E-zine or Print magazine?

[Taijiren]

Just out of curiousity, what factors contribute to publishing a submitted article in the e-zine vs the print magazine?

[GeneChing]

We discuss it somewhat on our writer's guide. It's really piece-to-piece. Personal 'warrior's journeys' like my Shaolin Trips series go to e-zine since they just seem to read better there - I attribute this to the rise of Blogs. Movie reveiws and such go to e-zine too, with a few notable exceptions. The seem to get a larger readership there, plus they pull in more traffic right about when the movie hits. It's all about traffic. Articles that are heavily graphic driven usually go to the print mag because on the web, words are cheap but pics are pricey (keep in mind that we have to store all this stuff, including this here forum, and that sucks up a lot of memory). Some authors have a preference. The 'old school' masters tend to prefer print; I think this is the nature of 'old school' - they want something you can hold in your hands. Professional writers tend to lean to e-zine; it can reach a larger audience over time (no shelf life, free access, international) and everyone who writes does so with the intention of being read. Pro writers have a good understanding of this. Amateurs, which most of us 'writers' in MA are, well, they tend to be more 'old school'. To be honest, we are still experimenting with the media of the web - isn't everyone? And the media of print is changing quite rapidly due to newsstand demands, so we really look for things that will sell there, but that's always changing.

[SimonM]

Perhaps after I have whetted my feet a bit more extensively actually training in China I'll submit a piece for the E-Zine. My blog is a little bit off-topic and rambling for such a venue but I love writing stuff... I am working on a book about my life in China and my Blog (along with various emails, hand-written journal entries, photos and other forum posts) is source material for this eventual project... It will be my first foray into professional writing unless you count a few newspaper articles I wrote in my teens so if I could do a published short article or two prior to it it would give me some experience. I'll check out the writers guide some time when I am not dead tired. Gene if I have any questions I assume you would be willing to answer them, right?

[GeneChing]

I'll answer what I can. As for writing up a personal 'warrior's journey', just make sure it's original and hasn't been published elsewhere - blogs count as being published. Self publishing on the web is publishing and we don't re-publish stuff. We want all our stuff to be fresh.

[SimonM]

Like I said before, republishing aside, I don't think that my Blog would be apropriate. It does have stuff about training in it and about teaching English and about traveling in China and about my relationships! If I write something I'll probably work on assessing training in China compared to training in Canada. After all the curriculum I am in now is very different from back home but it's still a hell of a lot of hard work.

[GeneChing]

...otherwise, you could have just stayed at home.

[SimonM]

ESL teachers get paid crap back home!