There are 866 publications in Poets & Writers’ database of literary magazines, 14 of which were added in early 2013. And while that number will certainly continue to increase, what’s just as certain is that all magazines and journals will have to grapple with the influence of digital—if they haven’t already. PW surveyed six journals, ranging from well established, longstanding publications like The Paris Review to small, online-only poetry publications like Octopus, and found lots of excitement about what digital publishing can do for these journals.
The Internet has freed journals from the constraints (and costs) of the printed page, allowing online-only publications like Jacket2, a poetry journal, to exist. “It’s our belief that the digital realm is ideally suited to the world of contemporary poetics, not just for its democratizing open-source accessibility, but also because it nicely complements poetry’s zero-sum economic realities,” said Jacket2’s editor, Michael Hennessey. “At the same time, there’s great freedom in not being limited by the material or chronological constraints of traditional print publishing.” To that end, Jacket2 has published features comparable in size and scope to anthologies, as well as brief, nontraditional work. The formula is paying off: 2012 was Jacket2’s first full year online, and it had nearly 300,000 visitors, with readership growing over the course of the year, and visits almost doubling by year’s end.

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