~

Since this post over at the Guardian blog first appeared, people have had a few things to say about the subject it addresses: indie publishing. I have read many of these posts and liked what was said:

Blake Butler

Scott Esposito

Matt Bell

Josh Maday

Shane Jones (I) and (II)

Adam Robinson
(also read what Joe Young wrote in the comments section of Adam's post)

Have I missed any?

Somewhat related to this - check out the latest issue(pdf) of the Mississippi Review. It's a special issue that focuses on the 'literary magazine' after 100 years. What I've read so far has been interesting: they have a section of quotations by various literary people who have been involved with literary magazines over the years; an interview with Robert Fogarty of the Antioch Review; a discussion among various editors about the future of literary magazines. I haven't read everything (yet), and I also believe most of the articles/interviews have been shortened for the online version - the print issue will have more stuff.

Here is a quotation from 'The Future is a Magazine: A Roundtable...':

"The one thing that makes me unhappy about literary magazines is that I don’t know thatthey’re really trying to find an audience, to really be unique, and to live in a world where things are so brand-oriented and people are so busy. In the modern era I think we really have to sort of compete with [these] other things, and I think literary magazines tend towards just hanging low. I think that’s a very high risk position. I still love what’s happening in literary magazines, but I also grew up on them, so I’m curious what’s going to happen. I want them to change and evolve, and I’m not certain that they are evolving."
~Todd Zuniga

I like that Todd said this, I think. It makes sense, sort of? Hold up any print issue of Opium and compare it against, say, another standard print journal and it's not hard to guess which magazine is 'evolving' easily and which is still trying to figure stuff out. This is not to say that many of the standards haven't initiated some sort of interactive features (podcasts, featured print content, exclusive web content, whatever), but that these additions don't feel as strongly integrated as they could be. Later in that roundtable, Aaron Burch talks a little bit about how web content at Hobart both supplements some of the print issues (the 'travel issue' is a good example of this) and also goes in its own direction (the yearly online baseball issue).

I meant to add more things here, but I forgot what I was going to say.