Peace,
Richard

and its not anonymous.

thank you for the cliches

Truth is, most journals are full of sloppy writing, soft ideas, poor thinking, and all manner of third-rate junk.

I hate the MFA world. I am an independent: no degree, no connection to universities. I am a writer and I am published.

Here’s my criteria for submitting to a magazine. It’s simple. I just look at how much they pay. That’s number one. Second is the audience. I look at their circulation (if it’s print) or their hits / ad rate (if it’s onine). I’d sacrifice a little pay for more eyeballs, sometimes, but it’s all about the money.

In other words, 95% of those “journals” are immediate nos for me, since they don’t pay squat.

But that’s how writing should be. It’s how it used to be. If more writers went independent, and avoided the MFA schoolteacher CV “credit” world completely, then there would be less of these lame journals and maybe more real outlets that paid.

Remember, a magazine pays its writers because the magazine is professional, the writers who work for them are pros, and above all they have *readers*. These lamebrain unpaying journals don’t have any of that. Who want them? Not me.

First of all, I understand that your article isn’t an attack on the site.

Second of all, I pretty much agree with what you’re saying. It should be a social thing. Ideally, Litmags.org, like blogs, friends, stories that are passed along, is another part of the web of information. That is why I built in the ability to comment and the social bookmarking (“good mag!”) thing. Ideally, if the site gets enough traffic, the social aspect of sharing thoughts overtakes the whole points/stats thing.

The points system thing is more of a psychological gimmick than anything. It is sort of for your Zelda coins, although I think the better video game analogy is to give people a feeling, like in the world of video games, there is a right thing, a way to score points. People have to get past that initial animal anxiety (will people like me more if i read this and talk about ?) before they can get comfortable and think and enjoy something new for real.

As far as the email I sent goes, I appreciate that it’s hokey. If you could read all the various anxieties I’ve heard from editors about small things on the website being offensive or misleading, you’d understand why it comes off as a kind of standardized pitch (hopefully they aren’t reading this). Not that I think it was wrong of them to be anal. It’s their product, and they have every right to want it represented in a way that matches up with their intentions.

Anyway, perhaps I’ll submit something to NOO. It does have a circulation of 2100. That’s, what, 30 Zelda points? I only need 15 more to get an upgraded sword.