Thank you Chris, and I agree about the need to contextualise.
I think it's tricky to navigate through the world of poetry and 'what means what' to different people. It is the same, maybe for publications (although I don't belong to the 'that doesn't count as a publication' school of thought - it's too hierarchical and doesn't help people grow).
But...once I'd got over the first rush of getting published and the joy of knowing that anyone - anyone, anywhere - valued what I was writing at all I did a bit of research. And came across an article that basically said what 'Umbrella' said - don't put these on your bio - pushcarts and 'best of' are nice but tell editors nothing.
And then I slowly started to learn about the world of journals, too.
I now use a mixture of duotrope stats, 'lists' like the Garstang list and - most importantly - my own personal feeling about work published on site - to decide where I internally 'place' a journal in that wider context. But it took me a while to work that out. And I still send out work to people I like who I want to support even if they 'fail' some of those internal checks because life is too short to keep quality assuring & there has to be joy and friendship too.
I think it's the same with things like Print-on-demand publishing. I'm not against POD. With some publishers, you can see clear editorial control and quality control whether it's POD or not. With others (particularly those that use Amazon POD only) it feels like self-publishing under another name.
Am I being overly picky? Has anyone else come across this? Is it worth starting a thread about?
Sarah-Jane
|