Sherry Chandler

What makes a good e-zine?

Heraclitean Fire has a thoughtful post today about the nature of e-zines:

Don’t try to be a print journal. The real print journals do that already, and you’re never going to look like anything other than a low budget knock-off. That means questioning your assumptions about how a poetry magazine should work. For example: why have periodic ‘issues’? Speaking for myself, my tolerance of reading lots of stuff onscreen at once is lower than reading it in print, so if a large issue of your ezine appears, I’m probably going to read a couple of poems then move on to something else. That happens with print as well, but at least if I have a physical copy of the journal lying around my house I’m more likely to pick it up again and read some more. On the web, it’s that much less likely.

The pattern Harry describes is exactly my pattern in reading e-zines. There’s something about text on a screen that brings out the attention deficit disorder. Predictably, I suppose, I can stay much longer if I’m producing the text than if I’m passively consuming it. But a piece of online writing has to be really good to keep my attention — and even then I will often make a printout to read.

Harry has some other practical ideas about e-zine design that I suggest you read — even if you aren’t planning to publish one, these thoughts may help you decide why some e-zines succeed better than others.

I like the idea of an RSS feed for a magazine to let you know when new content has been added. The only problem is that I am already way oversubscribed and I don’t know whether one more in-box item would make a reader of me or not. Perhaps it would depend upon whether my click-through found good poems. Well, no, maybe better than good…

And I will add one very basic notion about design: please oh please oh please don’t use colored type on a black background. I just cannot read it and will not even try.

While you’re at it, check The Rik Files, too, for thoughts about what leads you to submit to an e-zine.

Possibly related posts:

Poetry e-zine on a blog model

E-zines: the question of readability

What makes a good anti-war poem?

Used, New, and Out of Print

Miller’s Pond

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