Shaming people into buying your publication never works.

Libraries continue to be an important cornerstone of democracy.

And as the recent report from QUT on the take home pay of writers and other artists revealed, they haven't benefited from the growth of the creative industries. To say writers aren't carrying their weight based on, well, hearsay (you give no real evidence) is a low blow and does little to build a literary community.

Seen the recent reports on the typical income of creative workers? I'm a writer. That's why I don't buy new books - or new clothes - or new anything. Would if I could though!

I discontinued my subscriptions to literary magazines like Overland when the editors told me that they are racists and told me not to be so naive about it.

If you guys are our friends, than I'd rather not meet our enemies.

I've long held the view that something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. If someone is not prepared to pay for something then they do not consider it as being valuable to them. In which case, if, as a writer, you are prepared to submit writing to journals (or wherever) but you are not prepared to buy them (regardless of your financial position) then ask yourself, what is this journal's worth to you and why are you submitting your writing? If your writing is worth something to you, then, equally, so should be its place of publication.

This debate is one of values, and what we hold dear. And for each of us this is different. And I believe it would help to inform our writing, and everything else that we do, to ask ourselves more often: what is valuable to us?

Yes it's interesting I think to look at this from a standpoint of value.

I certainly don't subscribe to everything, but I do make a point of buying books, reading journals, anthologies, attending launches and so on when I can. Yes it helps the industry (which I work in too), but more than that it helps me as a writer. I get to see what else is out there, read some great fiction and that motivates me to write and to improve. Ultimately, it's an investment in my own work. Hopefully, as things more online, we'll see more flexible purchase options for writers and readers, but then that's another kettle of fish entirely....

Also, a journal that "receives funding from the university, the Literature Fund of the Australia Council for the Arts, CAL and Arts Victoria" and is an imprint of University of Melbourne Press can not characterise itself as independent by any stretch of the imagination. I also suspect the good will of writers, willing to license their work to these journals for very little money, keeps the publication afloat. Links to your annual reports are most welcome.

Just one quick clarification regarding the title of this piece: as the University of Melbourne Book Industry Study from 2009 and related articles in Bookseller and Publisher have pointed out, Australian publishing in general is in a period of rapid expansion and growth; there is no decline whatsoever in Australian publishing, generally speaking.

Whether or not 'literary' publishing is in decline (or else expanding at a slower rate) is a more open question, although there are good reasons to suspect that this is the case.

That being said, I agree that aspiring writers should absolutely subscribe to Australian literary journals!

@ 'My Two Cents' : I find your story highly implausible. I also think your statement is problematic given that you say journals 'like Overland' as Overland is a consciously left-wing journal and therefore anti-racist. But if there was some other journal that said that to you that is a real worry.

@ 'Constant Reader' I presume you mean by hearsay the experience of journals both here and in the US. Journals receive many more submissions than they have subscribers. Libraries are great but by themselves they aren't likely to keep journals or publishers in print. And yes money from writing might be awful but is that all people are living on? In terms of independence if that is your criteria then nothing is really independent.

I think what Zoe said about value is what resonates with me. If you aren't interested in subscribing to a journal (as opposed to being unable to afford it) why would you want to be published in it.

Maybe I just imagined it then.

I think we need to be a little careful.
Yes, writers should buy books, if by that we mean that they should engage with the literary culture, support their peers and generally take an interest in the writing of others. If we're interested in writing, that presumably means we're interested in what others are writing, not simply in our own productions.
That doesn't mean that it's the responsibility of impoverished scribblers to prop up the whole literary publishing industry with their purchases. It's more about understanding writing as a form of communication rather than just a means of self-expression.

Yes, let's be careful, Jeffrey.
Let's be very careful. We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Especially not yours. Or any other white persons.

@My Two cents: There's only one racist journal in Australia that I know of, and it's certainly not Overland. I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience with a literary journal, but am confused as to why this inspired you to unsubscribe from all literary journals.

@Jeff: What you said – with a qualification: It would be great to see a time when literary journals could support themselves without external funding, and this can only come about through the support of the literary community.

@Emmett Stinson: I did try to address this by alluding to the 'perception' that book sales are decreasing, but did not have exact figures at hand. The title was meant to be eye-catching more than anything else.

@Constant Reader: I think we may disagree on the role of the writer, the library, the journal and the literary community as a whole. And this was meant to be a call to arms rather than a shaming.

Thanks for all the comments, many of which were more eloquent and persuasive than my original post.

I guess I just saw too many white faces at too many events and remembered that I wasn't welcome there but that my money probably was.

From personal experience as a young aspiring writer there were several reasons why I sometimes submitted to journals without subscribing:

- I couldn't afford to buy anything I didn't have to, and if I needed to read a journal to get an idea of whether my work was suitable for it, then yes, I could go to the library.

- That's not entirely true. I regularly bought novels after I bought groceries. Any new writing is competing with the entire history of literature from all over the world. Short of cash, I invested in writing I was pretty confident would be brilliant.

- I never could agree that I should buy literature, Australian literature or new literature as a moral imperative. I should buy it because it is good. For a long time nobody I knew ever said, "You must read this journal. It's the best thing I ever read!" Most times I took the trouble to look at journals the stories were boring. Maybe I should have looked harder.

- Perhaps most important is this dilemma: I certainly would have subscribed to a journal if they had published my story. It's only fair. However, there are so many journals, I don't know which one might publish me, so I can't commit to subscribing to any before being published in any of them. I can't afford to subscribe to all of them, hoping that they will see I'm a subscriber and actually read my story before binning it. Furthermore, there was almost no chance of getting published in any of them, especially since I'm not David Malouf, so that it would only increase my irritation to keep wanting to be part of something, even paying them, that continually excluded me. In saying that, of course I admit to vanity and sour grapes, but who could be an aspiring writer without vanity, and who could be vain in an industry characterised by constant rejection without sour grapes?

Ultimately I gave up on thinking about journals and getting published in journals and came to that conclusion: "Why would I want to be part of something I'm not interested in?" I thought it better to concentrate on good writing than on getting published and am much more reconciled about it now, rather than bitterly confused about writing for market, about publisher's bias, arbiters of taste, self-indulgence, what is the measure of good writing, etc etc.

The only reason I had been interested, of course, was as a beginning, to get some recognition so that I could ultimately get a more significant work published. We are told that we should try to get some works published in journals. Fortunately, there is a way out of this dilemma now. The interweb offers more opportunities for publishing, for providing and getting literature for free (and what kind of fool would expect to make money from it? If you want money, become a doctor or a lawyer, or go into business.), without the politics, spite, bias, and marketeering concerns of publishers getting in the way. The promise of new technology, free distribution and social network marketing, is that, now I can publish what I want when I want, and if no-one reads my work I know it's because it's crap, not because I'm not David Malouf.

Perhaps the point I'm trying to make is that you say aspiring writers should financially contribute to the literary community they want to participate in, but to me journals were never a community. They were an exclusive club.

There is a place for journals in that future of publishing however, and it is as a filter and focus for good taste (eg: if I like left wing contemporary fiction, I'll go to the relevant journal site), and a forum for discussion. The ability to more immediately participate (blog, comment etc) rather than simply consume a world you can only dream of being part of, will be much more involving and engaging in a literary community sense than print journals ever could be, which were rather exclusive by comparison. (You could even start your own online journal of "Non-racist Lit" if you were unhappy with the proportion of white faces at literary conferences. You don't even have to bother criticising established journals for not being inclusive if you can just start your own.) Meanland is itself a great example. But remember we're not in it for the money (nice if you can get it though!). And just because something doesn't have a budget, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Don't expect a living or much profit from it - but, I'll make the point again, who ever expected riches from poetry?

I think that, like Emmett pointed out above, there needs to be a distinction made between the decline of publishing and the decline of literary journals. As far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of people who would willingly seek out and subscribe to literary journals are those that are either already engaged in the publishing/literary industry, or are seeking to be. That is, editors, publishers, established and emerging writers, literary critics, and the odd punter who fancies themselves an arts enthusiast.

So the question I see as needing to be answered when addressing the supposed decline of these literary journals (because, as Emmett also said, the book industry in Australia doesn't really need any hand-holding atm) is how can these journals move outside these circles to engage with the more general public? Developing a more expansive community is one way, and I think the Wheeler Centre is one example of how that can really boost interest.

Writing isn't like the visual arts; you can't just hang pretty things in a gallery and ask the public to wander through (I mean no offence to art galleries). It is, like Jeff said, a form of communication of ideas, not just self-expression. And as media of communication evolve--the elephant in the room at the moment being the Internet--of course the forms literary journals take are going to need to change with it. Meanland itself is an example of these new forms, and a good one at that.

We can, and should, criticize established literary journals. Especially if they claim to be about something they're not.
Especially if they're asking for us to support them.
That's my two cents on the matter.

Yes, it often is about what the journals publish. I have, in the past, subscribed to several journals (without being published in them), but find that the majority of the work contained in them was... very 'in house' literary constipation. In Australia, I think we make too much of this distinction (the literary vs the rest) and it tends to harm the literary journals by limiting what is acceptable in them. Let me say that I would never never never subscribe to Meanjin (or send them any work for possible publication). I have read issues and... yeuch. At the same time, I have subscribed to Overland... Haha, sorry, I put that in simply because of the humour, which should be obvious.

"There is a perception that book sales, in our technologically impelled 2010, are in decline, though a visit to any bookstore (in my hometown at least) indicates otherwise."

Mind elaborating? How are you able to determine the financial health of a business, and in turn extrapolate to an entire industry, by 'visiting'. What did you find ..?

You got me, Robert Collings -- that was anecdotal. If you want to follow up the state of the Australian publishing industry however, I highly recommend the study Emmett referred to.

Not sure we can say literary journals are in decline. Under the editorship of Sophie Cunningham Meanjin doubled its subscriptions in 2008 and also reported a tidy $13,000 profit, according to the University of Melbourne annual report. (2009 figures were not available.)

As for more submissions than subscribers, anyone who has spent anytime in the slush pile knows that there are as many theories about the number 8 and its relationship with the electric company as there are aspiring writers who would like you to publish their story about the dark side of suburban life. And god help you if publish poetry.

But even better than subscribing to literary journals, writers and artists are starting them. The print variety. Some are self-published zines, others art objects. They range from the dreadful to the inspiring; ditto, the cost.

To reduce participation in literary and intellectual life to a consumer choice not only belittles the pursuit, it sends a message that if you're not middle class, you're not welcome.

Literary life should always be open to the literate...even the guy who wants to tell you something you didn't know about the electric company.

Constant Reader, You seem to have a curious definition of middle class. Do you just mean people with disposable income?

I also don't understand the concept: 'But even better than subscribing to literary journals, writers and artists are starting them.'

How is that better? It actually reinforces my original point: we have writers so desperate to produce and publish that we are in danger of finding ourselves in a world without readers. I would ask: what is the point of all these writings? Is it simply to create? For what end?

In my humble opinion, writing should be a conversation, rather than a monologue into an abyss. And writing should have a purpose.

The reason writers and artists starting their own zines and journals is better than subscribing to established journals (in terms of conversation) is that writers and artists are forming their own communities of practice, self actualising themselves by reclaiming the means of production etc, rather than subjecting themselves to the assumed authority of established institutions and waiting with baited breath for their decree on whether they are worthy of recognition.

In this way they are closer to their readers, even if the reader response is silence or complete ignorance, it says something to the writer - that they have to make their writing better, or more visible. Also, people engaged in that more direct relationship are more likely to read and react to each others work, as they see each other in the street, share knowledge about independant production, share excitement about cool publications etc. There is a good chance they'll also be able to get direct, face to face or online feedback from their readers.

By contrast there is negligible coversation possible in established print journals. It is a matter of many people submitting work to editors who have no time to read them in their masses who then decide what literature people should be consuming. The reader spends money to consume the literature, given some assurance it is good based on the authority of the editor. But what is the point of their putting in any effort to write back when there is almost no chance of being read amidst the slush pile? Journals aren't about conversation and dialogue, they are a one way system, refining good writing from a lot of dross, for sale to literature consumers.

That's fair enough, it's nice to be able to buy something knowing it's the best new writing we have, as selected by an expert, but if you start claiming we should buy it to be part of the literary community and conversation, it really sounds like you are saying, "You should buy it to listen to what we have to say because we know best." It's like when you have a 'fire side chat' with your boss and he explains at length the importance of listening.

I agree with everything Bill said, I'd also like to add that sometimes it really seems like editors will go out of their way to discourage emerging writers. Most young writers know they are not Shakespeare and they aren't sending you their writing because they think they're particularly gifted, they're usually sending you their writing because they actually want some constructive criticism and helpful feedback. I don't think anyone ever really writes into an 'abyss' but that initial step of writing for yourself or for an outlet is very important for a writer to take. It is a step towards producing finer writing which may then be more suitable for literary publication.

I have had my writing in Overland magazine, and I felt very weird about it. I felt I didn't belong there at all. And it really was due to the lack of diversity in voices. Not just because I felt shy about my writing.

I agree with some of the earlier comments.

That is, you need to engage in the literary community as an author whether this is the established or the new and independent. Sometimes this means submitting to literary journals, sometimes this means self-publishing.

What I have a hard time with is the idea of publishing as a one-way street or publishing for the sake of publishing. In technical fields there is a demand given the form to build to purpose—so the majority of projects (if not all), both commercial and independent, have a purpose. A secondary result may be building the name of the developer/programmer but purpose is essential.

While it might be satisfying to decide that art has no purpose I don't think you can separate it from the political nor the effect it has on an audience.

So when starting a new journal or self-publishing, is it sufficient to do this just to get published? It is easy to self-publish now (online) so it surprises me this is even a debate. But presumably what people want is the prestige of being published in a literary journal or the prestige of starting one, but not the effort required to engage in a critique of the form or the conversation of literature.

It seems the conversation is steering towards what it means to be published, and correspondingly what literary publications offer writers that self-publication does not.

Obviously literary journals convey with them some kind of yardstick. Every writer wants to be published and the idea of being published in a reputable journal is an attractive one. They are notches on belts, proof that yes, you can write well enough for someone to want to waste ink on you. Self-publishing, on the other hand, seems to convey a sense of copping-out. You are publishing yourself, there are no gatekeepers. It's not so much a notch on the belt than an admission of laziness, or a lack of skill, or a certain air of naivety. Those attitudes are changing slowly, however, with the advent of social networking making it possible for self-published authors to make a living out of promoting themselves.

So with self-publishing becoming a more attractive option for those wanting to see their name in print, a greater consideration must be given to what literary journals offer other than just a space for names to be made. I'd be very interested to hear what other people think?

Personally, that's what I want to see, journals on our side, encouraging us, working with us, not against us, then you can tell us to support you, and we'll do it happily. You won't even need to ask.

'So with self-publishing becoming a more attractive option for those wanting to see their name in print, a greater consideration must be given to what literary journals offer other than just a space for names to be made.'
I guess it depends on what you are trying to achieve. In some ways, there are more options for writers today, although it should be acknowledged that, while the digital revolution has made production easier, it hasn't really solved the problem of publicity, which was always the big difficulty with self-publication. That is, for many years now, it's been feasible to make books yourself quite cheaply. It is, however, more difficult to get them noticed in a crowded market -- and there's no market more crowded than the internet.
In some respects, that applies to established journals, too. If you're a little magazine, you're always going to struggle for attention, especially when compared to the horizontal integration possible for a publishing house owned by Murdoch (from book to film and back again).
Nonetheless, a journal with a degree of longevity is part of an ongoing conversation among subscribers. By publishing with it, you enter into that dialogue.
Now that might not be everyone but IMO it definitely has its place.

Starting a journal with other writers, editors and artists is a sign of optimism, empowerment and willingness to engage in dialogue. It's not desperation and a desire to see one's name in print. The more the merrier. (And its funny how everyone gravitated towards the vanity publishing side of the continuum and didn't think about the many new small presses, as discussed at this recent design week event: http://www.sydneydesign.com.au/2010/index.php/after-hours/why-we-love-making-books-ideas-about-unfettered-self-expression)

The author on the one hand wants to use markets and consumer participation as indicator of value, commitment and support yet on the other hand doesn't want to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Good luck with that.

I think the point is that 'the author' does want to be read by a 'market' (money aside) and community participation is some indicator of value. The author also wants to be part of the dialogue, though journals are only a small part of it. It goes all the way back to Gilgamesh. But since there is virtually no chance of being published in an established journal, yet it takes a large amount of effort and anxiety, self publishing seems to be the only option.
(It also seems a bit rude when they require you to not submit to other journals while you have submitted to them, then never reply, so you can never try with someone else.)
It is good that times are changing and there are more smaller journals providing more opportunities. Perhaps my head is stuck in the bad old days 10 years ago.
Although self publishing attracts hardly any readers, doesn't count to scholarships and grants and doesn't provide legitimacy, at least it attracts some readers. You also have complete control, more direct feedback and less anxiety. You don't need to bend your work into the journal's creative vision (where the journal is the work of art/political view/etc rather than being a showcase of new art, or forum), but can manifest your own. You can improve as you go, without having to be the best writer in the world first time. Hopefully, in future self publishing and the many new small journals can fill in that vast gap between the several well known writers in the world at any one time, and the millions of nobodies.
Perhaps today I have 3 readers. Tomorrow maybe 10, then maybe 100. And then if I'm good enough, I get to 10,000 maybe a journal will invite me to participate instead of ignoring my begging.
Not long ago I happened upon the full collection of Meanjin and other major journals in that big library in Melbourne. Instead of doing what I went there to do, I was engrossed for hours in that ongoing dialogue - so that's another reason to read it in the library, to get the dialogue not the just the latest edition.