Mother Jones: The Death of Fiction?

I subscribe to a bunch of magazines and quarterlies: VQR, One Story, Event, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Geist, the Bellvue Literary Review, the Capilano Review, and the Paris Review. And some smaller publications - Kaleidotrope, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (a Christmas gift from a friend), and On Spec. It gets a bit pricey after a while, but it’s usually worth it…and I feel guilty for submitting to markets I don’t subscribe to. Admittedly, my fiction isn’t being published widely. Yet. I hope. But it does seem a bit ridiculous to have legions of writers who aren’t reading.

Let’s see, the editor of the VQR makes $134,000 a year, the three other staff members make $76,000, $42,000, and $62,400 respectively for a combined $314,000 in annual salaries for a journal published four times a year with a circulation of 7,000. And god knows how much it costs to print the fat glossy issues and distribute them. And you wonder why literary journals are on death’s doorstep? Instead of asking writers to support journals, journals might want to reexamine their business models. Genoways sternly asks writers to “put themselves on the line” for the future of literary fiction while he takes in a six-figure salary. Meanwhile, six writer/professors in UVA’s Creative Writing Program make over $100,000 a year, with three making over $150,000 a year, and you wonder why literary fiction writers don’t care about readers anymore? For most MFA graduates, landing a teaching job is the jackpot. I don’t know about you, but if I was making $150,000 a year teaching fiction writing, I wouldn’t care if nobody read my stuff.

At one time the death of university literary mags equated to the death of the short story, but the world has changed. You wouldn’t know it by reading this article, but MFAers aren’t the only writers writing and university lit mags aren’t the only mags publishing. Stop navel gazing, look up, and recognize that technology has changed the literary landscape. Fiction isn’t dead, it’s simply moving elsewhere.

Heather above says: “But it does seem a bit ridiculous to have legions of writers who aren’t reading.” Well put. Many thanks to VQR for bringing this discussion, and the economic plight of some of the nation’s best magazines, to light once again.

@TravisSmith - why are you so against a decent wage for the editorial staff? Even 42K is kind of a low salary to raise a family on.

T.J. & co, I don’t think the argument is that writing only occurs in MFA programs. (If you go back through old blog posts on here, you’ll often find us championing online-only and other new or untraditional outlets and communities.) Rather, as Ted’s essay and this blog post put forth, the profusion of MFA programs has led many would-be writers to demand more from the existing literary community than they give back. With so many thousands of writing aspirants, why don’t these same people – folks ostensibly passionate about fiction – subscribe to the magazines to which they submit? Why, with more writers than ever in this country – on balance, a good thing, I would say; part of what makes a creative and diverse literary culture – are magazines flooded with submissions but not subscribers? (I do admit that I’m guilty of having submitted fiction to magazines or journals that I haven’t read.) Is the shift of culture and media towards “free” models to blame? I’m genuinely curious, and I don’t accept the notion that low subscription numbers somehow means that literary journals are an anachronism. Using that logic, the Billboard charts, representing only commercial popularity, would be the supreme arbiter of what makes great or essential music. The problem seems to be one of expectations, perhaps in this case that literary magazines and journals only exist to serve writers, to validate an embryonic writer’s hopes – hence the numerous people submitting to VQR who don’t subscribe. Personally, I think the relationship should go both ways, and one way to do that is to support a journal by taking out a subscription. It may seem crass to talk about these things, especially in such baldly fiscal terms, but often the subscription cost is quite low, yet it’s an investment that makes a big difference for those who do important work in keeping these great magazines alive.

Yes, $50 is too high for one journal, when there are still a good number of them out there and I have eclectic tastes. And though I’ve submitted to you a couple of times without any real expectation of success - curiosity, more than anything - my intent has always been to go it alone. What I don’t understand is not why more aspiring writers - oh dear, I do hate that term, since the only thing to aspire to is writing better and better - don’t subscribe to literary journals, but why they don’t take control of their own means of distribution. You may like to claim that the best writing is fostered by traditional literary outlets, but we can’t actually know that, can we? After all, until very recently, there wereno other outlets. Did Montaigne need a literary journal?

To Jacob, Ted, and everyone else on the VQR happy gang, Jacob writes: “With so many thousands of writing aspirants, why don’t these same people — folks ostensibly passionate about fiction — subscribe to the magazines to which they submit?” I’ll admit, a lot of writers don’t subscribe to literary magazines. I polled my classmates at UC Davis a few years back and I heard one say she never bought literary magazines and another say, “I don’t buy them unless I happen to be very rich at the time, or someone that I love has a really long story in one.” But your question overlooks quite a lot, not the least of which is the fact that the great majority of these “thousands of writing aspirants” live on ramen and stipends that in some cases don’t exceed $12,000 per year (to say nothing of those foolish or brave enough to take out a student loan for their MFA). How many literary magazines should someone earning $12,000 per year subscribe to? Okay, let’s say that person has a $20,000 stipend, but now lives in Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area. Is two or three enough? But then, should he only submit his fiction to two or three magazines, while that writer in the north-east, blessed with connections and a trust fund, submits widely? You also seem to be implying, either explicitly or by omission: That you’re not supporting a literary magazine if you buy one of the anthologies (BASS, O’Henry, Puschart, the non-required one) in a cost-conscious effort to see what “the little magazines” are publishing these days. That you’re not supporting a literary magazine if you read it through a university library. And that you’re not supporting a literary magazine if you buy a copy at a bookstore, or pick one up from the VQR table at AWP. Or if it is okay to do any of that, it doesn’t count as much as buying a good, old-fashioned, take-it-to-the-board-of-directors subscription, because when you go trolling through the database, looking to see which submitters have been naughty or nice, those who don’t visibly support the VQR with their pocketbook get a form letter wrapped around a lump of coal. (I really can’t believe you did this; it’s the Bush-era in microcosm, isn’t it? Or was it something you allowed in the name of “propriety knowledge” and “research”?) If you’re flooded with submissions, and you really don’t like all that implies, why don’t you require those submitting to first subscribe? Problem solved. And because I’m not just about loud voices and let me finish I said let me finish, maybe you’ll allow me to offer another suggestion: offer a student and/or struggling writer’s subscription price. Then not only would you be offering relief to those who might question your current price point, you’d be able to draw up a list, like Stalin, and be certain that these were the good ones, the pure ones, those most deserving. An online only price might be a good idea, as well. When I moved overseas last fall (and let my subscriptions to the NYer, Hobart and Ninth Letter lapse) I considered signing up for the VQR, but wondered why a physical product had to be delivered with every subscription (I wasn’t about to fork out extra for the int’l rate; see above). It seems wasteful to have something delivered that’s not going to be read, and why should I pay the same price as everyone else if I only want to read online? Okay, I’m done.

I make just over $10,000 a year as a member of Literacy AmeriCorps. I work about 50 hours per week, which amounts to just over $4 per hour. What little money I do have, I spend on supplies for my family and adult literacy outreach programs and classes, money I feel is better spent in that way than on literary journal subscription fees. In short: Yes, subscriptions to literary magazines are too expensive for me. That does not mean I don’t read literary magazines. I get as many as I can through my library system. Don’t assume that because someone is not purchasing a journal, they are not reading it. I also read the work that appears in a number of online journals that I adore, such as Anti-, Qarrstiluni, Linebreak and Failbetter. These journals employ a publishing model that allows them to open up, rather than locking down, access to their content by sharing that content with the widest audience possible. Asserting that financial support of print journals, with their limited distribution and limited readership, is the way to ensure the future of literary fiction (or poetry or nonfiction for that matter) – especially in a digital age – is at best questionable. Will there really be no future for literature without print magazines? Or will other modes of sharing and exchange open up to allow that future to unfold? If a journal is going under because it can’t afford to continue publishing printed journals, perhaps blaming writers and readers is not the right approach, nor is putting the financial burden on them to keep those publications afloat. Perhaps a new model is in order, one that allows that journal to reach the widest audience it can reach at a price point that is sustainable for those publishing and editing that journal.

Disclaimer: I’m just the web guy. And I’ve got the day off today. So I’ll just speak to a couple of technical matters here.

Or if it is okay to do any of that, it doesn’t count as much as buying a good, old-fashioned, take-it-to-the-board-of-directors subscription, because when you go trolling through the database, looking to see which submitters have been naughty or nice, those who don’t visibly support the VQR with their pocketbook get a form letter wrapped around a lump of coal. (I really can’t believe you did this; it’s the Bush-era in microcosm, isn’t it? Or was it something you allowed in the name of “propriety knowledge” and “research”?)

We’ve only pulled out numbers in aggregate, approximately like such: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM subscribers LEFT JOIN submitting_authors WHERE subscribers.name = submitting_authors.name AND subscribers.zip = submitting_authors.zip We have neither the mechanism to nor the interest in correlating submitting authors with subscriptions. I can’t envision what sense there would be in publishing an author merely because he’s subscribed. When we publish an author, we pay him between hundreds and thousands of dollars; $32 for a subscription will come out in the wash. What’s a “take-it-to-the-board-of-directors subscription”?

An online only price might be a good idea, as well. When I moved overseas last fall (and let my subscriptions to the NYer, Hobart and Ninth Letter lapse) I considered signing up for the VQR, but wondered why a physical product had to be delivered with every subscription (I wasn’t about to fork out extra for the int’l rate; see above). It seems wasteful to have something delivered that’s not going to be read, and why should I pay the same price as everyone else if I only want to read online?

We’ve put a bunch of work into doing just that, but the end product would be pretty disappointing, unfortunately. When we license work for each issue–photographs, illustrations, articles–that license is often restricted to print only. Many authors simply aren’t willing to have their work reproduced electronically, which is outside of our power to change. The product that we’d deliver to those subscribers would be crippled, sometimes fatally (e.g. a series of articles about a Frost poem that you can’t actually read), and that’s tough to justify. So, yeah, swell idea, and we’d love to do it, but copyright law prohibits it. As I said, I can’t speak to anything else here–clearly, I know little about this world.

Dear Waldo, Thanks for the added information. It’s good to know that VQR doesn’t have its equivalent of the Do Not Fly list.

To Jacob, True, Genoways isn’t arguing that writing only occurs in programs. He sees no need to argue this point, assumes it as matter of fact, a self-serving attitude that is pervasive throughout his article. His tunnel vision does not allow him to see beyond the university, be it the non-MFA writer or the independent publisher. This perspective is convenient when arguing that too many MFAers and too few lit mags created a world where writers no longer care about the reader. Too few lit mags? There are more places to publish than anytime in history; that is, if you take the online expansion into consideration, which he does not. How can he? To do so invalidates his position. VQR, once a big fish in a small pond, is now a big fish in an ocean. Denying the ocean, as Genoways does in his article, creates a sense of elevated importance for the university lit mag, an illusion that hopefully sways VQR bean counters the next time money for the lit mag is appropriated. But let’s get real here. Only egocentric editors believe that the literary world ceases to exist beyond the university doorstep. The rest of us know better. To your pressing problem–too few subscribers and high overhead–if VQR can’t make it targeting writers with its product, change the business model or change the product. Seriously. Hand the mag to a professor who is fighting for tenure and will gladly donate his time, or change what you publish so it’s attractive to a wider range of readers. Please don’t take these suggestions as an example of someone who is insensitive to your situation. I can only imagine how it feels to run a mag in tough times. The ax is sharpened and who knows where it might fall. As Genoways points out, more than one excellent lit mag has run into financial problems. Will these fine publications be missed if they go under? Certainly. Anytime a lit mag goes under the literary world takes a hit. But let’s not equate the death of a few lit mags with the death of fiction, as the headline of your blog post suggests. Fiction is alive and well, despite the doomsday articles and doomsday headlines that insinuate otherwise.

T.J., you’re not disagreeing with Genoways, you’re agreeing with him, you’re just too self-important to realize it. He writes that “university-based quarterlies have seen steadily declining…cultural relevance,” so your discovery that’s so doesn’t come as a news to anybody. Not only does he never say that “the literary world ceases to exist beyond the university doorstep,” he lists a dozen non-university publications (The Atlantic, Elle, Esquire, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, GQ, McCall’s, Mother Jones, etc.) that were long major figures in the world of the short story. Which is pretty generous for an article that’s about university litmags. And complaining that an article about university litmags mostly talks about university litmags is just dumb. I might as well complain that you failed to support the troops in your last comment. You do support the troops, don’t you TJ?

I think the problem here is the assumption that people who go get MFAs are “folks ostensibly passionate about fiction.” My opinion is just that of one person (obviously) and I should qualify it further by saying that I don’t have an MFA and I don’t intend to get one. I live in NYC and I meet and know plenty of people who have MFAs, and for the most part they seem to be far more passionate about identifying themselves as a writer than they are about fiction in general. I read constantly – almost obsessively – but I almost never read contemporary fiction (apart from short stories here and there) because in my view so much of it evokes a distinct MFA aesthetic, and it’s an aesthetic I find extremely off-putting. It’s safe, bland, afraid of appearing too intellectual (unless it isn’t, in which case it’s preeningly obtuse or cutely grad student-y) … I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that a great many people who go get MFAs *also* come off as being safe, bland, afraid of appearing too intellectual, and that they appear to have gotten their MFA in the spirit of someone checking off a box on a list. An MFA goes so well with the Brooklyn apartment, the baby with a distinctive name, and the food coop membership. It also seems to be a nice thing for a certain type of well-off divorcee to get, since it’s more stimulating than opening a boutique and it makes the days go by a little faster. I don’t find it surprising at all that they wouldn’t be any more interested in each others’ work than I am in theirs!

It’s not just that fiction writers aren’t reading literary journals. I’m finding, increasingly, that in my classes, my students aren’t reading, period. They want to be writers, but they don’t read. They watch television, read an occasional newspaper article online, but cannot name a novel they’ve read in the past year. I subscribe to as many literary journals as my school budget allows me to. Many of them sit unopened by the students. I have forbidden students to tell me that they don’t like to read: I’ve told them they can’t be writers if they don’t like to read. How can they learn about the mechanics of writing if they don’t see it put into form in front of them? I would like to believe that they are observers of the world. But, for many, the only thing they observe are their navels. I see my job as their instructor to change that. I challenge them. I present them with exemplary writing. I make them buy notebooks and take notes on the world. I have them perform writing exercises almost every day in class, as if they were practicing scales. Some of them come out of my classes convinced that writing is what they want to do. And some of them realize that the only reason they wanted to be writers is that they want to be “published” and “famous.” The wheat gets separated from the chaff. Those who love it, will keep at it. And those of us who love good writing will continue to do our best to support small literary journals AND believe that writers and editors deserve to get paid for the hard work that they do.

@Lorraine, not reading? Now that is scary! (And meanwhile there are people/writers like myself who would love to have free i.e. affordable access to all those unread journals.)

Could VQR (and others) afford to offer a student subscription rate or a “starving artist” rate (with a copy of form 1040 perhaps)? I also like the idea of a “web only” option. With so many writers producing so much good work it can become difficult to store, much less read, everything one might like to. Supporting excellent publications is a good idea as is supporting the Post Office but receiving stacks of paper that I don’t have time to read induces guilt on a number of levels. There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a writer but I eventually decided that I enjoy reading much more than writing. Frankly I find the modern trend toward everyone making their own art (much of it awful) appalling! This may be just one more symptom of the increasing economic stratification which allows self-actualizing “artistes” the luxury of writing volumes that most folks have neither the time nor the education to read. Literature, like democracy, requires a well educated (not just well trained) populace to flourish.

Dear VQR Editors, An excellent essay by Ted Genoways at MOTHER JONES. Having earned my MFA in Virginia, this article caught my eye. VQR is renowned as one of the leading literary magazines in the country and Genoways makes some excellent points. However, speaking from my own experiences during and after my MFA creative writing program, acceptance of a short story for publication in a literary magazine is a damn-near impossible feat. Now I know why. 60,000 new writers submitting work to a handful of paying publications does make the magazine editing task daunting. Most assuredly, brilliant writing is neglected simply due to the submissions volume. I do not flatter myself by thinking my writing in that pot of gold, but it does propose a thorny dilemma. How do we give new fiction the breath and light it needs to develop when the criteria is set almost beyond attainability? We joked that not even Hemingway could’ve gotten his work published in some popular lit mags. To this day, I don’t disbelieve that. A solution to ‘the death of (short) fiction’ can only come when writers and editors discuss and debate. So thank you Genoways for getting the ball rolling. Another topic Genoways brought up in his MOTHER JONES essay was related to the lack of Iraq War fiction. I had to comment further: www.sarahmccoy.wordpress.com. Yours truly, Sarah P.S. Wa-hoo-wa!

I agree 100% with Genoways’s Mother Jones article. To Travis, who listed the salaries and then said that if he were making $150K a year teaching fiction he wouldn’t care if anyone read his stuff — wow. That’s not exactly the point now, is it? First, let’s not begrudge someone for making a good living at something they’re good at. Secondly, “the point” is there are too many submissions and the readers have vanished. If you’re a writer, is $50 a year really too much to spend on literary magazines? We buy coffee daily at $5 a cup, or pay $50 a month for bad cable TV, or $20 for a round of beers on a Friday night ….. but we have a fit when someone suggests paying to read good writing?!?!?! My head is about to explode. I am almost finished with my MFA. I edited a lit journal (albeit a small one) for a year — small, but we received hundreds of submissions and had about zero subscribers. AND I buy lit journals. Not all of them, but I know which ones I like and I’m sure I spend 5 times that $50 on lit journals a year. I never understand writers (especially my fellow MFA’ers) who do not support the very art they create or the community in which they’re a part. Genoways is right. The least we can do —- the very, very least —- is to support the lit journal community that all of us submit work to on a regular basis. If you think getting a piece of work accepted now is hard, just think how much harder it will be when all these journals shut down. Butter your own bread, folks. Or at least use that cable TV money to buy books and literary journals; you have a hundred TV channels to watch and nothing is ever on anyway. Invest in your future; read a lit journal instead.

Speaking on behalf of writers who can’t wait till the gatekeepers give them the go-ahead, here’s our take at 317am.net on “The Death of Fiction?”