I know very little about what happened with this so I won't comment in detail on it.
But I do want to point out, for those who may not realize, a text, be it an interview, poem, blog entry, whatever, will almost certainly find more readers online than in print. No Tell Motel receives more unique visitors in a day than there are currently copies of the first Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel in existence (approx. 400 and that includes galleys, contributor copies and the 30 or so in my home -- since this title is POD, this number will change). No Tell Motel receives more unique visitors by noon on any weekday than copies sold over an entire year. And this isn't just a case of it being available for free online, less than half the poems in the anthology are reprints -- over half are new, never been published poems.
The printed product does not bring publicity for the online product -- quite the contrary.
Addendum: The above isn't meant to imply online is "better" than print -- but to suggest that if one is worried about "all the people" who will read something in print format after it's been available online for a couple years -- well, it's kind of too late.
Labels: print versus online
posted by RL @ 8:11 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
how right you are!
wonder if that's really the issue tho? permissions do need to be made explicit so there are no surprises. maybe the misunderstanding just ticked off the wrong poet.
also, sometimes people don't understand that anthologies don't generate wads of $$$, despite the fact that they're sold for the cover price. maybe somebody thinks they're getting cheated because they weren't paid. just a guess. seen it before.
hard to say without details. anyway, i'm feeling for lance. he worked hard on that project.
I wonder, though, if there might be a difference in the quality of the reading effort done online and with print. Online, I think it may be more likely someone would visit but not linger too much on a poem, just glancing at it. Whereas with print, a financial investment might (though not always) mean more reader invesment in the poem. The Internet is still relatively new and needs time to gain the same kind of media legitimacy. (Are their differences in kinds of readers?) Just a guess, I don't know for sure.
Of course, there's the context. a poem in a famous anthology may be seen differently as the same one published online. (Walter Benjamin's "aura" of a piece of art.) It's kind of like that violinist who played at the Metro.
I'm probably way offbase, but that's what I'm thinking about this subject right now.
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