active list becomes with accumulating submissions. However, we recently discovered moving things in and out of the archive affects the REPORTS that Submittable offers, which is what we use (instead of counting ourselves) to determine how many readers voted on enough submissions to make our masthead.

REPORTS/SEARCH FILTERS

The reports and also the search filters offered are two features that help to make Submittable really awesome. I can easily see how many submissions are “assigned” to certain readers and editors as well as the number of overall submissions and how many were in which genre for a certain submissions period. This is useful information when it comes to my own workload as well as the workload for my editors and readers. We’ve moving, because of viewing results like this, from a system where we admit to the masthead those readers who have read a certain percentage of our incoming submissions each period to one that admits them based on the actual number read. We realized that it’s unfair to ask readers to read “75%” of the submissions if that number is constantly changing–and especially if it’s constantly rising!

As for the search filters, depending on the access level your editors have, they may be able to see more than their assignments within the submissions list, and the search filters are key. My poetry editor can filter the submissions so she just sees poetry then–but she can also filter them in any variety of ways–by labels, by status (NEW, IN-PROGRESS, ACCEPTED, etc.), by who it’s been assigned to, and more. The list itself can also change order, which I love. You can order by author name, submission name, number of positive or negative votes, status, title of submission, submitter name, and more. This makes archiving all declined or withdrawn work easy–you can either filter the list, or if you don’t want to have to re-filter it back to your original settings, organize it by status and do so that way. It also makes it easy to mix up what you read–“today, I’ll read everything that I haven’t that was submitted to us early in the submission period,” is one I like to do myself.

THERE’S SO MUCH MORE

GS <3s Submittable! There are so many different ways to use it right and well. Please comment below with your own pro-tips for Submittable users–or, if you don’t, what your journal’s accept/respectful decline process looks like. Do you use a different platform? Are you still accepting submissions via email? By only post mail? Let us know!

FOR MORE resources that can help in running a lit journal, see this subsequent post TOOL KIT: Best Resources for Running a Lit Journal.

3 different years’ worth of my high school’s lit mag, Demogorgon!

The post The Days of ‘Respectfully Decline’ and How they Led Here: Submittable as a Tool appeared first on Real Pants.

Last JOURNAL JOURNAL I posted about Submittable and why it’s essential for lit journals. While Submittable is the best friend an editor has, it’s not the only friend. Here are some other great–and perhaps necessary–resources for a lit journal’s tool kit. Gigantic Sequins would not be what it is today or even be possible without most of them.

TRELLO

Trello is a new addition to the GS tool kit, something we implemented back in November, and at this point, I can’t imagine life without it. Sort of like how intense things were prior to Submittable, how often we rely on Trello now makes me wonder why we never looked for a thing like it to help us stay organized before. You use this shared space to create vertical lists, under which you can place “Cards”, which are sort of like post-it notes that have built-in accessories: checklists, comments, uploading capability, labels, deadlines, members, etc. The thing about Trello is that it may sound overly complex– but it’s not. It’s major advantage is its user-friendliness, despite the amount of capabilities it has. In the past, information–such as contributor names as they should appear in an issue, which bookstores we’re currently stocked at, which pieces we want to archive online from back issues, or what an editor needs to get done before a certain date–was scattered throughout emails, in people’s personal Word files, in various different versions of a forthcoming issue itself, and so on. For example, our Trello “Names” card under our 7.2 Production list is how, if we were publishing a certain 19th century American writer, we would make sure that Edgar Allan Poe wouldn’t appear as “Edgar A. Poe” in his bio and then “Edgar Allan Poe” the whole rest of the issue, for instance–we’d also use this list not just for name versions but name spellings so that Mr. Poe’s middle name would assuredly be Allan and not Allen throughout. And that’s just one card!

Here’s a glimpse at a few of the GS lists and the cards we’ve organized within them in Trello. Clicking on the title of the card “2016 Fall Friend Drive” under the “Fundraising” list, for instance, will open it, and the amount of capabilities each card has makes Trello great for storing and keeping track of all sorts of information. //

PATREON

Patreon— We use Patreon to keep track of and collect donations from our gracious Friends, who are those who help fund the publication of each of our issues. Patreon is sort of like a perpetual crowd-funding source, there for projects that need ongoing rather than one-time support–like GS. It’s set up like a typical crowd-funding site–there are levels, rewards, a short video that explains what we do (ours is really cute, it’s a bunch of our art telling you about the GS process and why you should donate, put together by Fo Sho and Tell), and a profile page, where all of this is pre-laid out for your cause/project. What makes Patreon unique is that that when our Friends donate, they’re automatically signed up to donate again next time we’re ready to drop an issue. GS comes out every six months, so our Patreon Friends don’t have to worry about sending us their contribution every six months, they’re already registered to do so–and can opt out any time.

GOOGLE/GOOGLE DRIVE

Drive—Google Drive itself, sharable file storage attached to a google account, is essential. If we had to find the email in which a file was originally sent every time we wanted to open that file (read: how we used to do things), that would take too long. Giving up becomes easier. But if there’s a shared folder clearly labeled (maybe even folders within that folder!) finding things becomes a lot easier, as does knowing which version is the most recent version of something. If four different emails sent over time contain four different versions of our acknowledgements page and I find the third email/third version I might not know there’s a fourth–but if they’re all in the same folder, it’s obvious the one labeled “version 4” is the most recent.

Docs–Google Docs is great for when information needs to be changed/updated/edited. Our Production Team uses a Doc for our Production Schedule to note when tasks need to happen by, whose job it is to do each, and when it was completed. Any time any of us need to work on the same document, either all at once or over time, using a doc is the best way to go.

Sheets–Sheets are similar to docs in that they’re editable by multiple people, but they’re an excel-type document rather than a word processing one. They’re also good to use as a never-ending sort of table. For instance, we have a master list of all GS contributors that’s a Sheet. Here, it’s easy for each genre editor to locate contributors’ names, twitter handles, websites, which issue they were published in, and any other important notes–for instance, if we published someone under a name they no longer publish under, which name to refer to them as would get noted here for if we’re promoting that person’s book on social media. Another Sheet we update is one that helps us keep track of distribution at bookstores. This is one that needs improving, as there are so many columns that it becomes intimidating for staff to update it correctly– but for now, at the least, it’s an easy reference for me to look at and see how many copies of each issue should be sent to editors who are the contacts and stockists for the local bookstores that carry GS. There’s always room for improving the way we organize things, but meanwhile I’m just glad we have tools that help us keep track of things better than pen and paper.

Hangouts— We have our editorial meetings via Google Hangouts, typically in its videochat form, so that we can see each other face to face, something we don’t have the opportunity to do as a complete group pretty much ever. You USED TO be able to put on fake masks and funny hats and glasses (and monocles? and eyebrows? and floating question marks?… see below…) when you did this, but you can’t anymore, which is sad.

Good times at a 2015 GS Editors Meeting ///

Gmail— Every one of the GS editors has a gmail account, and I’m grateful for this so that everyone has easy access to everything above. GS itself has a gmail account, and I can’t stress how lost we’d be without our labeling system. Just like in Submittable, we have an extensive system of labels that help organize the emails that come in. I am sure there are other great things about Google/Gmail, but labels, labels, labels are what I want to stress before we move on to…

SOCIAL MEDIA

Hootsuite– Especially when multiple people are managing social media, Hootsuite is a user-friendly way to schedule posts so that staff members aren’t posting too close to one another or too similar of posts. Facebook now has a “schedule” option for its pages, so we use Hootsuite to maintain our twitter account. Since many editors rather than one person run the twitter page, it’s a really helpful tool. It’s also a time saver, in a way–tweeting live all the time can be really stressful. There’s a risk to scheduling a tweet rather than posting it live, but it’s a huge time saver. That being said, if you are going to use a program like Hootsuite to schedule tweets, double-check them for veracity (get names right!) and also proofread them before they go live.

Facebook— Some of these are a bit obvious–like, one of the first things a new lit journal in 2016 might make for itself is a Facebook page–so I won’t glorify that too much, especially considering how difficult it can be to get a page’s post any attention without paying Zuckerberg et. al for the privilege. However, the “groups” feature it has is a good way to have some light-hearted fun with a masthead/staff/editorial board, especially if that editorial board is international, like GS’s has been in the past and could well be in the future. Aside from sharing links, news, and announcements, you can also share documents via a facebook group, which can come in handy.

Twitter— See above note about how some of these might be a “bit obvious,” but I want to add: I think GS’s robust twitter presence is part of why we typically get around 1000/1000+ submissions, and growing, per submissions period. #JustSayin

Instagram— Instagram is just FUN. I wouldn’t say this is a necessary feature for a start-up lit journal, but once you have established yourself, Instagram is a great way to keep what you do in people’s minds as they aimlessly scroll. Ours is run by our Assistant Production Editor, meg willing, and she does a great job taking the GS aesthetic and applying it to promotional posts, as well as process and event posts. One noted disadvantage to Instagram is that you can’t post clickable links in the captions/comments, though you *can* in the description and then refer to that link in the comments, which we do and many others who use Insta promotionally do.

We use Instagram to promote submissions, preview what’s in the issue, and let people know general updates on what’s happening with GS! //

Tumblr— We have a tumblr! It’s all the rage! The kids love it. Our CNF Editor, Ian Carlos Crawford, runs it because the rest of us are like “tumbl–what?” Another thing rad about having multiple social media accounts for your mag, especially if you have a diverse staff, is that the personality of the editor/s running it are sure to sneak out in what they choose to post. This means that while our Instagram has a lot of collage/erasure/post-it note art, our tumblr gets a bit Harry Potter/comic book-y at times.

Pinterest— GS does not have an official Pinterest, but I have a board for black & white illustration/art where I pin images often that would be ideally fit with the GS aesthetic. This is a great point of reference for anyone who wants to see what kinds of art we might be looking for, and it’s one of the first places I go when I want to solicit art.

OTHERS

Adobe InDesign— My Production team uses InDesign to put together the journal, and saves the files as PDFs for me to look at. So while I’ve never actually seen the innards of InDesign, I know we couldn’t do what we do without it.

Adobe Acrobat— Speaking of PDFs, where would we be without them? Lost. I’m sure there’s a million ways Acrobat is helpful to us, but here’s something about it I just learned this year: Did you know you can comment on a PDF kind of like you can comment on a Microsoft Word Document? You can. And you don’t even have to pay for the fancy version. This is good for… if you want to make text edits/suggestions/comments on a PDF version of an InDesign file, for instance.

If you click, in Acrobat, on the yellow box with the talk bubble in it, the comment that’s been made made will pop up there. As you can see, the text of the comment also appears in the sidebar. //

WordPress/Weebly–The GS website was originally a WordPress site, though now it’s a Weebly site and we host our blog on WordPress. I’m not sure, if I could go back in time, what I might change about this situation? Maybe, since we are so integrated in Google, to allow for my editors to have less accounts they have to keep track of, I might have the GS blog be a Blogger blog, which you log into via your Google account. We use Weebly for our official website because its user-friendly, though something else owns our URL. This is the sort of thing that drives me up the wall, so my best recommendation would be to try to use one site for everything rather than multiples: one to host your URL, another for you website, and another for the blog. If you can do something like that all together all in one place, it’s the best choice.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I began to address this above, but it’s worth noting separately: we do use *a lot* of tools to keep GS together and running smoothly, and the more you have, the more things you have to keep track of usernames/passwords/where to go for what. It’s best when things are linked–like how we use Google Chat for our face to face e-meetings rather than having everyone sign up for something like Skype, which would be another account for them to keep track of. Try to streamline or compartmentalize everything in a way that is user-friendly and works for everyone. We link to Google Drive files via Trello and have tried to cut back on sending too many emails/posting anything “important” to the Facebook page now that Trello has become so integral to our process. It is taking some people longer to catch up/get on board than others, which creates some miscommunications, but all in all, the way we do things works, as is evidenced by the print journal we put out every 6 months. I really don’t think, at this point, we’d be able to do it without a majority of these tools at our disposal, and I hope anyone running a journal might benefit from implementing some of them/using tools they already have access/accounts to in a more beneficial way. Also, I am sure there are things I’m missing! Feel free to comment about which tools are essential to YOUR lit journal’s ability to keep on keeping on!

The post TOOL KIT: Best Resources for Running A Lit Journal appeared first on Real Pants.