Let me turn this around and ask in what circumstances you would want to
submit material that had been previously published?
Compare poetry publication with academic journals. These too exist in print
and virtual form. There is no intrinsic prestige issue related to the
medium, prestige being vested in the peers doing the peer review. The same I
think is true of poetry. On permenance, in fact on-line journals have the
edge because they don't take up storage space. But 'journals' have a
permanence of record that 'magazines' don't. Magazines are _supposed_ to be
disposable.
Now, suppose that you have submitted material that was published elsewhere
previously. Would you prefer it to appear with other material that has been
published elswhere previously -- essentially as an anthology -- or would you
be hoping that everyone else's contributions would be fresh-minted?
By the way, on the question of covering letters & envelopes: I think that a
re-used envelope exhibits thrift and ecological sensitivity, both virtues
that are likely to impress themselves subliminally on your average editor.
An endlessly recycled envelope may perhaps suggest cheese-paring
eccentricity, however.
On the other hand, fresh paper for the submission itself avoids giving the
impression that the material has been sent elsewhere and rejected.
When I was working at Chapman, the reason for the strict
no-prior-publication policy was that there was always far more stuff to
publish than space to publish it in. That issue doesn't really arise with
online journals, but the corresponding temptation to publish everything you
like may lead to an impression that you (as an editor) don't have much sense
of discriminiation, in which case it 'means' less to be published in your
forum.
P
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