How to Start Your Own Literary Magazine

The publishing world can be brutal. Given the number of creative writers competing for readers, it may take dozens of submissions before you find a home for one of your own stories - meanwhile, many of the published stories you read simply don't pull you in. They might be in the wrong genre, or the writing isn't tight enough to hold your attention. The resulting distaste - coupled with the financial hit you take for simply subscribing - is enough to make you want to give up reading and writing altogether.

Fortunately, the internet age offers an alternative: starting your own literary magazine. Never before has it been easier to meet and interact with like-minded writers - starting your own online magazine offers the unparalleled opportunity to not only network with these writers, but to attract others with similar interests.

Starting Out: Choose Your Focus
Whatever your focus, your journal should fit a specific niche. You need a focus which will hold your own interest while attracting a dedicated group of fans. "Literature" attracts millions of readers every year - but very few of those readers will notice your own contribution to the world stockpile of creativity. Narrow your focus - it's better to attract one hundred dedicated readers - the kind of readers who will share links to your magazine - than it is to pray for some unspecified number of faceless visitors.

Given the relative anonymity of the internet, you can do particularly well by presenting the work of a tight-knit group of people. Publications like the Toad Suck Review and the North Carolina Literary Review capitalize on the literary traditions of their regions (such as the Toad Suck region of Central Arkansas.) In this tradition, I'm currently sponsoring Word Planet, an online journal for undergraduate writers of Johns Hopkins University. It's certainly not the first literary magazine to come out of Johns Hopkins, but it will be the only one that specifically caters to students of all majors. Each semester, we have nearly five hundred students who take Introduction to Fiction and Poetry. By the end of the course, these students have all written at least a dozen pieces in poetry and fiction, and yet very, very few of these students will ever share - let alone publish - their work outside of class. By catering to this group of authors, we can attract readers who want to see what their dorm-room neighbors are writing.

If you prefer to publish work from around the country - or even the bworld - you'll want to specify a tight focus for the content of your magazine. Orson Scott Card capitalizes on his fame as a science fiction writer to promote his Intergalactic Medicine Show, but you don't need fame to get started. Chris Dunmire's Creativity Portal has been recognized by Writer's Digestand the English Journal of the National Council of Teachers of English. Dunmire's success has taken time, and it comes through careful attention to quality and her focus on setting up a "how-to" for at-home creativity.

Choosing Your Literary Home: Blogspot? WordPress? HTML?
Once you have your focus, it's time to give your magazine a home. For this we have two considerations. The first is that you need a dependable place where your readers can easily access all the articles you post. Secondly - an no less important - you need a format which is easy for you to edit. If you're an experienced website designer, then you may want to choose one of these recommended web hosts, purchase your Adobe Creative Suite, and design away.

Chances are, though, you're looking for something that's more small-scale. Always remember: the content of your online magazine is far more important than what you use to post it online. For simplicity, you can't beat Blogger - the design templates are easy to use and customize, and you can have a free website up-and-running in minutes. If, however, you have some experience with websites, you may find that Blogger doesn't offer enough options for customizing the look and feel of your blog - you may find that WordPress offers a bit more control and a wider selection of templates. However, with freedom comes complexity - I've found it's much easier to make a Blogger website that looks nice, whereas WordPress gives far better control over search engine optimization, menus, and category pages.

If your financial budget is zero, then the free versions of Blogger and WordPress are the way to go. The website name won't be quite as cool - you'll be one of the thousands of authors featured at either blogspot.com or wordpress.com. If, however, you can spare $10-$20 a year, I recommend purchasing a custom domain - e.g. www.yourliterarymagazine.com. My primary writing website - 12Writing.com - is simply a Google custom domain purchased through Blogger. For ten bucks a year, I maintain five different blogs on subdomains of 12writing.com. WordPress offers a similar service for $17 per year.

If, however, you want the greatest possible control offered by WordPress and you can spend $5-$10 a month, then you may find that independent hosting with WordPress is a better way to go. This is a bit pricier, yes, but it does offer the greatest potential for expansion - if you later choose to learn HTML or PHP, or maybe even create your own social network, then you'll need the resources of a dedicated hosting service.

Finally, please bear in mind that these are not the only online options for your literary journal. New websites offering cheaper and better services all time. As you investigate your options, I recommend taking a look at hosting options which encourage community-building. HubPages, for example, offers free webspace with links between related pages by multiple authors with integrated opportunities for earning money through Amazon and Google Affiliates. The downside is that you have far less freedom over the look and feel of your own particular hubs, and are instead forced to follow the limited template options. Unlike having a dedicated blog, though, the hub-approach allows you the freedom on a huge variety of topics, which in turn can help you attract readers across a variety of interests.

Don't Go It Alone: Recruit Help!
The sheer volume of material currently on the internet makes it very hard for a single person to produce enough content to "get noticed" by a good-sized audience. Literary journals, in particular, pop up all the time. It seems disturbingly easy, almost like a pyramid scheme. You set up a website, ask people to send you good stories, and then you post them. You aren't even writing most of the content - what could be easier?

Don't be mislead - literary magazines are hard work. On top of getting your online domain, someone needs to attract submissions, read through the pile, and actually select which stories and poems to post. And the process doesn't end with the first issue - you must continually search for new authors. You are always trying to figure out what your next issue will be.

It pays to get help. I recommend finding other like-minded writers who share your particular interest. Ideally, you want to find writers who will feel intrinsic rewards from working with the magazine. For Word Planet, I recruited Hopkins undergrads to run the magazine. For them, Word Planet is literally their magazine - it's the one publication that will be open to most of their peers. They've put together fliers, designed the website, and come up with editorial guidelines. I could do all of these things by myself, but I wouldn't have the time to make it look as good. In addition, this group of around ten undergrads will be far better able to attract submissions from other Hopkins students than I ever could. As a creative writing instructor, I can spread the word to all the other instructors, and the call for submissions would eventually reach their students, but there would be little to separate my personal website from the established literary journals already out there. When our readers find out that their neighbors from down the hall are on the editorial board, or that someone from IFP II was just published the poem that everyone's talking about, then the journal will build its own intrinsic momentum.

Spread the Word Online
Once you have your dedicated staff of editors and a specific focus, you'll need to build the energy which brings in submissions. Your first stop, naturally, should be Facebook. If you don't already have a Facebook profile, then you'll want to set one up. From there, you can use the tools on the left to start new pages for your magazine. I recommend setting up a "Like" page for your readers, and then possibly a "Group" page for the members of your staff. And then - very importantly - make sure to update the Facebook page often. Announce your upcoming issues, calls for submission, and links to other articles of interest. This is just as much a part of your magazines "home" as the webpage that hosts all your articles. For many people, the announcements on your Facebook page may serve as the front door to your main site.

The next step is to make your page a part of the conversation in the literary community. For Word Planet, this is somewhat simplified by our target readers. Most of our authors and readers are undergrads, and they are almost all on Facebook already. They'll share links to their own stories and poems with their friends - real people who they actually know well. But if your magazine doesn't come from a dedicated group of readers and contributors, then you may need to build one yourself. To do this, seek out the discussion boards on Facebook, HubPages, Twitter, and in other places. Wherever your potential readers may congregate online, take part in their conversations. Introduce yourself.

Note, however, that there's a major difference between introducing yourself and becoming the local Tupperware peddler. Don't oversell your website. The goal is to build a readership by showing that you are an interesting person with useful material to share. Post links not only to the articles in your magazine, but to other points of interest on the internet. Did someone on the message board have a question about writing romance stories? Give a thoughtful answer. Never mind that your magazine is only about the intimate life-after-life love shared by the undead - you might win yourself a reader. Or someone might link to your answer. Either way, it builds a positive online presence for you as a person and the magazine representing your brand.

Now the Hard Part: Read All Those Submissions
Is this really the hard part? It depends. Ideally, yes, this should be the hard part. You want to have so many submissions to read that you can pick the best ones for your online magazine. But the authors you turn away also offer your best hope for future submissions - you'll want to send a nice thank-you for their submissions. Better still, offer them advice for how to submit better work next time.

However, this all depends on how many submissions you receive. Starting out, you may not have many submissions. And you may not have many more readers. But that's okay - Rome wasn't built in a day. Take little steps every day to make sure your magazine is worth reading. You'll find that your readership - along with those submissions - will naturally grow with time.