On 10 Jan 2006 at 22:53, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> My argument, Marcus, was with your assumption of The Drunken Boat as a
> company along with the use of 'customer' and 'vendor' as synonyms for
> 'reader' and 'contributor' respectively. Since a 'customer is one who
> purchases goods or services,' and a 'vendor' is 'one who offers goods
> for sale,' it doesn't seem to me to apply.<

It wasn't an assumption, it was a metaphor. Everyone else, even Alison 
Croggon, seems to have gotten it. Let me quote what I actually said:

"A company that wanted its vendors and customers to maintain a solid 
relationship would be pretty interested in making sure that both could 
get in touch with it, either to place or fulfill orders."

In a subsequent email I clarified this when you suggested that I was 
offering "corporate ethics":

" ... it's wise to be honest with your vendors and customers. Small 
businesses where the decision-makers are inevitably in close touch with 
their customers know that; big businesses get away from it as the 
decision- makers get further and further removed from dealing with 
actual customers. A poetry magazine is a small business in that regard."

In the same spirit in which you offer "corporate ethics", let me say that 
you're making it clear that it is not your policy to be honest with your 
readers and contributors since you reject out of hand the notion that 
they are customers and vendors and that your enterprise is a small 
business.

Now, if we can agree to be finished with that sort of thing, if you were to 
lie to your contributors or readers, would you expect them to forgive you 
because your enterprise doesn't charge them money? Of course not. If a 
small business lies to its vendors or customers, would you expect them 
to forgive that entrepreneur because she needed the money? Of course 
not. Do you see any similarity there? Substitute "cheat" for "lie", or 
"steal" for "lie", and so on. Do you see any similarities there? Your small 
gift-economy enterprise is like any small money-economy enterprise in 
such significant ways that your objection to terminology is at least 
merely moot if not actually disingenuous. 

No matter what kind of enterprise you run, you have to provide what you 
promise to provide or people will cease to deal with you -- whether what 
you provide is the bubble reputation in a gift economy or cash on the 
barrelhead in a money economy. You cannot escape the fundamental 
human rules of fair exchange, not even in a gift economy. In fact, 
because in a gift economy there is nowhere to go for recourse for 
pricked reputation bubbles, and no restitution available, as is provided 
for in courts for money economy disagreements, it may be more 
important to be honest in your dealings than in a money economy where 
you can, in the end, simply buy your way out of trouble, by making 
money restitution, if you can raise the cash.

On 10 Jan 2006 at 22:53, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> We do have readers/visitors
> who read for free and contributors who contribute for free. Though it
> should be noted that the contributions are the result of much work,
> which is receiving no renumeration, which I remind myself of when the
> hours of html begins to wear.<

Here are the facts that, however unrecognizedly on your part, admit that 
there is, in fact, an exchange going on. Some people work to contribute; 
others work to organize those contributions, and the work exchange has 
got to be seen to be a fair exchange by those participants or those 
participants cease to participate. The all-too-human rules of exchange 
are no less applicable for there being no money involved.

On 10 Jan 2006 at 22:53, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> To me, it's more significant
> that they are both magazines founded by women editors, independent of
> any foundation or financial institution's support, designed and
> webworked by each of us, and having created a poetry venue that is of
> value to our respective contributors and readers, and the
> no-submissions policy is the only manageable one.<

Haven't we been here before? Are you so good at parsing nonsense 
poetry that you cannot read and understand lucid prose? I agreed 
explicitly, and admired, the no-submissions policy you and Ms Croggon 
have in your enterprises as a good one, as, in fact, the only manageable 
one. I pointed out at what you seemed to think was too-great length just 
why it was the only manageable one. Why are you trying to persuade 
me of what I have already demonstrated I agree with? Are you just being 
bloody-minded, trolling for disagreement where there is none?

On 10 Jan 2006 at 22:53, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> Neither do I  see anything wrong with publishing the work of friends
> if it's interesting work, or requesting work from writers.<

So long as that is the clearly-stated policy so that no one is deceived 
into thinking that your policies are to publish "the best poems received" 
or other such locutions, I don't see anything wrong with it, either. In fact, 
as I've already said, I don't see how any part-time publishing enterprise 
could be operated otherwise: the problems of an open submissions 
policy are just too great.

On 10 Jan 2006 at 22:53, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> I do have
> contributing editors, which is not a screening collective (like for
> instance at Field where all of the editors have to favor a particular
> work for it to be published), but which works more on the principle of
> guest editing, as they  bring in work or features that I might not be
> familiar with or have access to, and do so, dependent on their
> schedules and enthusiasms.  And Alison may have a point that the best
> magazines are those that reflect a particular editor's sensibility; I
> think highly of Masthead and it is one of the best internet magazines.<

This mutual reputation masturbation aside, I ask you once again why 
you deny that you have readers and contributors by denying that you 
have customers and vendors? You seem to be determined to bring 
value to the table for your customers by demanding that your vendors 
bring value to the table for you, however you may define "value". It 
seems simply opaque to deny that you are facilitating a value exchange, 
that honesty in that exchange is important, that the human rules of 
value-exchange apply or that and that value exchange even exists. 
Once again, are you just being bloody-minded, or are you trolling for 
disagreement where there is none?

On 10 Jan 2006 at 22:53, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> Basically I publish The Drunken Boat because I like creating a space
> for poetry, even those poetries that I may have no affinity for, nor
> am I interested in competing with other magazines (hence, our always
> featuring other magazines or publishers of poetry, including Masthead,
> Ravi Shankar's Drunken Boat, the current features etc, to send our
> visitors to other sites) or with business models for success. That biz
> aspect seems to me only depressing, somewhat back to the beggar's
> banquet and fighting over crumbs.<

The problem of any human enterprise of any mutuality or hope to 
achieve significance within its ambit of ambition is that you cannot 
escape the human rules of exchange. The only question is how are you 
going to address the fairness issues. As for "the beggar's banquet and 
fighting over crumbs" by paying out the money you pay, and doing the 
work that you do within the context of the po biz you have necessarily 
become one of the crumbs to fight over. The only question is whether 
you realize it. Not to realize it, to imagine fondly that you're doing this 
just for your own satisfaction, that you have no impact on the po-biz, that 
because no money exchanges hands nothing is exchanged, is to so 
blinker and blinder yourself that you get tempted into saying silly things 
such as that you have no readers or contributors because you have no 
customers or vendors. You're denying the very reality you're trying to 
create: that there is a value to what you do, and to what your 
contributors and readers do.

So, why are you doing that?

Marcus