What has been the reception of the blog? What kind of readership do you have?
We get about 100 hits a day, and I get a lot of good feedback about it. I guess my one major problem with it is we don’t get a lot of commenters, which is incredibly frustrating. I feel like there are certain blogs that have sort of a culture of commenting, and our blog just isn’t one of those blogs. And I don’t know really how to change it, which has been frustrating. We’ll occasionally have all of the other interns comment on the blog in the hope that it will spark some conversation, but that doesn’t seem to really work either. We’re trying to be a lot better this semester about driving people to the blog. For example, one of the interns is doing a post on different form stories in literary journals. So we get new journals and she goes through them—and that’s one of our goals, to sort of support what other journals are doing too. So when she finds a form story, she writes about what it’s doing—so, for instance, there was a story in Black Warrior Review that was using charts and graphs to explain a relationship between two characters. So she wrote about that, and I asked her to send an email to them and say, “Hey look, we did this.” And ideally they would sort of come to the blog and hopefully comment on it. So I think we probably need to be more proactive about going out and driving people to the blog in that way.

Have you tried many survey-type posts that directly encourage comments?
Occasionally we’ll do something that’s like, “Please comment on this post!” and that generates maybe five comments. But then you look at a blog like HTMLGIANT where it’s a billion comments on every post. And I think their topics are more rousing—you know, they usually write about things that are controversial or really exciting. And the writing on that blog is more journalistic; the posts are much longer. And I think our blog is kind of like, “This is fun!” so it isn’t necessarily comment inspiring. Someone might write like, “Yeah, this is great—thanks!” So, I don’t know that it’s necessarily problematic; I can see when I check the stats that people are going to the blog. But I’m not sure that when people come to the blog they feel like the conversation that I initially was talking about as to why I started the blog—I don’t think that conversation is necessarily happening. And actually we’ve been having more conversations with Twitter. So that’s becoming more of a way to kind of drive content toward the blog, which has been really cool to see happen.

Can you speak a little more to how you’ve been integrating Twitter with the blog?
Well I owe it all to an amazing volunteer. She just totally trained herself on Twitter. As far as I’m concerned she’s a social media/Twitter genius. So she’s on there all day long, and she’s just made Twitter totally friendly. I mean obviously on Twitter we can communicate in real-time in a way you can’t on a blog, where we sort of post information and people can respond or not and then we can respond. But on Twitter she’ll post something and then people will respond, and using the hashtags she can kind of create a little conversation. And she’s super friendly, and she’s been good about trying to give people a behind the scenes peek at what’s going on here in a way that feels really informal and fun. So for example, we started asking people to tweet questions to us. And then we’d collect the questions and answer them on the blog. We’ve done that three times, I think. We did it once just with our editors, and someone asked something like, “What makes a piece of fiction get past the first round?” So we pulled all our editors and came up with the top ones and posted them, and that got a ton of conversation. And then for the second two questions, I think one was “Do you have advice for starting a lit journal?” And then the other was something else more administratively oriented. So we took the questions and pulled eight other literary journal editors, and then we collected them and edited them. Again—trying to get other literary journals involved, and hopefully making the Twitter followers feel like they can actually talk to us, even though we’re obviously collecting the information and editing it. But that drove some traffic to the blog. And we got a few more comments on those than we did on some of the other posts.

Do you have any specific advice for literary presses or magazines trying to start or revamp a blog?
I think the regular posting has been a godsend, because if you know you can sort of plan ahead of time, it takes some of the pressure off. And I guess the posts are sort of related in a way to our mission. You know, what is our mission: to support emerging writers. And then to be HFR oriented, but to also look outward to the larger literary community. So some posts are related to HFR, some are absolutely looking out at other journals, and some are just more like “How do you be a writer in the world?” kind of things. I think having some consistent posts in each of those categories and trying to continue them is helpful. And the voice thing, I sort of didn’t think too consciously about it, like “How do I want this blog post to sound?” Although I guess that couldn’t hurt if you had a sense of what the feel should be. And then I guess as far as driving traffic to the blog, it’s just reaching out and letting people know what you’re doing. If you’re going to be supporting what other literary journals are doing—you know, let those journals know that you’re doing that! I think we used to sort of put stuff up there and be like, “Yay!” but now that we’re contacting and letting them know, like “Look, we talked about one of your stories,” that’s actually creating more engagement.

When and how did the Hayden’s Ferry blog get started?
The blog got started over the summer about three years ago, not long after I took over the journal. Summers are relatively quiet around here, as the students aren’t really around, and I think I had maybe one intern. I was just trying to think of a way to get people interacting more with HFR in general. Our website’s pretty static—it’s a university website, so it has a certain feel so it. And I was looking for a way to sort of create a space for conversation or just a more playful space, so the blog seemed like a good idea.

In terms of the playfulness, it seems like the tone of the blog has been pretty consistent since the beginning. How did you strike that note?
That’s interesting—I’m surprised to hear you say that actually. When it first started it was primarily me trying to come up with some content, and I was trying to think of things that were HFR related, but I didn’t want it to be all navel-gazing and “Look how good we are, and you should read this poem!” So I was trying to come up with stuff that was sort of literary but more fun, that would maybe draw people in who hadn’t heard of HFR, a place that they could just go and get some news, or get some information, or hear something kind of funny or fun. My sense is that the blogs that I return to or the blogs I know that people return to provide a very specific kind of information, but they’re generally entertaining—that’s why you would go there. So that’s how I was envisioning it, but then it just became too much work for me to do it every day. I mean, that first summer I was planning in advance, and I had a post going up every day, and I was finding topics like literary songs, and I was scouring the internet. And then when the semester started I just couldn’t do it anymore, so the interns have kept it up. It’s been kind of a challenge to get them trained and going and comfortable in the blog in just a semester’s time, and usually just when they’re comfortable is when the semester’s almost over.

How do you try to acclimate them to the blog?
One of the first things I have them do is a virtual scavenger hunt. I’ve kind of identified some of the things on the blog and the other social media sites that I think are pretty successful, so I have them go through and locate specific pieces of information so they sort of hit those things as readers. And then I ask them what they think is exciting about the blog or interesting about the blog. There have been a couple of regular posts that certain interns have picked up—we did one called “A Cup of Ambition,” which is interviews with people who have literary-like jobs, maybe some that you haven’t heard of. So that’s the kind of post that an intern can maybe do one in a semester, and it sort of feels continuous. So for the first “Cup of Ambition,” I think we interviewed a small press editor, and then an intern did a greeting card writer, and then someone else did a ghostwriter. They interview them using the same eight questions, so that makes it look like there’s some continuity even though…there really isn’t. And there are a few posts like that—a “Website of the Week” post that interns can sort of pick up, and we do a “News Around the Net” post every Friday, which just collects literary news. So I think those help establish some continuity, or at least the illusion of some continuity.

So you sort of establish the post categories as a way to have the interns get into a rhythm?
Exactly. And sometimes an intern will have a great idea and they’ll start a category, and then I’ll really want another intern to pick it up the next semester and it just doesn’t happen. My sense is that I don’t know that people actually notice that stuff. I’m hypercritical of it, because I want it to look like we’re on top of everything. But I think if you just read the blog, it probably appears to have more continuity than I feel like it does, just because I can sort of see the behind the scenes of it.

What is the interns’ process for blog post publication? Do they work in a rotation? Do they have to submit their posts for review first?
Usually I’ll just have them tell me what they think is going to be interesting, I’ll say yes or no and kind of lead them in a different direction, and then they’ll write a post. I’m usually really hard on them on that first post, trying to get it through several rounds of revision. Typically that first post is also like a retraining of their brain to write in blog voice—because blog voice is like the way you talk to a friend, y’know, your personality is important, which is the complete opposite of any academic writing they’ve ever done. The kind of thesis to closing paragraph thing is usually the first draft of the blog post. And then we have to sort of break that down and say, “You’re allowed to be you in this post and communicate what you think is interesting about what you’re talking about.” So that usually takes some retraining, at least initially.

My first two lists: literary presses and literary magazines, because it’s critical to keep track of what’s going on in the community.

@theinklesspress/literary-magazines (Currently following 162 literary magazines.)

@theinklesspress/literary-presses (Currently following 76 literary presses.)

While I tried to be thorough creating these lists, I undoubtedly missed many many presses and magazines. If you’d like yours to be added, please comment!

For the first study in the series, I looked at South Dakota Review, which provides an example of a common dilemma facing literary magazines affiliated with schools: remote site integration.

When you Google “South Dakota Review,” the first result is orgs.usd.edu/sdreview, the journal’s page on the University of South Dakota’s website. The second result is southdakotareview.com, the journal’s primary website.

The journal’s page on the USD website has:

• an “about” page
• sample poems, essays, and stories from past issues
• submission guidelines
• subscription information

From these features, it seems like this could easily be South Dakota Review’s only presence on the web. When I visited it for the first time, I assumed it was, and had a very confusing conversation with my advisor about where on the site to find SDR’s social media links.

SDR’s main site at southdakotareview.com is not the fanciest website out there, but it is certainly more sophisticated and has more time and energy devoted to its upkeep than the USD website. Hosted on WordPress, southdakotareview.com has:

• blog updates
• an “about” page
• submission guidelines
• subscription information
• a blogroll
• SDR Facebook link

Notably, the only link I can find between the two sites is a broken image (which seems like it should be the SDR logo) on southdakotareview.com that leads to the University of South Dakota SDR site. If, like me, you stumble onto the University of South Dakota page first, you can still find all essential information about South Dakota Review–the submissions page includes their new Submishmash option, the subscription instructions are consistent with those on the other site. But it seems a shame that SDR’s efforts with its main website could be lost on some searchers. On the other hand, the USD site’s selection of sample poems, essays, and stories would be missed by visitors to southdakotareview.com.

At this point, it seems readily apparent that the integration of these separate websites would be ideal. But there are many possible explanations for why that hasn’t happened:

• It seems likely that the USD page was formerly South Dakota Review’s primary website, and perhaps the move of the main page to southdakotareview.com was a decision relating to the limited bandwidth available through the University of South Dakota.
• Perhaps it was also a move to grant SDR more independent control over the site, with WordPress as an easy way to generate a news feed.
• Leaving the USD page up as a separate entity seems to be both a practical and political move. If readers are used to finding South Dakota Review information through the University of South Dakota, pulling the page from the USD website entirely would just lead to confusion. And certainly SDR wouldn’t want to disassociate itself from USD, which would be an easy conclusion for readers to jump to if SDR pulled its information from the USD website.
• Why the South Dakota Review page on the University of South Dakota website doesn’t even link to southdakotareview.com is a trickier question. Perhaps this too is a political or logistical issue, or perhaps it’s just something that SDR hasn’t gotten around to addressing yet.

Whatever the reasons for South Dakota Review’s two websites, their presence makes it clear that negotiating content accessibility decisions as a university-affiliated press or magazine is wrought with with challenging issues.

But last week some obvious writing advice struck a chord to help me remember. I happened across a blog for beginning writers with a post on how to negotiate the tension between writing from your soul and fitting in with market trends. Rachelle Gardner’s advice, of course, is to do both: “It’s important to be yourself in your writing, find your unique voice, do your own thing . . . But if you want to be published, a certain degree of paying attention to the marketplace may be helpful.” This wisdom is constantly echoed in the academic creative writing world: The best writers are the most voracious readers. Understand the personality of the journals you submit to. Find your idiosyncratic point of view. Just write, keep writing, and things will happen.

Just as most writers strive for a balance of both fitting in and being themselves, so too most publishers need to balance following the movement of the industry and upholding their values. Though the literary wonderland of my dreams may never become a reality, my original conviction stands: literary publishers need to keep up with digital developments or risk becoming irrelevant. The best literary publishers, like the writers they publish, are the most voracious readers. They understand the personality of their readers. They find their idiosyncratic point of view. They just publish, keep publishing, and things happen.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded of that which we already know.

The announcement of the promotion sent independent booksellers into an outrage. Amazon is flaunting its state sales tax evasion that makes it impossible for tax-obligated brick-and-mortar bookstores to compete with Amazon’s pricing (see this statement from the Retail Industry Leaders Association). MobyLives identified this as Amazon taking “its standard of predation to a whole new level.”

As reported by Johnathan Easely for The Hill, Senator Olympia Snowe, the ranking member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Small 
Business and Entrepreneurship, called for Amazon to cancel the predatory promotion: “Small
 businesses are fighting every day to compete with giant retailers, such 
as Amazon, and incentivizing consumers to spy on local shops is a 
bridge too far.” Amazon has made no response to Snowe, and seemingly intends to launch the app internationally.

Unfortunately, there appears to be little consumer awareness of or concern for Amazon’s tax evasion and illegal predation practices, as the comments in this article at The Verge illustrate: “People wouldn’t use physical stores as showrooms if they’d price it decently; overhead my behind.”

The funny thing? Though the indie book world was the first to speak out against it, the Price Check discount didn’t actually apply to books. Regardless, Price Check Day has brought much needed attention to Amazon’s unethical practices, which I hope will ignite further action against them.

Vakili succinctly explained Small Demons as “a web of connected data, basically with books as the starting and end point.” It’s a new approach to metadata and discovery, where the metadata is made up of the references to people, places, and things within a story. Small Demons graphs a book’s metadata and connects it to other uses of the same pieces of data, enabling discovery of the people, places, places and things that operate inside your favorite books, and also allowing you to locate books that feature your favorite people, places, and things. Vakili’s operating theory: “Context breeds desire.”

Small Demons will be making its datasets available to publishers, further expanding the meaning and potential benefits of rich metadata.

The site is now accepting requests for beta access. Videos from the TOC Books in Browsers Conference will be archived here this week. Finally, take a look this sleek intro video:

At the first ever Metadata Perspectives conference a few weeks ago, Fran Toolan of Firebrand Technologies argued that the lack of attention paid to metadata is indicative of a continued “print mentality” in publishing that is impeding digital development. (via Publishing Perspectives)

Sourcebooks Editorial Manager Peter Lynch echoed the familiar call to “create and support a company culture centered on metadata,” and offered practical strategies for spreading metadata responsibilities throughout a company, rather than relegating the task to the production and IT departments. (via Sourcebooks)

These conversations got me thinking about my own experiences with metadata as a summer intern for a small publishing house where print was still very much king.

We did utilize an extensive title management system, but I was the primary person responsible for maintaining its data. The associate publisher would enter a title’s basic information early on in its production (title, author, series, ISBN, author bio, initial summary), and then I would do the updating as a book’s production progressed. When early reviews and blurbs came in, I selected and inputted the quotes that would be featured on the title’s Amazon page. I linked the book to previous titles by the author and competitive titles. I created generic publicity plans to satisfy distributor requirements.

I’m not trying to present myself as incapable, but when a book’s print cover is proofed by at least three people after the designer, compared to an intern generating a significant portion of a title’s metadata unproofed, there’s a statement being made about the publisher’s attitude toward digital publishing. And I would venture to guess that this attitude is not exclusive to the press where I interned.

Our lack of attention to metadata was also noticeable from the customer end. During my time with the press, we were notified (usually by the author himself or the distributor) about several errors that made it onto Amazon, including incorrect cover images, inconsistencies in titles, failure to upload descriptive information, and once even a misleading, obsolete synopsis. Many of these errors were caused by metadata that was entered at a very early stage of a book’s development and never updated. As an intern who wasn’t even at the press for a full production cycle, it was impossible for me to keep track of all the small changes in a title’s information that had occurred over the course of its publication.

Overall, suffice it to say that the management of metadata at this small press was sloppy. Some of this can be attributed to the bulky title management system that made errors easy to make—it required saving and reloading with every step, was very finicky about formatting procedures for descriptive information, allowed only one person to access it at a time, and was prone to crashing. But really, these are small obstacles to accurate, complete metadata, not barriers. If a publisher were to do as Sourcebook advises and build a “company culture” that emphasizes metadata as much as print, the metadata issues would resolve themselves.

1. What drew you to the MS in Publishing program at NYU?

The initial draw of the NYU Publishing program was that it actually existed. I was fairly certain that I wanted to pursue a degree in publishing because it seemed like the best way to merge my degrees–English Literature and Finance–in a way that I found fulfilling. There are very few publishing programs in the U.S., and with the publishing industry centered in New York City, it seemed like the ideal place to learn about publishing.

2. How do you feel the publishing program is preparing you for a future in such a rapidly changing field?

The NYU publishing program is really on top of updating its courses to stay aligned with the changing industry. For example, I am in an interactive media class in which my professor has said that the content he is teaching this year is entirely different from last year’s content. I think that Andrea Chambers, the program director, does a wonderful job of making sure the content her students are learning is up-to-date and relevant. Most of the classes I am in require that we read news about the publishing industry outside of class, and we discuss recent developments and changes during class. I think this type of discussion is very stimulating and forces us to confront the reality of the changing industry and challenges us to find new and innovative ways to share published materials.

3. Describe the greatest insight the Summer Publishing Institute gave you into the future of digital publishing.

I think the greatest insight about the future of digital publishing that the Summer Publishing Institute gave to me is that digital publishing is not going to be the end of the print publishing industry–it will just change it. I am a strong advocate for print publishing, as it is my preference to hold and read a physical product. After hearing from the many industry professionals who visited SPI, I have more comfort in the fact that the print industry won’t be diminished entirely. Digital publishing really just expands the ways that readers interact with content–it doesn’t usurp print publishing.

4. What piece of advice about digital publishing do you think is most important for literary presses and magazines?

I think one of the most important things to keep in mind when publishing digitally is to make sure you are posting on a regular basis. If you find people who enjoy the content you are producing, they are going to want to come back for more. It is important to meet that demand and to keep the voice of your content consistent and compelling.

5. What platform are you reading on? What do you like or dislike about it, and how do you see your reading habits changing in the future?

Right now I am reading good old-fashioned books. I don’t have a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad or a Kobo, but I have been considering buying some type of e-reader. I’m not sure at this point if I want something multi-functional or if I want just a dedicated e-reader. I’m sure I’ll eventually have some type of e-reader, just for the convenience and ease of use, but for right now I am content with lugging around books in my purse! I’m also waiting for the day when publishing houses decide to include a digital copy in all of their print copies so that I can buy both together and switch between the two as needed. I also really see the benefit of using an e-reader for news reading, which is something I do mostly online.

In some ways, Facebook is granting users more control over their online presentations: the sleek new Timeline allows you to spotlight significant actions on your profile and bury others you don’t want people to see.

But in other ways, Facebook is taking away users’ choice in what they share with the world. A slew of new social apps will now automatically post any and all of your activity on Facebook. With this change, Slate argues that “Facebook is killing taste.” Whereas before you had to actively “like” something to share it to Facebook, now every article you read, every song you listen to, every movie you watch will be streamed through Facebook, regardless of whether you liked it, hated it, or felt absolutely neutral about it.

As Mark Zuckerberg introduced this new feature, he said, “people have things that they want to share, but they don’t want to annoy their friends by putting boring stuff in their newsfeeds.” And so Facebook created a space specifically for annoying, boring updates, including a running log of everything everyone does on the internet: the Ticker.

So what does this mean for publishers? Well, your press or magazine’s updates are likely to end up in your followers’ Tickers. Anytime someone likes your page, it’s likely to end up in their friends’ Tickers. As if it weren’t enough of a challenge to be heard already, your page is now even more likely to get lost in the Facebook noise.

The only way out of the Ticker is through content that Facebook’s filters identify as “important.” So the more user interaction your updates get, the more likely they are to make it onto the newsfeed—meaning it’s now more important than ever to be authentic, significant, and engaging in your social networking presence.