WEBVTT

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So given our topic, publishing
in the 21st century,

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I think the most
obvious place to start

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is talking about
internet publishing.

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Rebecca, your journal, the
Drunken Boat is online.

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And Ander, New Michigan
Press publishes in print,

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but your journal
DIAGRAM is online.

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And Kristen the University
of Arizona Press

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publishes both physical
books and online books.

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I'm curious, how do you decide
whether a publication should

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be online or print?

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Or why did you choose print
or online for your press?

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What were those considerations?

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And I don't care
what order we go in.

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I'm putting this up for you.

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Oh, OK.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well, actually, at the
University of Arizona Press,

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all of our books are in print.

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And we do have some titles
online on our website.

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But those are largely
out-of-print books

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that we're trying to make
available to the bigger,

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wider audience.

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So right now, we
are in the process

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of trying to figure
out how to navigate

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this digital revolution
of publishing.

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And we hope to be publishing
e-books and online books pretty

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soon here in the
next few months.

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I started on my journal
DIAGRAM about a little

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more than 10 years ago,
because we just celebrated

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our 10th anniversary.

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And I started it when I was--

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I had just finished
my editorship

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at Black Warrior Review, which
is the literary journal out

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of the University of Alabama,
which has a pretty good budget,

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and they have a
staff of 25 or 30.

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And I saw at the time-- and this
was still kind of in the early

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days of the internet,
relatively speaking--

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that I stumbled on these
sites like Web del Sol.

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And it occurred
to me that what we

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needed to have at Black Warrior,
when I was working there,

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some sort of online
component, especially

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because I found really
fast that when I went to--

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I think, in my first AWP
Conference, Associated Writing

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Programs Conference
in 2000 or so,

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that there was a lot of
people that were publishing

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interesting work online.

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And I've been working in--

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I've always been
a computer person,

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so I've worked with HTML before,
and I've worked in the web

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before.

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And so what I did is
I tried to start--

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I started an arm of
Black Warrior Review,

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called the Warrior Web,
that would have-- it would

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publish additional content.

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And we'd still keep
the print journal,

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but we'd also publish
extra stuff online,

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because we have so much good
work that we couldn't really

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publish at all.

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And it was great for two issues
that I was the editor for,

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and then I was no
longer the editor.

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And then, all of a
sudden, the next editor

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killed the project
totally, thus making

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one of the potential downsides
of the online very obvious.

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That it didn't physically
exist in the same way,

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and it went away.

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So in my anger over this, and
the decisions that I had made,

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I understood that I
clearly had the best

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taste among all of the people
in the editorial staff, which

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is the only--

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which is actually a very
useful thing as a writer

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and as an editor, because then I
wanted to start my own journal.

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And so I started a
journal called DIAGRAM.

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And we just started it
online just because we

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couldn't afford to do print.

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There was no option.

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I mean, I'd worked with
letterpress printing

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in Alabama's printing and
binding program, the Book Arts

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program.

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And it started online, and
it had always been online.

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And at the time, there
weren't very many--

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there were not a lot
of online journals.

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And the ones that
were, a lot of times,

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they published
their own editors.

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They wouldn't have
professional turnaround.

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They didn't have a good design.

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And they didn't
even have something

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like a reliable regular
publication schedule,

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or an ISSN, or
anything like that.

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And so we got all of that.

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From the get-go,
we really wanted

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to make sure that we did as much
as we could to convince people

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that we were serious
about being a journal,

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and we were going to be
around, that we weren't online.

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We would publish--
we were online,

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but that doesn't mean
that we were fly by night.

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There's plenty of print
journals that print an issue,

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and then go under
because the editors have

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something else to do.

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And so even a couple of
years later, we would--

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even the Black Warrior's
a great journal.

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And then we had probably
3,000 subscribers.

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Two-- I think, in
our third year,

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we started to really look
at our traffic in DIAGRAM.

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And we would get over a
million hits, certainly

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over a million hits a year.

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We'd get tons of hits.

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And that worked out to something
like 30,000 unique viewers.

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And they're not just in America.

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They were all over the world.

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And they were weirdos like us.

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They really liked this idea
of publishing schematics,

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and hybrid texts,
and things like that.

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And to me, it
became very obvious

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very quickly that, at
least for short form work,

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online had major advantages
that print didn't have.

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Our budget is still
almost nothing.

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We publish online, and it's--

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I mean, a lot has changed
in the last 10 years,

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clearly, between how
things have moved.

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And now, if you apply
for an NEA grant,

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they actually count
online publications,

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even though certain
tenure committees

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don't include online.

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So to me, the war has been
won in favor of the online.

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Having said that, I
also publish a print.

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We publish print anthologies,
and I love the book.

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So my press is all in print.

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We don't publish anything
digitally, which may or may not

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change as we get a reasonable
e-book format that'll actually

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do line breaks reliably.

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Anyway, that's enough for now.

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Wow, this question, I've
only published online.

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And that's interesting, what
Ander said about anchor,

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because that was one of
the things that motivated

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me to start the Drunken Boat.

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I was living then in an
isolated corner of New Mexico.

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And I wanted to get
involved more in a writing

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international type community.

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And so I signed
up to be an editor

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of a then-online publication.

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And I was promised complete
editorial control, which--

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and we seemed to have a
good working relationship.

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So I put this issue together.

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And just about the time it
was supposed to go online,

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the person who ran
the website said,

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oh, no, this is what I'm going
to put in there for your cover.

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And these are the images I want.

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And I felt that the
images not only did not

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fit with the content
that I had gotten

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from various contributors,
but that there

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was a way in which it cast
a negative light upon some

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of those contributions.

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So I said, well, what
happened to editorial control?

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And so, basically,
at that point,

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my position was entirely
volunteer, so I quit.

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But I still wanted to have
an online publication.

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So I thought, well,
the only thing

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that's stopping me is that
I don't know how to do HTML.

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And I realized that, in a
way, with online publication,

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it's not about inventory
or money or the funding

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that you have to back you up
because it is very inexpensive.

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You don't have to
worry about the length

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of the work, the format of
the work, how much it costs,

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or any of that once you've
got the website, the domain

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name, and the host that
you pay for your space.

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But it's knowledge.

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It's knowing how to
do that HTML work.

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And that's what I didn't have.

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And in this other
situation, that's

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what the person who
ran the website had,

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was the computer know-how.

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So at that point, I
decided that the easiest

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way to get around the
conundrum was to learn HTML.

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So I got one of those
books, how to teach yourself

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HTML in 24 hours.

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And it actually works.

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[CHUCKLES]

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And so-- and I had
some help, too,

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from one of my
daughters at that time.

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And this was 2001.

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In 1999, she had built a robot
that she ran from a website

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that she built. And
she was like, 15.

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So if I was doing something
that wasn't working,

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I could be like,
what about this?

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So I think that
online publication,

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in terms of journals,
particularly,

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is a great thing, because
you don't have to worry

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about the cost of publication.

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And this means, for me,
in publishing the Drunken

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Boat since April of 2000, that
I've been able to give space

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to a lot of work that has
been considered to be too

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much for the regular print
journal, or some print format,

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or it's too long,
it's too experimental,

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doesn't fit within the standard
format of the page, et cetera.

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So it's a great place to
explore these enthusiasms,

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to let writers have this
space for the innovative

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and the explorations that
they might be interested in.

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It is true that line
breaks are a problem.

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But you can get around
those in terms of just

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by doing the HTML
work to get around.

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And then you have to
look at the pages in all

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these different browsers.

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But it does also attract
a great readership.

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And I'm not sure that the people
who are reading poetry online

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are the same people
who are reading books,

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because there seems to be
a much different and more

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numerous interest in
online publication

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than you usually see
with a print journal.

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