On 13 Jan 2006 at 12:18, Joanna Boulter wrote:
> Now I didn't say a thing about making publication dependent on
> subscription, which is something I am of course dead against. I merely
> find it rather odd that people can write poetry and submit it to
> magazines, in full expectation of getting it published, without having
> sufficient interest in poetry publication to want to subscribe.
What seems so odd to me in these repetitions of the familiar old things
in this discussion is the way that the poetry editors/magazines want to
have it both ways. They want credit for the noble endeavor of working
for free in a gift economy, but they also want money to pay for labor and
materials. The conflict between these two wants means that it can seem
as if those editors who charge money for subscriptions and ads cannot
be very serious about participating in a gift economy. It's really hard to
see how any of those who charge money can deny that they are in a
money economy relation to their work. So the question becomes, for me,
why those editors don't spend a good deal more time selling
subscriptions and ads in order to support their endeavors -- or hiring
people on commisison who will sell for them. It's not as if the model of
how to run a magazine for money is absent. Don't the people who write
poems buy cars and plants and pictures and vacations and home
furnishings? Has anyone ever tried to take the academic demographic
to businesses, and point out that the people who write poetry own
homes and work in offices and drive cars and all the other things that
other consumers do?
Marcus
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