There’s an online literary revolution afoot. While all types of print magazines—from traditional literary journals to magazines like the Atlantic Monthly—have seen their circulations dropping lately, online magazines and journals have been gaining in both readers and prestige.
If you need any proof of this, simply check out the 2005 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market(N&SSW). Two of the book’s feature interviews focus on the growing field of online fiction. In the first interview, editor Jill Adams of the Barcelona Review talks about how online magazines and journals are now legitimate places to be published. In the second interview, I talk about storySouth‘s Million Writers Award for best online fiction of the year.
When you add these interviews in with the 2005 N&SSW Market giving online markets their own section in the book, it is hard for anyone to argue that online magazines and journals have not come into their own.
It’s funny how things can change in just a few years. In the winter 2002 issue of storySouth, I wrote an editorial about how it was better for new writers to be published in online magazines and journals than in traditional print literary journals. Back then, that essay started a number of heated discussions in online discussion groups and caused storySouth to receive dozens of e-mails both for and against the value of publication in online markets. Now, just two years later, I doubt the essay would even be noticed or commented upon.
Online fiction has come of age—and I say it’s about dang time!
