Jake Adam York edits Copper Nickel, a member of Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), which exists, as it suggests, to develop the publishing capacity of its members (independent publishers of America’s finest fiction, poetry, and prose) through a nexus of communication, marketing, and organization. Its services include an annual literary publishers conference, a series of technical assistance monographs, regranting programs, workshops, roundtables, and a variety of digital resources.
York’s Facebook cause “Support Literary Journals: Subscribe To One Journal a Month for the Next Year” asks readers of literary journals to “sit down to show their support [...] to ensure that one of America’s oldest forms of publications remains a robust and continuing part of American culture and American life.”
He explains to ASF his cause and what independent publishers are up against.
ASF: As you say in your Facebook cause description, literary journals across the United States are being asked to support themselves financially. Your cause asks readers to take responsibility personally to sustain their journals by subscribing to them. What was the fire-starter, so to speak, that motivated and inspired you to begin this cause?
York: I saw, within one week, that the Southern Review and New England Review were in danger of funding cuts, which seemed ludicrous to me, given how prestigious and long-lived these journals are. I’ve been struggling in my own circumstance with the business model for Copper Nickel, which is a young journal I’d like to see last 30 or 50 years, so I had an immediate appreciation for how weak a literary journal can seem and for how helpful the ability to offer a number of subscribers can be for a journal suddenly (or perhaps recurrently) in a position to justify itself. In my own community, there’s a lot of “ambient consumption”–people coming to readings, reading the journal in libraries of bookstores, or sharing copies–which becomes invisible consumption when you’re asked to give a ratio of dollars spent to readers served, something that I suspect is becoming more common these days. I’ve been using Facebook since November, and it seemed like the appropriate tool to make a network of interest visible–so I started the “cause.”
ASF: There are 230 members to date listed on your Facebook cause site right now. How many are you hoping to get?
York: It would be great to see 1,000 members by the end of the year. That’s an arbitrary number, but one that I think would record the seriousness of the concern, and one that might promise a widened circle of involvement in the non-FB communities to which each person is tied.
ASF: What are all the means you are using to get word out and subscriptions in?
York: On FB, the campaign is mostly a campaign of letters, individuals writing their friends. I hope the cause will make the means specific journals are using to draw subscriptions visible to others and that, more broadly, we’ll be able to focus a discussion of the value of literary journals and patterns of readership and circulation and make those values and services more visible than they seem to be in the current economic climate.
ASF: Currently, people are not donating on the site. What would the donated money go to specifically?
York: I think people should put their money into the journal of their choosing instead of donating to the cause itself. But if donations are made, I hope CLMP would accept the money to support a broader-based campaign to the same end: getting people to subscribe to literary journals. CLMP would be in a unique position to put that donation to work.
ASF: The May 7, 2009, Chronicle of Higher Education article you link to suggests heavy-hitters Louisiana State University Press and Utah State University Press are facing fiscal cuts. And then there are the lit journals in peril–the 30-year-old New England Review (out of Middlebury College), the Southern Review (LSU) and Watershed (out of California State University, Chico) among them (per P&W’s May 15, 2009, issue). Add to that the very small indie presses and journals and you’ve got a lot of struggling artists and readers.
Further, the Inside Higher Ed article states, “In 2003, Washington and Lee University floated the idea of ending or sharply cutting support for Shenandoah; the university pulled back from its plan amid strong criticism from the literary world.” Another example of a journal avoiding the cutting block: the Antioch Review. Which, “when Antioch University shut down Antioch College, the university’s board went out of its way to say that the cuts would not affect the Antioch Review, which continues to publish.”
Do you believe the atmosphere is different now?
York: I think the Shenandoah crisis (full disclosure: I was then and remain a contributing editor for Shenandoah, so I had a close-up view of that situation) was actually a vanguard of our current moment. The aftermath of 9/11 included a minor recession which threatened many literary programs, not just journals, and make it clear that history and prestige in one cultural vein might not be regarded as worthwhile in another one. I can’t speak with authority about the fiscal pressures at work at [Washington and Lee] in 2003, but I suspect they suggested the shape of the present situation, with declines in endowment income and pressure to make everything pay against its own line-item, which is, I think, a rather poor way to measure the worth of a literary concern or any concern with a community interest. I don’t know that the threat is more real, but it is more visible, and perhaps rhetorically sharper given the current economic conditions and concerns.
ASF: Why does the task of supporting literary journals fall to subscribers?
York: I believe a journal’s ability to offer a number to quantify its readers is much more useful than the money subscribers provide, though subscription dollars are indeed useful and, in most cases, actually provide more support than newsstand sales, something few readers realize. Subscribers can make visible the larger halo of interest or concern in a particular title or, more broadly, in the literary journal, often for less money than a month of basic cable (and I believe literary journals are infinitely better than basic cable).
ASF: Is having a large subscriber base and access to grants the secret to staying alive, to success?
York: Grants make life easier, and a larger subscriber base (ironically) make a grant easier to obtain, in some cases. I don’t know that a grant is the secret to success, but a grant will prolong the life of a title. Subscribers are, in my view, more important, not so much for their money, but for their interest: it’s the exchange of concern and interest that keeps literature alive and growing, and I’d say the same thing for literary journals.
ASF: Any suggestions for indies to become self-sustaining or better their business model?
York: Not yet, but I think a serious conversation about this will emerge from the present situation.
[ASF would like to hear from readers and the indie press on this topic. Comments are welcome and vigorously--vigorously, we say!--invited. Oh, and if you're looking to join the cause by subscribing to this journal, here's how.]
Here is the thing with the journals. Until I started taking creative writing classes, I had never heard of any of them. I would say an average consumer has no idea what a literary journal is or what it does or how it stays in business. It’s almost a “For Writers, By Writers,” kind of a deal. There are exceptions, of course. I worked for a lawyer who said she liked to pick up journals to read when she travels because they are perfect travel companions. They’re not a huge commitment, like a novel. They’re diverse. You can hear a lot of voices in one, small place.
I also think writers have a love/hate relationship with journals. I love journals, have a shelf full at home and have a lot of subscriptions, not to mention I try to pick one up whenever I am at a bookstore. (But, ah-ha, you can hardly find them in a bookstore. There’s a few indie-ish bookstores around Phoenix that I know carry a bigger selection than, say, Borders, but most people shop at Borders.) However, most writers crave acceptance from journals. They’re like our old crushes whose houses we drive by in the middle of the night. We love them, we obsess over them, but they reject us. I think sometimes, especially when you first start, it’s a hard fight that gets frustrating. That being said, I do my best to support where/when I can. There is so much good writing out there in those journals, and it really does kill me that the magazines might be dying. My absolute favorite thing in the world is to be paging through a journal and happen upon an amazing story by some random writer. I find so much awesome writing that I would never otherwise know about. But, when I tell people, “Oh, I read this story in such and such journal,” they say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only read US Weekly.”
I don’t really know anything about business models or how a good one works, but I imagine part of that is PR and spreading the word, which is what is happening here. This is awesome (the blog, the interview, the cause).
I jumped on the Facebook cause, and I’m inspired by subscription rallly. I’ll do my best to spread the word.
I didn’t know about the Facebook effort, but ironically, just this morning posted an offer to readers of my blog to send them a copy of various literary journals that I subscribe to, with the objective of helping them to realize – if they don’t already – the richness and value of the medium. I’ve had a few takers already, and will add to my list as I am ready to “turn loose” of other copies. The journals are of great benefit to me as a person coming to a writing life late on, and living out of the mainstream in the splendid Longleaf pine woods of panhandle Florida.
I hope the Facebook cause, your post above, my small effort and other ripples in the pond will lead to increased subscriber bases.