Twitter Etiquette – Who Knew?

This article from online magazine Nerve explores the new social networking device Twitter (which, yes, has been around for a while now).

Basically, it tells you what NOT to do when you tweet. And I can definitely agree. Why Twitter about the most inane happenings in your life? It’s amazing how much drudgery is tweeted in 140 characters or less.

To check out the “Nine Essentials of Twitter Etiquette,” click here: http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/cutler/nine-essentials-of-twitter-etiquette/

This is the essential guide for those who tweet and for those just thinking about starting.

Literary World Floundering?

Major publishers have made cutbacks, literary magazines have changed publishing frequencies.  For as many new magazines and presses that are starting out, many are throwing in the towel and calling it quits.

And why is this?

M-O-N-E-Y!

Well, some of it has to due with personal health and commitment issues (mainly for online, but for some print magazines as well). There are a lot of magazines folding due to the fact that subscriptions are down and they cannot keep publishing if they can’t even break even. Some magazines that have been housed and supported at universities find their funding sources cut off, meaning they have to scramble to find a source of income to keep publishing.

It is really sad. Contests have been suspended, some magazines that paid contributors for publishing their work have had to either cut down the amount or stop paying altogether.

Despite the floundering of literary publishing, the staples are still around, from the Hudson Review to The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review to Shenandoah. There are also new magazines springing up (many of them online, but some new print magazines such as Paul Revere’s Horse) that hope to challenge the decline that is being seen.

There are also new presses popping up, hoping to succeed where traditional publishing seems to be struggling. Digital media, e-books, POD – they are jumping onto the digital revolution, believing more people will flock to electronic media versus traditional print media.

Give me a musty old book anytime, I hate reading online if I can avoid it, but there are a lot of people taking to the new digital age.

Anderbo Looking for Novelist

Anderbo, an online lit mag, has put out a call looking for a novelist.  They hope to produce their first full-length novel for the website. Anderbo recently was published in Dzanc’s Best of the Web for 2009 for the story “The Right of Passengers” by Waqar Ahmed.

***
ANDERBO SEEKS NOVELIST:
Anderbo.com is seeking to post ONE unpublished entire novel on its website by December 1, 2009 for at least the following six months. We will look at the FIRST 30 PAGES (up to 10,000 words) of your e-manuscript and decide within 60 days if we want to see more. THERE IS NO READING FEE and all literary rights will remain with the author. No novel submissions will be accepted after September 1st. We guarantee to choose and use one manuscript, and to pay an honorarium of $300 to the chosen author upon publication. For technical guidelines and address see http://www.anderbo.com/guidelines.html

NewPages Reviews New Issues of Literary Magazines

NewPages updated their Literary Magazine Review column yesterday. It contains 11 new reviews of the current (or one of the most recent issues) of online and print magazines.

Magazines reviewed in this batch of reviews are:

The Antioch Review :: The Chaffin Journal :: ChiZine :: Eclectica :: The Farallon Review :: Journal of Ordinary Thought :: Manoa :: The Missouri Review :: storySouth :: The Sun :: Tuesday

This edition even contains a double review of the two most recent issues of Tuesday; an art project. So go and dip your toes into the world of literary magazines and maybe you’ll even be inspired to purchase the issues reviewed or even to subscribe to the magazines in question.

New Online Lit Mag Premiers

SIR! a new journal of poetry and prose has its first issue online. This new online magazine boasts some well-known names in the online and print literary scene, such as Blake Butler, Ryan Walsh, and Mike Young.

It is a nice, new online magazine with a good collection of poetry and prose. I don't know why, but I am usually a bigger fan of poetry than short prose - maybe because I can't write short prose to save my life. It takes quite a bit of talent to make short prose work, to tell a story so concisely. Anyways, I digress.

This new magazine is definitely worth checking out. I thoroughly enjoyed the poems by Chad Reynolds and I loved Brooklyn Copeland's "How Many in Their Daring." Spencer Troxell's poems add some well-crafted humor into the mix. His poem about fruit flies was amusing and definitely rang true this year. At least in Michigan where fruit flies seemed to appear in abundance and one had to wonder where all those little buggers were coming from.

Charles Lennox's piece "What the Other is Thinking" is an interesting look at the connection between lovers and how they realize that they aren't as connected as they thought. Another favorite among the collection is Elisa Gabbert's "Blogpoem the Second." It really hits home with writing and the internet today.

All in all, this is a great new online magazine. Definitely a must for people starving for great writing who can't necessarily afford subscriptions for print journals. Besides the poetry and prose, there is also a page of links to other magazines that are great sources for more good writing. Take a gander at the site and enjoy a few chuckles.
[http://sir-magazine.org/]