It's Lit

I think, I'm not completely, positively sure, but I think that I have the concept of my magazine pretty much done in my mind. I spent this week thinking about what I want to include and what I can add without taking too much off the "lit mag vibe", and I believe I have come up with a nice idea. I am reinventing the literary magazine! (Yes, I know I'm not reinventing it for the whole world -NOT YET- but it's a good way to start). I want to do that because I think it gives me more space to have creative freedom and it is a way for me to create something entirely new. Besides, I think it will be more of a challenge, for me, to successfully portray the concept of this magazine I have in mind than simply creating a lit journal. Plus, it gives me a wider target audience, which is always nice and always welcome.
So here is what my mind has been working on for this past week: I will have a mix between a lit mag and a reg mag (that's a normal magazine, if you didn't get it). How? With five very simple steps:

1- I will maintain the prose, poetry, and art, obviously.
2- But I'll add more! What more? Op-eds, reviews and critiques, and news about the literary/art world.
3- The op-eds will be mostly of themes related to the magazine -literature, art, media, no politics, economics, and sports.
4- The reviews and critiques will be of books, expos, galleries, authors, artists, among others of the same field.
5- And finally, the news will be limited to a two-page spread with bright, insightful, captivating images, and terse descriptions.

With these ideas I'm in great shape to start designing my magazine. Right now, I'm not as concerned with creating my pages as I am with figuring out the sections of the mag -I want to have a clear "system" for 1867 before I start creating anything, so it hypothetically flows as smoothly as possible, and I can be sure the cover, table of contents, and two-page spread aren't out of context or weak. I'll end up creating the table of contents first -partially because I have no idea what to do for my cover and two-page spread yet, but mostly because it follows my thought process of "the system".

This post is nice and sweet, but now I'm getting to my real intentions behind it. I am trying to figure out my target audience. The usual audience for lit mags are people who SPECIFICALLY enjoy them, and therefore have a subscription or simply buy. Literary magazines usually publish twice or four times a year -the ones that deviate from this pattern are very rare-, mostly because they require contribution from random people with random moods that randomly write -writers. They don't have an established staff to write all the pieces because that's not what they are about -they are about presenting many different artists to the world. I wish to keep that, but also have the idea of a staff to write the op-eds, reviews, and news. Balance. This way I can add expand my target audience. I'll go from "first and foremost about writers" to "first and foremost about writers and readers", and by doing that I'll be reaching to an adult, middle to upper class, appreciative of art audience beyond the usual writers and publishers. For me, that is very important as it is a way to smash underdog, bohemian literature in more people's face. I'll be giving an even better opportunity to unknown but talented writers that are abundant in this highly commercialized, standardized, snobbish world of ours.

I think I've found my beautiful cause. Lit.

"Council of Literary Magazines and Presses." Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. Web. 18 Mar. 2016. <https://www.clmp.org/indie_publishing/indi_litpubl.html>. 

"Literary Magazines." And Journals Database| Poets & Writers. Web. 18 Mar. 2016. <http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines>.