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Comment by asdfasgasdgasdg | Hacker News Reader

The economic reasons for the failure of these types of publications seem pretty obvious. The bar to "putting your stuff out there" has never been lower. These magazines cannot be gatekeepers any longer. While at the same time attention, that dreaded currency, is being spent on a wider and wider variety of pursuits.

I'm curious about the actual volume of literary work being produced compared to days past. For those who still partake: is the work still being produced? Is it harder or easier to find? Is the quality changing?

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> These magazines cannot be gatekeepers any longer.

I reckon they really could, with a bit of smarts. The brands alone are worth so much, in these times of winner-takes-all. Look at the news: anybody can start a blog, but the actual "papers" we turn to are almost invariably old, established brands, even when they clearly suck. And there is so much shit online, respected filters are worth their weight in gold.

One of the problems is indeed the competition with bazillions of stimuli coming down the internet hosepipe every second. People have to make a conscious effort to sit down and read certain material, rather than using it as escapism - on escapism, the mobile internet cannot be beaten.

Another is that there is no economic model anymore. People bought books and magazines convinced that they were paying for distribution costs; in fact, they were also retroactively paying to produce the material. Now that distribution costs are virtually zero, nobody wants to pay anything, and the industry has not been good at making clear that writing and editing cost money.

Another again is that there is massive digital fragmentation: some people will read on kindle, some on phones, some on laptops, and some still want paper. The numbers are so small, for each mode, that they cannot individually sustain much; but supporting them all costs real money.

>People bought books and magazines convinced that they were paying for distribution costs; in fact, they were also retroactively paying to produce the material.

This was the whole "Why aren't ebooks a lot cheaper?" theme. A lot of people assumed that most of the cost was in printing, shipping, and selling physical books whereas that was actually a pretty small slice of where the purchase price went.

And this isn't just a literary magazine thing. My understanding is that science fiction magazines, and I assume other niche publications, are struggling as well. And it's mostly not a case of going to Kindle shorts or whatever. For the most part, short stories, etc. just aren't really much of an income stream for most authors any longer.

> This was the whole "Why aren't ebooks a lot cheaper?" theme. A lot of people assumed that most of the cost was in printing, shipping, and selling physical books whereas that was actually a pretty small slice of where the purchase price went.

Traditionally authors got around 10% (or less) of the retail price of a book. Same for music. But they also got an advance, which complicates things. But still the bulk of the price was in distribution.

> But still the bulk of the price was in distribution.

As I understand (largely from contact a while ago from insiders in the TTRPG industry), for print runs of the sizes many non-mass-market books get (which is still going to effect ebooks of similar market sizes the same way) fixed costs like editing, layout, etc. take a lot (layout especially in things that aren't just plain text.)

As I recall, printing for a typical hardcover was about $2 per copy to which you can add some for warehousing, shipping, returns, etc. (A qty 1 softcover print on demand book is <$5 shipped.) But leaving aside distributor cuts (which in the case of Amazon applies to both physical and digital books), most of the cost is in everything a publisher does and its cost structure.

The volume is higher, by a lot. More books are being published now, because the barriers are so low. The problem is that the quantity is overwhelming, no one can sift through all of it. Literary magazines were never "gatekeeping" in the sense that it's never been necessary to publish your work in a literary magazine in order to be a successful author, but they were an opportunity for authors to get their work in front of a fairly dedicated audience.

As for quality, debatable. We're living in a golden age if you're into YA fiction, that's for sure. I'm not an expert, but I've found international literature more interesting than domestic stuff for some time. Unfortunately, a lot of these magazines were also the first places foreign authors appeared in English translation, so that stuff could easily become less accessible soon.

Controlling access to "opportunity for authors to get their work in front of a fairly dedicated audience" sounds awfully like gatekeeping.

There's always going to be some kind of gatekeeping at some point in the process--even in a purely digital marketplace, there's limited attention. Small publications like this are pretty much the least limiting form of this: relatively cheap to produce, many of them with only a few employees, publishing many short pieces, often skewing toward authors without existing followings.

There's a huge difference between controlling access to a niche audience which in large part exists because of the publication itself, and controlling access to publication in general.

> so that stuff could easily become less accessible soon

Surely if there's no lit magazine to publish them, they'll publish their stuff on the web? And then it'll be available (even if translated with Google translate).

Do you really think it's worth reading poetry translated via Google Translate?

There are pockets of new literary work being produced. The cultural soil is not suitable for its widespread proliferation, so one really has to look for its rosebuds and morel clutches. What we select for as a society are dandelions, and literature simply does not possess the ability to reproduce in such volume.

There is no lack of work being produced. My wife (a writer) subscribes to several literary magazines, none of which are associated with a college or university. These journals seem to be doing just fine, between subscriptions and grants. And she is always receiving information about newer journals, or journals that we've not come across before.

Which magazines would your wife recommend? Would be interesting to know what others find worth subscribing to (out of the many, many that one could subscribe to).

yes it's still being produced. publications like the believer make it easier to find. you gotta be plugged into writers to know where to look otherwise. the quality is great, regardless of it being in a publication or self published, though a curated publication with editors and an aesthetic vision is obviously, in most cases, better.

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