As many of you may know, we created a survey regarding Subprimal Poetry Art/Music and ran it during June. Some of the questions focused on the things we’ve been doing (music / audio integration, art work, etc.) and others on new things that we had been considering.

First, I’d like to give a big thank you to all of those who responded. I know surveys are generally an unexciting errand, but many contributors and readers expressed an interest and completed the survey.

The responses to the questions regarding what we’re currently doing were in the majority favorable. This was more or less as I expected, but it’s good to do a sanity check once in a while.

As for ideas moving forward, there were several different ones and the responses were in favor of some and not much in favor of others. Two of the main ideas that received a strong favorable response were more frequent publication, and becoming a paying market. We’re implementing these, effective immediately.

1. More frequent publication: In August, we’ll open for submissions again, which will lead to the second issue of 2016. That won’t leave enough time to produce more issues this year, but in 2017, our submission schedule is changing in order to produce 3 issues per year. See the submission guidelines page for details on the dates.
2. Paying market: As a writer and a human being, I feel strongly that writers ought to be paid. Beginning with the next issue of Subprimal Poetry Art/Music, we’ll start doing exactly that. It’s not a huge amount, but it’s a start (details). As we explore this new territory, we hope to find ways to do more, which leads to:
3. Funding a paying market: Of course, it takes $ to pay and that needs to come from somewhere. One viable way to raise money is through a submission fee. We won’t be doing that in August, because for the time being we have some reserve funds, but it is a likelihood in 2017. One of the survey questions was if you’d support paying a small fee to fund becoming a paying market, and this received a very favorable response. The flip side of that question (no, won’t support a fee) received less support, but still a sizeable portion. So, I realize that this is a controversial issue, but allow me to explain a bit more.

More On Funding

Should we implement a submission fee (and again, that’s likely in 2017 since our reserve can’t last forever), keep in mind that this money will go towards paying authors. We’ll need to keep a little bit in the reserve tank so to speak, and cover a portion of our operating expenses, but we’re not looking to become a profit center. Your submission fee will be a way of supporting the community of writers and small publications. Moreover, we will be entirely transparent about the amount of money that comes in, the amounts paid to authors, etc. We’ll publish a financial report after every submission period. This is not the norm I suppose, but I want that Subprimal Poetry Art/Music is completely up front about money matters.

Other

Other ideas that had strong support include essays about the writing craft, and publishing author interviews. We’re going to solicit essays in August, and think about how to manage author interviews for 2017.

Again, thank you everyone. We are slowly growing, and I feel that these are good new directions. I appreciate your creative contributions and your support, and look forward to working with many of you in the future. As always, if you have any questions, please get in touch.