Well, we open it up to questions from the audience.
Is there anything you'd like to ask the panelists?
I'm just wondering like, if you publish something on a website,
is it like an archive in a way?
Is it going to stay there for a long time?
Or is that--
I'm not sure how that works.
It depends.
It depends on the journal.
If you published something in DIAGRAM,
it will stay there forever or until I die, at which point
perhaps, if my estate doesn't pay the bill.
I mean, then who knows it goes away,
or maybe it'll be archived like the Wayback Machine.
I mean, to some extent, that's probably,
it's an interesting question for librarians.
How do you archive?
How do you catalog?
And we have an ISSN and we are indexed
by the American humanities index.
So there are certain things that you
can do to I think to give yourself
a better shot as a magazine of being around in the long term.
But you know, it's never a guarantee.
I mean, even with print journals, it's not a guarantee.
I mean, try to find a copy of Issue
two of the "Snorer Review," which is UA's grad student run
journal.
I'm speaking, I don't know about you too,
but I mean, any given issue, you only publish so many.
A lot of them, dogs eat it.
Some of them, I mean, some of them will be archived.
Actually if you want to find out,
I'm sure the Poetry Center is by far, your best bet.
Well, I mean, they were one of the few really good resources
for that in the country.
And so I think it really varies.
Whereas for instance, like the people
that I publish in Warrior Web, including
Joan Houlihan, the poet and critic that I love.
She was really angry when her publication disappeared.
And it did disappear, it was gone.
And I freaked out on the editor, and they
brought it back in a really some sort of a subservient way, so
you at least, get to the archive.
But I think, I don't know.
It's hard to say.
But there's a lot of data, so it's
anyone's guess as to how long any of this will be around.
Well, like Andrew says, it depends.
For instance, in the directing code,
all the past issues since April of 2000,
and we're in our 21st issue this time are all online,
so they're all still there.
It is true that some web publications just poof,
they're gone.
For instance, there were a lot of literary magazines
that were on geocities, and because you could
get on a free-hosting if you let them
run their ad along the side of the page, and all of those
disappeared when that company basically
withdrew that whole website and that option.
This, in some respects, in the United States is behind.
For instance, the Oxford Library has an extensive catalog
and archiving system of many online publications.
For instance, I was in a collaborative writing project
that was conducted online on several poetry lists,
and all of that work that was written by various poets
during three months [INAUDIBLE] on one occasion
and two months on another.
It's now our archived than the Oxford library.
And the same thing has happened in Australia
where a number of University Libraries
have archived all sorts of these online presences, magazines, et
cetera, and lists activities.
We have, I think, more going on here in the way
than those particular countries do just
in terms of sheer numbers.
But there are some websites or some magazines that
have regular archives, but it is often
very dependent upon just the circumstances.
There's a little bit of a trade off with that though.
I mean, in that try to find a poem in journal x.
If they're on the internet, you Google the poem,
chances are good it's going to pop up real fast.
And that sort of instant gratification, as a teacher
is really useful for me, so I'm trying
to find a particular poem.
Sometimes I have time, but you know,
I'm not that good of a teacher sometimes.
So I just need to Google this, and if it's there,
great, let's go.
So I mean, there's a trade that you make immediately available.
And I think ultimately, like no one really knows, right.
I mean, we're in this tremendous transition right now.
I mean, and again, I'm going back to print to me,
we're in the biggest transition and publishers,
we don't even really know what's going to happen.
The e-book, I mean, are there going to be print books?
I mean, I think there's always going to be a place for print.
And I think it's going to be these really wonderful books
that are these just well-crafted,
maybe poetry would be the best form,
but I think in terms of are they going to stay online,
I just don't think we know.
I think everything is just sort of moving
in this other direction now, and we're all just
trying to figure out what's going on.
Google probably has a plan.
[LAUGHTER]
So it may all be online, but it might be all in their name.
I'm just curious for all of you, I mean,
I think of the way a lot of like, I read a reading series
and I think of how--
I think of diagram, for example, moving between genres and forms
that I think of reading series sometimes
integrating performance.
And then I think of YouTube, which
has videos and this sort of movement between YouTube
and not so much Facebook and Twitter, but online,
and cross-genre, and what you can put in a book,
and what you can put in an e-book,
and then what you can put in an online publication.
And do you see some sort of relationship
between video creation or performance
in books publishing?
I mean, how do you publish a performance?
How do you publish?
I don't know, it just, I think of that because I dance,
and so maybe I don't know.
It's weird but I'm curious.
Do you have any thoughts on it?
So what we might do is we might--
in our book, put a website, and say see the website
if you want to see a live performance or reading
of this particular poet's work.
It's so much more accessible now.
So back in, even just a couple of years ago,
we were publishing poetry with CDs or disks,
and now that's like what do you do with the CD?
No one wants the CDs.
Libraries don't want that one because they get lost, right?
And so now that's kind of passe, so now we
do add website links to our website
or to the actual print book, go to this website
if you want to hear this, or.
Well, I mean, it's certainly one of the advantages
of being online is you can as long as you have the bandwidth,
or even like a link to YouTube.
We can do video, we can do flash.
We can do full color, which was a super expensive when
I worked at Black Warrior Review, we put as much color
as we want.
We can go crazy.
We can have audio.
I mean, you don't have to pay a certain amount of web
hosting costs but that's gone down so much.
That I mean, not to be clear, to be able to do anything
doesn't necessarily make it easier
to do anything in particular.
And it doesn't necessarily make it better,
but it's certainly it removes a lot
of the financial constraints on print publishing.
Like, you're publishing a long poem or a long story.
That's 50 pages in a print journal.
They have to love it that much more
to want to devote that much of their journal to it.
And we do to some extent, it's kind
of a pain to lay out 50 pages.
But there's no real financial disincentive there.
But I
Don't know.
I mean, I think of a magazine like Born magazine,
which is one of my favorite online magazines
defunct as of this year.
I'm sad to say, which they specialize in multimedia stuff,
and they would hook up a sound artist with a writer
with a video, some who does video,
and make these really cool, and sometimes kind of half-assed.
I mean, pieces that are all online.
And so to me, that's what's so exciting.
And maybe if we don't do we have like e-paper,
we can do that in the book because I would love,
love, love to be able to do books that actually have
a digital paper, and you can do stuff in our interactive
in some way beyond how interactive text generally
is, if it's any good.
But we won't know how that's going to work for a while.
But I can almost guarantee you that if that
happens, where it's going to happen,
will be at the small presses.
It will not be happening at the big presses, at least
not until it's a proven technology and like a winner,
and maybe if it has a werewolf in it that's being milked.
[LAUGHTER]
And on that image, we have to include.
Thank you so much for attending and we
do have a reading coming up, I believe next on the scheduled.
Yeah, in 10 minutes, TC Tolbert will be reading here,
or in the audience, correct?
Yes, yes.
All right.
Thank you very much, fellows.
Thank you.