Long-standing literary magazines are struggling to stay afloat
I spend a lot of time thinking about, and trying to solve for, these sets of issues. There is an implicit boon that one gets from reading, perhaps especially reading print, a phenomenon which writers know well, and the job of literary magazines is to make this implicit boon explicit. The whole model needs to be updated, and investments into technology and physical spaces need to be made. Literature has always been the proto &#x27;lifestyle-brand&#x27; lifestyle. I think literary magazines and nimble publishers could learn a thing or two about the dynamics of lifestyle-brands. Take, for example, yoga, surf-shops&#x2F;apparel stores in NYC, and meditation more and more. What one has to struggle against at all costs, however, is the commodification of literature. For literature to discover its survivable form for the 21st century, it really must focus on making that implicit boon explicit.<p>I could go on and on and on about this subject. I am very near to opening a coffee shop in Chicago that will also function as a kind of arcade for writing and reading. I have also been developing a web app to attempt to formalize the process and craft of literary production. I believe literature, and even new literature, to be resilient, and novel implementations will be discovered. Long-standing literary institutions do perhaps needs to fail first.