Submission call: Send your work to Versal 11!

Amsterdam's acclaimed literary & arts journal, Versal, is now reading for its 11th edition. Its editors are looking for excellent prose, poetry, art and the inbetween.

Guidelines and submissions here: www.versaljournal.org/guidelines

A $2 submission fee applies, or submit for free between October 1 and October 7, 2012.

For a close look at Versal's tastes, purchase the current no. 10 or a back issue: www.versaljournal.org/order. Pre-order Versal 11 when you submit and we’ll waive the submission fee.

The deadline for submissions to Versal 11 is January 15, 2013.

From a ten-year editor, part 4: Occupy the slush pile

“I guess what I was inquiring was if you take solicited submissions from authors outside the slush pile. For all my lit mag publications in the next year prior to my launch, we've done the discussions between me, my agent, and editors. that's [sic] how most authors (new or established) do it.”

“I don’t know you, but I do feel old enough to take the liberty (or, if you prefer, to be so cheeky) of sending you a press release setting out my recent job as a writer. It’s up to you to decide what to do with: asking me an excerpt, a free ebook copy or putting this press release in your ‘archive’ (aka wastepaper basket).”

There’s a tumblr for weird letters to lit mag editors, right?

I recently spoke to two creative writing classes at the University of Amsterdam. We spoke about Versal, submitting to literary journals, the writing process, and editing a mag. I was mostly coherent I think; class started at something like 9am and I was delirious from getting up so early (yeah, ok).

When I have a chance to speak about these things I love, I often find my way towards opinions or conclusions that I’ve long had but never quite directly articulated. Thanks to the sharp questions from the students or my early rise from bed or their professor Jane Lewty’s acute promptings, or all of the above, we had important and insightful discussions in both classes. There were three things we spoke about that stuck out to me, that I’d like to share here. Call them things I’ve learned along the way.

The first is: being a “writer”. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to actually believe that writerly fame is possible. I’ve met too many writers now and read too many works to have a grasp of what that really means anymore. And I told the students that. I boomed something and waved my arms: “There are seven billion people on this planet. No one’s going to be famous anymore. All you've got is inspiration, that little ego inside of you, and god.”

The second: being a woman writer. The “little ego inside of you” is important. Obviously for everyone, that we for-lack-of-a-better-word embrace our drive and talent and look the world square in the eyes. But in all my ten years of editing Versal, only ONE woman has ever contacted me outright and asked me to publish her (cf. first quote at the start of this post). All of the others have been men. I don’t know them, they don’t know me, but they are sure of themselves and they tell me this. I don’t agree with the tactic of course — theirs is an extreme approach. But as I’ve grown into my role as Versal’s editor, as well as into my own poetry, I have cultured an ego enough to steel me through. Through what? Not rejection letters, that's not really a big deal. But standing on stage after the booming voices of men. But taking my place at the microphone during panels. But writing things like this post. But writing at all.

The third: being part of your community. And here is where we are all humbled. I suggested to the students that, given the chance, they should seek out community whether online, among themselves, or in the canal belt of Amsterdam. They didn’t necessarily have to get involved and organize, but they could. They could also just attend events. Become a part. And one day even join a lit mag team. I suggested they not try to start one, unless they really saw a need (in an interview with Roxane Gay not too long ago we spoke about the over-proliferation of lit mags, esp. in the US). But rather bring their talents and energies and passions to a project that is already underway — because funding isn’t great no matter where you go now, and lit mags and lit orgs in general could really use the help.

What I didn’t understand when I started Versal at the green age of 23 is that a literary journal is in and of itself a community — not just a mechanism of that community. What bugs me about the writers who email us and tell us how great they are and ask us to publish them is that 100% of the time they have not bought Versal, attended any Versal events, or even seemed to have perused our website. They are asking to be made part of the community without joining the community. Without building the relationships that are really what drive this. They feel owed, and maybe they are, but I’m not the purseholder. 

As I’ve seen Versal grow these last ten years, and as I’ve grown, I’ve become increasingly thankful of the community it has given me. And in turn, Versal continues to be my contribution back, my way to be a part. And the more that I’ve worked to be a part, the more I’ve enjoyed some of the trappings of being a writer. I’ll never be Ezra-Pound famous, I’ll probably hang out in the slush pile most of my life, but I’ll really enjoy all of this anyway.

Submit that work.

Submit today!

Deadline: January 15

Website's back! Now I'm off to Malta.

Oh bless the shining stars. Today was, like, 2003. When websites really did go down for half a day.

If you tried to reach us today. We're sorry. Our web hosts went bonkers on a server.

Anyway, we're back.

And now: I'm off to Malta. Me and the lady are celebrating our one-year. Robert, Sarah and the rest of the Versal gang are going to hold down the fort while we're away. If anything weird happens (again), blame them.

Versal's contributor payment matching scheme

In case you missed it, from our guidelines:

NEW! We are now working towards paying our contributors. Funds collected from contributor payment donations will be matched by Versal and distributed equally among Versal 10's contributors. Contributors will also receive one gratis copy and the option to order additional copies at a discount.

and

All proceeds from the submission fee go towards production costs. The optional $1 added goes towards contributor payment, and will be matched dollar for dollar by Versal’s other fundraising activities.

Maybe it won't be much, at first, but it will be a start towards rectifying at least one inequality in our literary economy, at least where Versal is concerned.

Going Dutch

So it seems that the capitalist system is failing small press publishing in America.

Though I'm no economist, the economics of this look pretty straightforward to me. The literary economy is saturated with presses and journals. The consumers in this economy are consuming what they reasonably can. But the revenue is spread so thin that, in general, no press or journal can survive without external cash injections from grants or credit cards.

In the wake of BlazeVOX-gate, lots is coming out about small press publishing. For the first day or so I think I really did read almost every comment, because I'm really interested in what good can come out of this discussion, for writers and publishers alike. I've admittedly fallen behind on my reading but have a bazillion tabs open in Firefox.

The following list is a generalized distillation of some of what's rising to the surface (at least of what I've seen so far):

• A general consensus that we (writers and publishers) value transparency where (at least) money is involved (and I think we may be starting to admit that money is always involved, even if it's in an "intangible" form like doing one's own book promotion)
• Professionalism is a pretty good default to stand by
• A general consensus that there are not enough consumers for the number of presses and journals (or that the level of consumption itself is too low)
• There are people who believe that the right of publication should be free, and people who believe in shared economic models (for lack of a better term)
• There are people who believe art and money cannot or should not coexist, and people who believe that they can (or at least have to)
• Many publishers are experimenting with new business models, or considering them
• We all at least seem to agree that we wish things were different, or easier, or both

A few months ago I asked on this very blog how we, writers, could improve our participation in the literary economy. I am a writer and an editor, so I include myself in this question. I have thought about this a lot over the past few months; the BlazeVOX discussion has, if anything, helped my vocabulary along so I can grapple with it better.

In a nutshell, answering this question starts with me just being me. In other words, what do I do and what more can I do? (Now I feel like Johannes and the hippie.)

I asked myself what my consumption is in the literary economy (what I take out of it, so to speak. I'll leave out what I put in to the economy for now). In brief, it is, in no particular order:
- Supporting KickStarter campaigns of presses and journals I like
- Subscribing to my favorite literary mags
- Subscribing to one or two "seasons" of presses I love
- Buying a literary journal I haven't seen before but want to submit to
- Buying extra copies of journals in which my work is published
- Registering for AWP
- Buying about a suitcase full of small press books at AWP
- Purchasing gifts for friends and family from small presses and online bookstores like Powell's
- Writing checks for contest fees (which isn't easy, because I really do forget how to write a check)

So let's say all of us are doing roundabout the above. But that's clearly not enough to sustain all those presses and journals out there that we love. What else can we do?

When I saw that 1913 a journal of forms was actually open for submissions, I rushed over to its website. I freakin' love 1913. I saw it has a small reading fee. I didn't hesitate. If anything, I thought, hell, there's no chance my poetry is going to be accepted by 1913 but I'll throw this journal $3 so other people will be and can be and so that 1913 can be a journal.

And that's when it hit me.

I'M A SOCIALIST.

Blame it on Holland. Blame it on my hippie parents or my Montessori preschool. Blame it on my feminism or big Catholic family or the fact that I'm short. Or gay.

I believe in the basic tenants of socialism because I believe in sharing. And I'm starting to see the literary economy like I see my healthcare coverage in Holland:

I pay €135 a month for premium healthcare coverage. On top of that I pay (highish) taxes for healthcare based on my income each year, and a max €175 co-pay (for the whole year). I don't see additional bills once I've hit the yearly co-pay max. And here's the kickers: I have a chronic illness. I take medication daily and see doctors and have blood tests regularly. I also go to a physical therapist once a month for preventative care so that I don't injure myself climbing. Massages are covered. Dentist trips are covered. Hell, until recently, vitamins were covered. Oh yeah, EVERYONE IN HOLLAND IS COVERED.

It ain't perfect, but I don't pay out of pocket for an emergency ambulance ride either.

Imagine we all took a socialist attitude towards publishing, but one of course that didn't rely on "outside" government support. What if we said to ourselves, sure, I'll pay this $3 reading fee or this $20 contest fee or I'll share the costs of my book's publication so that not only I can continue to enjoy the privilege of print but others can as well.

I don't mean to demean the seriousness of our human right to healthcare, but it serves as a good example of where my head's going. It's going away from the economic model I was taught growing up (me! me! me!) to the one I've learned to love in my adopted home (all! all! all!). Johannes Goransson brought up the problematized "Author" in his post and I'd like to take that a step further and complicate the MY WORK IS GREAT AND YOU ARE PRIVILEGED IF YOU GET TO PUBLISH IT idea as being the major contribution any of us make to the world of literature.

Clearly I'm simplifying things. But I hope I'm at least making my point. If we all agree we're committed to seeing writing in print, esp. non-mainstream writing that is not part of the normal capitalist Amazon economy, then does it not follow that we all join in the economics to make that happen? And thus change our minds a bit on what that looks like? The world has changed drastically since I was taught to detest submission fees and vanity presses. Can we not change as well?

I also just want to point out one more thing. In my final post about the help Versal got from some €3000/day strategy consultants, I mentioned that one of the first ideas the consultants had was to charge a fee for submissions. Keep in mind these guys have no idea what's going on over there in the American literary world. They purposefully didn't come into the meeting with much background because we all wanted to see what would come out of the brainstorm if we had a blank page. And the idea came up almost immediately, because they felt that the fee would be a good "channel" to increase writers' participation in the literary economics.

How very socialist of them.

Like correctly spelled words in sentences.

The latest fray in literary America, which like most I am watching from afar, has me thinking a lot about best practices in publishing.

If you haven't been keeping up, start here, where writer Brett Ortler shares his recent but seemingly conditional acceptance from BlazeVOX. Then head over to HTMLGiant, which picked up the story rather quickly and where, true to form, the comments threads exploded. There are some heated responses out there, too. And last but not least, BlazeVOX's own Geoffrey Gatza responds here. 

I'm following the fray closely because I am interested in what is between the lines of this discussion. There's actually quite a lot between the lines but I'm focusing on where it touches issues of business models and (business) practices, transparency, the changing relationships in the literary economy, what we "should" do, how we're/it's all changing, and the much-discussed "future of publishing".

These are each big discussions in and of themselves, which is probably in part why Mr. Ortler's blog catalyzed such a huge debate.

If you've been following our own blog over the last month, you'll know we're struggling with these very issues. Trying to find and implement a new business model for our journal has been an exciting but scary road, and I've tried to share as much about that road as I can, and will continue to do so. And foremost on my mind has been how to continue to be the honest, transparent and respectful journal that we started as and have grown more into. Which is why I'm thinking so much about best practices.

What are best practices? Wiki has a pretty good summary on them. In short, they are generally accepted things that work. For example, we could study what kinds of rejection letters are the "best" using certain criteria. Once you define what is "best", you can determine what practices will lead to it. So in the case of the rejection letter, we might define "best" as being respectful, non-demeaning, encouraging but honest. We could harness indicators like repeat submissions to determine how effective a letter is at its intended goal (some letters, e.g., may want to discourage a writer from sending work to the journal in the future, while others may want to encourage a writer to try again). The practice of writing such letters will have to do with things like the quality of the writing, the diction of its vocabulary, the signature (i.e. signed by an editor or by "The Editors"), the time lapse between submission and rejection, etc. Hard to imagine, maybe, but these things are actually measurable...



It wasn't too long ago that a situation in publishing led to the establishment of a best practice. Foetry's whistle blowing and the subsequent attention that bad contest practices got prompted CLMP to develop a contest code of ethics, which many contests now employ.

This latest eruption has underscored a lot of things, but for me as Versal's editor while Versal undergoes a change, I am interested in some of the best practices for small publishers that are coming to light. Like:

1. Grammatically correct and well-structured correspondence
2. Transparent business models
3. Transparent and upfront publishing terms

In a way these seem very obvious, and almost stupid to write down. But I think a letter that I write to someone who has entrusted me with her work should be well-written and not have spelling errors. I've spent nearly 10 years now with Versal thinking about these things, and assuming I was just a total nerd, and in an early instance having to argue with a fellow (now gone) Versal editor about why he should write emails that had complete sentences, and feeling then like I just was too uptight and generally not cool while his slightly manic emails were "cool" because they were "natural". 

But this post isn't because I feel vindicated now by the crowd. It's because I want to continue (here and elsewhere) talking with writers and editors and everyone interested in what we can all do to make this better. And sometimes the best place to start is somewhere really simple. Like correctly spelled words in sentences.

Feel free to share what you think are "best practices" in small publishing down there in the comments. And also other thoughts. Already this big debate is starting to move "forward". Part of that can be about how in this major transitional time for publishers, we can be "best" at what we're doing.

Whip it.

We here at Versal try to respond to all submissions within two months.

Some of you might have noticed that we're running a little behind, a fact which will no doubt make its way to Duotrope very soon and make me shed some wheepy tears.

See 'cause half of us were at my wedding in September so we didn't start reading until October and, well, yeah. But we are definitely on it! We are reading and loving your work. And we have purchased some whips and are using them to reach each other across the interwebs. The miracle, really, that is the interweb, that makes Versal possible.

Our apologies.

Thank you for your patience.