Preditors and Editors ™
A guide to publishers and publishing services for serious writers since 1997.
Reader Response
An opinion by Raechel Henderson Moon, writer and editor.
© 2000, Raechel Henderson Moon.
How many times has this happened to you? You find a cool new e-zine. It has
a great layout, the content is rough but has promise, the editor and staff are
friendly and seem to have a real passion for what they're writing about. Maybe you have a
story or other piece of writing you'd like to submit. Maybe you want to see how the
site grows down the line. You bookmark the site and go on your merry way. Fast forward
a month or two or six down the road. You hit the bookmark and get a 404 Error.
What? Has the site moved? Nope. The e-zine is dead. Another one bit the dust. Que sera
sera, and all that jazz.
I've seen e-zines come and go many times over the last few years. Usually
they explode upon the scene blazing with enthusiasm and fantasies of making money off
of banner ads. That first big bang doesn't last long, though. The realities of editing an
e-zine tend to rip through the rosy glow in the first few weeks.
So what? That's the nature of the beast. Survival of the fittest and all that. Right?
Well . . . sort of. True, about seventy-five
percent of e-zines that fail do so because the founders
didn't realize what they were getting themselves
into. They quickly decide that they'd rather do something else with their time and fold up
shop. The other twenty-five percent have editors
and publishers that are dedicated to their vision
and struggle hard to achieve their goals. Even so,
they eventually give up. Why? Lack of reader response.
I'm not blaming readers for the demise of
every e-zine out there. Frankly many e-zines fold
because they were badly put together. So don't think
I'm pointing an accusing finger at you. Think,
instead, of this essay as a step-by-step Guide to the
Care and Feeding of Your Favorite E-zine.
On mailing lists, on message boards and every other place where two or
more editors get together, they eventually complain of a lack of feedback from
readers. Editors send out messages to other editors begging them to visit a new e-zine
and comment on it. Editors want feedback, crave it, need it. Some only want syrupy
praise. These are the editors who will most likely fold after six months. But other editors
want all the feedback they can get. As long as it is constructive they can use it to create
a better product.
Most of us, however, work in a vacuum. We post our e-zine, we place e-mail
links, guest books and message boards and hear nothing. We come up with polls and
contests and get less than a five percent response. It is a frustrating and lonely journey
and after a time some give up because they feel they aren't reaching anyone.
Now before any editors start nodding their
heads and accusing readers of killing their
publications, let me add that it takes at least one year of
steady publishing to gain a steady audience. That's
twelve months of publishing on time. So any editor
who closes up shop before the one-year anniversary can't blame a lack of reader response.
With that in mind, let's look at what the
reader can do to support her favorite e-zine without
paying a dime.
The best e-zine in the world is a failure if
no one knows about it. Editors spend forty to
sixty percent of their time marketing their e-zine.
They list the e-zine with all the search engines, they post announcements, and they
exchange links with other sites. Dedicated editors know that just putting a few pages on the
web doesn't guarantee the pages will get read. If you have a favorite e-zine, link to it
from your webpage. Grab a banner or button from the site and link to it or provide a
text link. When you put up the link, e-mail the editor and let him know. The editor
will most likely put a link to your webpage as well. Writers can keep a bibliography
on their webpages with links to their works online and to e-zines that have
published their work. This not only supports e-zines but also is smart self-promotion.
You might also want to e-mail your friends and let them know about your
favorite e-zines. If you read a good book or saw a great movie you'd tell your friends, right?
The same should be true of your online experiences. Send your friends a link to the
e-zine, story or article that you liked. If the e-zine is e-mail based you can forward an issue
to friends. Most e-zines allow such forwarding as long as all the text is forwarded
but make sure it is okay to forward the e-zine. If only an article is worth sending to all
your friends, send the entire e-zine with a message at the top about why you are
forwarding this e-zine. There should be a disclaimer somewhere that states the e-zine's policy.
If not, e-mail the editor and ask for permission. This is especially true if you have a
story or article published in an e-zine. Many authors place a link to stories and articles
that are currently published online. Help support those e-zines that published your
work by letting friends, family and fans know where they can find your work online.
I feel that one barrier to reader response has been the imperfect analogy
between print and online reading. I agree with some of the arguments of the anti-e-book
faction (you know the ones: "You'll get rid of paperbacks when you pry the last one from
my cold dead hand!"). The experiences of reading online and reading printed matter
are significantly different. They require different postures, positions, habits, etc. So it's
no surprise that the two mediums incorporate different responses. If you read a
good story in Realms of Fantasy you might tell a friend or post your favorable response on
a message board. It is unlikely, however, that you will write the author or the
magazine to express your opinion. It requires you to sit down with pen and paper, compose
a letter, find an envelope, address it and mail it off (after digging a stamp out of the
drawer). And you can't directly address the author most times. The best you can
hope for is that the magazine will forward your letter to the author.
Now compare that with the online reading experience. Liked a story? Click
a link (to the author if the address is provided, otherwise to the editor), type your
response and hit send. Voila! Near instant communication with the author. It is a bit
daunting to think one can communicate so easily with the author. Many readers brought up
on the print reading experience might not even think of this. But writers want
feedback, even more than editors. Even criticism, as long as it is constructive, is welcome. I try
to make it a habit to e-mail the author when I read something that I enjoyed. If
the author's e-mail address is not provided, I'll write the editor of the publication with
a request to forward my comments to the author and permission to give my e-mail
address to the author. When e-mailing an author, do read over what you wrote once or
twice before hitting the send button, especially when sending negative comments. The
author and editor took time to edit and proof the writing before presenting it to readers (or
at least they should have). Show similar courtesy by sending a thoughtfully typed
message. Writing "I just didn't like this story because . . ." and then going on to list your
reasons will elicit a better response than "Your story sucked!"
Probably the most difficult part of creating
an e-zine is coming up with a design. Every six to
eight months Eggplant Productions goes through a redesign as we try to build a site that everyone
can navigate. Yes, that's a near impossible task, yet
we continue on. In this matter we depend heavily
on reader feedback. We can't tell how something
will work or not work for all our readers. If we
didn't get e-mails from readers telling us what was
wrong we'd be coding blind. If an e-zine is hard to
navigate or hard to read, let the editor know. Make sure
to specify what browser, screen resolution you are using and what url you are looking at. Again,
a polite message will get a better response than
an e-mail trashing the site. As important to problem reports are e-mails of praise. If the
e-zine changes for the better, let the editor/webmaster know. It's easier to keep up
the good work when you know that what you are doing is good.
Finally, take time to participate in online discussions, message boards and
contests. Editors don't initiate discussions just for the heck of it. If an editor runs a poll,
she really wants to know what you think. Maybe you think the poll is silly, then let
the editor know! Make suggestions for future polls. Readers provided thirty-five percent
of Jackhammer E-zine's Questions of the Week. That's not including the fifty
plus Questions that I got that just didn't get used. Many readers did get their
questions used and in this way they helped edit Jackhammer E-zine. This is one of the
strengths I see in e-publishing: editors and readers working together to create publications
that would not be possible in print. Drop by the message boards and leave a note. Even an
"I was here" is better than a blank space. Sign the guest book and let the editor
know that you passed through. Make time to stop in at the weekly sci-fi chat and say "hi."
Years ago, when EP was a far away dream, I experimented with an education
major. The Internet was just gaining a reputation as a cesspit of sex and violence. I did
some research to show fellow teachers of the future that the Internet could be a useful
tool. What I found was a story about a classroom in New Zealand. The teacher took
her grade school students' stories and posted them on webpages. People from all over
the globe wrote e-mail commenting on the stories. What the teacher noticed is that
the next batch of stories were better in quality than the last batch. The students
took greater care with their work when they knew that others, besides their teacher,
would read it. The same holds true with your favorite e-zines. Your feedback encourages
the editors, can increase the life expectancy of the e-zine, and help create a
better publication. That is the power of reader response, and you've supported the growth
of a publication without spending any money.
The copyright of "Reader Response" belongs to Raechel Henderson
Moon, but I encourage you to pass this document along to anyone who might
be interested. As long as the content is not repackaged and no profit is made
by redistribution, you have my permission.
If you have any questions or comments please feel free to e-mail me
at roach@eggplant-productions.com
. And as always, stop by the main
Eggplant Literary Publications, Inc. website (http://www.eggplant-productions.com/
) to see what we are up to.
Other articles of interest:
Planning is the Key (
http://www.eggplant-productions.com/newbie_editor/newbie_editor_planning.pdf
)- Part I on planning and setting up your e-zine.
It's the Little Things (
http://www.eggplant-productions.com/newbie_editor/newbie_editor_little_things.pdf
) - Part II on planning your e-zine.
Do it With Style (
http://www.eggplant-productions.com/newbie_editor/newbie_editor_style.pdf
) - How to create a house style and create a "look" for your
e-zine.
The Newbie Writer Resource
Page (
http://www.eggplant-productions.com/newbie/newbie_writer.pdf
) - Everything you wanted to know about writing, but editors wouldn't tell you.
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