The Future Part 2

Autumn of 2009 found me as an adjunct faculty member on a very collegiate looking campus. I walked through the old buildings which were half vacant and somewhat crumbling in the quiet and abandoned nooks. It felt good to walk through the trees on the outskirts of campus as the old trees began their transition to fall colors and finally shed those leaves outright. The entire fall semester was such a learning experience for me. I was still fresh out of graduate school and believed I could be, if the experience was good to me,a college instructor. Incidentally, it was not a positive experience and after the semester ended, I never taught in a formal classroom again.

The two things that really annoyed me were the two predictable things. At the time the economy was failing, or had failed. When the economy dips, it's predictable that college enrollment will increase. I found the administration at the college to be very out of touch with the outside world. They were scrambling to find classrooms and instructors for recession refugees turned enrolled students. The administrators also seemed somewhat annoyed that there was an increase of work due to these external circumstances. The second thing that really bothered me was the cellphones in my classroom. I had a few legitimate students, the rest were cellphones. At least that was the way I saw them, I saw them as cellphones. Needless to say, I could not wait to get through the 17 week semester.

There were all sorts of other writers in my life at the time. Many of them were teachers too. When I shared my frustration, most of them replied with an apathetic surrendering that made me fear for my future. And furthermore, I saw many of my colleagues trapped in a sort of adjunct hell that seemed to force them into teaching more and more classes with no money, no promise of the future and no time to write. I also had a few writers in my circle who were writing for newspapers, and although none of us knew it then, their days writing were already numbered.

It was one of my dear friends, Mark, who I confided in. At the time he was still writing for the weekly. He was very knowledgeable and capable when it came to website design which was something he was pursuing part time. He and I had had many months together talking reading and writing and life. I confided in him. I didn't want to teach. I wanted to be writer solely. I also thought I wanted to start a literary magazine. He was instantly excited about the idea. We enlisted the help of two other very knowledgeable people, Janice and Jana.

At the time, there were about five thousand literary magazines operating in the United States. Two thirds of them were attached to colleges and universities. Literary magazines and universities have always gone together. Funding, I suppose, or endless free labor, keep the college magazine alive. The remaining magazines, I discovered fell all over the board, some were for profit, some designed for advertising space, and not more than a few were tangible indicators of passion. At the time when I wanted a magazine of our own, most journals were still in print. Very few were online, and the ones that were, were often online components of tradition print.

As we were forming the magazine, I pronounced vehemently that I wanted an online magazine. Everyone was shocked. I remember everyone being shocked anyway. Here I was, the least technical guy of our group, the least likely to embrace new technology, and I was suggesting a virtual magazine. Mark, for one, was eager to try it.

In the very early days, especially as we made the small press circuit, we were nearly shunned being an online journal. No one will take you seriously. Online is not legitimate. Go print or go home. We got grief because of our name too. But we persevered. What I knew then was that it would be incredibly cheap to operate an online magazine. We had a small amount of money, and I new we would have blown the whole of our financial status on one print issue with no promise to curate a second. I knew that an online magazine we could afford to endow for at least a decade without relying on advertising dollars or worse still, money from writers.

In the ten years of Umbrella Factory Magazine, I saw so many strange things. One of the strangest, of course, was the fall of the print journal. The fall of the print journal was in direct correlation to the rise of the online journal. At the half life of our magazine, there were more online magazines than not. Then the most curious of things began to happen.

Online magazines started to become more pricey to run. All the free services we got to enjoy when we started up our magazine suddenly were not free anymore. Then came the small ways to make a buck a or two in order to pay for webhosting, Facebook advertising or submission managing services: you can charge the writers who submit to your magazine. The argument, of course, is that in the olden days, a writer had to pay for postage and the SASE, so why not accept that when submitting online? I could never swallow it. I mean, why the hell would I give a magazine I don't know money to submit my story when I know that I have a 90% chance of getting a rejection? So, here's a buck, or five, and my story which you may or may not read and I'll patiently wait 90 to 120 days for you to tell me: “sorry your piece doesn't fit our needs at this time, best of luck placing it elsewhere.”

Incidentally, once other magazines began to charge for submissions, and we did not, our submission pool increased and our content improved.

The future? I feel like I saw the rise and fall of the online literary magazine in the small ten years I was in the culture. I already saw the decline of the online lit mag. Now, with platforms like wattpad.com, why do you need a formal magazine? Wattpad, I believe will kill the literary magazine as we know it. With Wattpad there are no editors. There is only the direct link from writer to reader. There is no rejection, not in the formal way anyhow. And it's still free, or at least it still has a free component. It's not based on merit, but rather on likes and views and shares. It's a social media writing/reading outlet. I do not agree with this system, but I know it's only going to get bigger as literary magazines continue on the current trajectory.

A future without literary magazines is probably not going to happen. I think and I hope that there will always be literary magazines available to writers. They are, after all, for writers. They are CV builders. They are important. But in order to stay relevant, at least the online magazines, things need to change. I think the more successful online magazines offer something unique. Some offer virtual classes. Some offer manuscript reviews (this is a service worth paying for). Some participate in third party anthologies.

Otherwise, current trends, not so good. Don't you think it sad that the online magazine killed the print journal because of overhead and that social media platforms will do the same for the “traditional” online magazine for the same reason?