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I know I’m jumping the gun here, but I just love this stuff. At some point we’ll actually have a product to promote, but until then here are some marketing tips for those who have journals out there already. And for our group, let’s start thinking about creating a “marketing team” in addition to the standard teams of readers, genre editors, & production staff.

I’m halfway through my note-taking of the interviews I’ve conducted in the past 2 months, so this is just Part I of a compilation of promotional advice from various editors. If you enjoy this stuff like I do, and/or have some marketing tips of your own to add, please “Leave a Response”! 

• Develop a clean, sophisticated design for your site – this will announce the value of your enterprise more than anything else
• The best marketing technique is simply to publish excellence from a variety of writers, new and emerging; for journals, less can be more – publish only the stories, essays, and poetry that blow you away
• Create an opt-in e-mail listserv and/or e-newsletter for your journal
• Exchange links with other magazines
• Network; as your community of writers and readers grow, correspond with friends around the world on a daily basis
• Send out press releases when something new & exciting is going on (first issue, first big-name author, new web redesign, new columns/features, etc.)
• Attend the Annual AWP Conference Book Fair
• Participate in various writing conferences across the county, including the Sewanee Writers Conference & the Bread Loaf Writers Conference
• Sponsor or co-sponsor readings and presentations at the AWP conference
• Hold readings of selected work from the latest issue of your journal in your local community
• Post new features on your website every 1-2 weeks
• Archive the online journal permanently in libraries worldwide through the LOCKSS program initiated by Stanford University
• Register and keep your profile up-to-date in Duotrope’s Digest – best registry of online journals available
• For online journals, it’s important to have some print marketing materials to hand out, such as postcards w/ photos from the latest issue
• Seek out “Best of the Net” – every literary journal can nominate poetry there
• Nominate your best work for the Pushcart Prize  
• Use your blog to weigh in on the discussion surrounding today’s literature; be brief & don’t be afraid to say something confrontational if you believe in it
• Post 1-2 new posts per week on your blog; content can include quick interviews with writers in magazine, promotion of events, special events of interest to writers in regional area
• Send especially exciting issue links to popular blogs
• Announce your “birth” at newpages.com
• When first starting out, solicit many of the MFA departments in the country; it’s a quick way to get submissions
• Purchase an ad in a magazine that most suits your journal’s style to announce your presence
• Use Twitter – a most important marketing tool because a lot of book lovers, authors, and literary journal folks are on it. Use Twitter to announce links to new blog posts, interviews with a best-selling author, most recent issues, etc. Retweet anything from any of your authors
• Take adequate time to help your publication find its audience; be careful not to cross the line into blind, belligerent promotion…!

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