The role of print journals in the digital age: Why you will never see a harvest app - Guest Post by Davina Bell [22.03.2010]
Don’t get us wrong – at harvest, we heart apps as much as the next person. (Or we would if we could afford iPhones, but hey, that’s publishing wages for you.) Sticking 50s hairdos on funny headshots, charting our sleep cycles, iCricket – we just can’t get enough.
It’s not that we’re skittish about new technology or look down our proverbial noses at anything that doesn’t involve the massacring of Finnish forests. It’s just that the digital experience isn’t what we’re about, and that’s why Giramondo will poach Bryce Courtney before you see a harvest app.
harvest is a literary magazine that publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry and columns alongside full-colour pieces of art. It's printed locally on thick recycled stock using vegetable-based inks. As you can probably appreciate, it’s not the cheapest thing in the world to produce, which could well lead you to ask: why bother? The colour, the art, the stock are surely superfluous to sturdy, meaty pillars of writing that could stand happily on their own, like kebab-shop beef slabs, pre-slicing.
Our aesthetic is, in hindsight, both a reaction against transience, and an expression of how we feel about writing. We want to make something that sits weightily on your lap, that flicks nicely against the thumb, smells like hot-pressed ink, and sits as prettily on a bookshelf as it does on a coffee table. Something precious enough that it would tear your heart a little to recycle it, and can’t be binned with a click.
And in doing so, we want to say to writers that this is what they are worth – that their words and the worlds that they conjure are a thing of incredible beauty, to be savoured and revisited. To all emerging writers, we hope to say that their sentences are deserving of a bed of toast-thick paper, not only a photocopied zine or the page of their Moleskine, though these too are fine places to rest awhile. Our desire is to offer readers an ellipsis in which to unplug and indulge, while the great earth beeps and pings around them. And, in our choice of art, and font, and stock, to create a product strong enough to justify moments spent in other moments.
Until the iPad can give readers an experience as sensually enjoyable as a padded cover, or the Kindle can outdo the satisfaction of real-time rustling paper on fingertips, we believe there is still a role for print journals, particularly those that walk on the stilts of art and design. Perhaps the future is paved with web-linked, animated, holographic, virtually scented, fully soundtracked literary experiences, downloadable for $1.99. But for now, screen reading – even on the most gorgeous of devices – just doesn’t offer the intimate, tactile experience afforded by paper-pulp products, which meld to your body when you fall asleep mid-sentence, and soak up your plot-induced tears. To enhance these experiences – to give readers beautiful objects to sleep on, cry over, bathe with, cook from, travel through – is how we see the role of design-based print journals.
This is not to say that something read on screen is somehow of less importance – not at all. That writers now dangle on the end of web threads visible the world over – at any time – is truly thrilling. The idea of words quenching reader thirst instantaneously is delightful on many levels, not least the number of people gleefully, willingly drinking them in. It’s just that it isn’t our thing, our role or our purpose. And even as we watch our idols folding themselves into exciting, phone-sized morsels, we’re okay with that.
Perhaps the idea of art-infused literary journals is frivolous and presumptuous. Perhaps their days are already numbered, and they’re now about as sustainable as paper hats in rain. Perhaps there will come a time when reading from pages in bed will seem as ridiculous as cleaning your hands on the coat of a dog, medieval style. But for now, harvest and its bedfellows sit hopefully on bookshop shelves, their covers as tangible as skin, waiting to be touched. That’s just how we like it. And that’s why you’ll never see a harvest app*.
*For now. (It’s the age of digital publishing – who knows, right? And, on reflection, ‘virtually scented’ does sound pretty good.)
Davina Bell is one of the founding editors of harvest magazine.
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Comments
phill — 22 March at 02:43PM
Harvest is definitely one of the most beautifully presented journals I've ever bought. Davina is right, there isn't an app that can replicate the feeling of holding an issue in your hands; there's a texture that a touchscreen can't emulate.
And I think that's what books and journals will have to focus on in the future, producing 'Something precious enough that it would tear your heart a little to recycle it, and can’t be binned with a click.'. Making books into tangible objects of beauty will be one way to allow their survival in the coming digital age. I'm pretty sure Harvest will be one of those journals leading the way in that department.
Jo — 22 March at 11:12PM
I agree with you, Phill, that Harvest is a beautiful journal. I'm generally pretty impressed with the quality of the work they publish, too. However, I'm not quite convinced that ensuring books' survival is the way we need to think about this digital vs. print debate. It seems to me that print and digital often give different reading experiences, so that some content is better suited to one format than to the other. While information-based or timely content might be best delivered digitally, other content, such as beautifully presented literature - well, you just want that on your shelf to gaze at longingly!
Elizabeth — 23 March at 02:17PM
Harvest is one beautiful magazine, I have to second you all! I for one am very glad it's not going digital. Nowadays anyone can get published (or publish themselves) on the web. Because of this, I wonder if web writing and online magazines aren't taken as seriously as print ones. As a writer, I'd much rather have a publication like Harvest Magazine in my folio than a page of URLs.
Zoe — 26 March at 11:25AM
Harvest is beautifully produced, no doubt about it. But (and I should confess that I am in the process of building a literature App for the short story), discerning readers will always make choices based on the quality of the writing and the ideas. As will a discerning editor. And you can do that in any format. That's the awesomeness of it (can I say awesomeness? I'm gonna.)
ashleycapes — 27 March at 11:11PM
I agree on the quality of Harvest as a print journal, can't beat being able to hold something you purchased!
I think in the digital age, print journals have another benefit, the affordability of publishing software and so on, that must surely make a difference to the ability for volunteer-fueled publications to produce amazing work?
Ainslee — 31 March at 01:32PM
Zoe, I wonder if saying readers will buy a magazine 'based on the quality of the writing' is to miss the point of something like Harvest, which mixes writing with art and design? While I agree that e-readers, iphones etc can be an awesome (environmentally friendly!) alternative to print when delivering written content, I wonder if the point being made here is that some print journals offer more than just written content? It's an interesting aspect that we'll have to discuss more as ereading devices improve, and we can do more with design and colour.
Henk (van Leeuwen) — 10 April at 04:51PM
Until Davina’s beautifully crafted post, I have increasingly felt that my advancing years were consigning me to an era, made long redundant, of technological ignorance. It was like ‘manna from heaven’ in a desert prevailed over by the apparent allure of techno-science’s activity, vitality, confidence and diversity. We are told to submit to our technological destiny as our inevitable becoming. It is no longer enough just to keep up with technology; we are to be subsumed by it. As the growth of the technology/information juggernaut accelerates, our only option to avoid being crushed by it is to become ‘faster’ ourselves; to become ‘more efficient’, better organised, ordered, structured and accomplished for our allotted consumer role. To be ‘technologically savvy’ and therefore consumer-ready may simply result in a more mechanised human being. Knowledgeable as far its access to software and electronic media allows it to be, reliable in a mechanistic kind of way, functionally conscious, but in fact also spiritually and creatively empty. As neurologist Susan Greenfield argues, the emphasis on process over content, or method over meaning, becomes addictive, significantly altering a brain that is “exquisitely malleable”. She warns that “individuality could be obliterated in favour of a passive state, reacting to a flood of incoming sensations.” The spoon feeding via computer menu options may contribute to the creation of thoughtlessness marked by a total absorption in the here and now, and to the inability to reflect. Thoughtful and creative books and literary mags such as Harvest nurture free-ranging inquiry and reflection; they safeguard beauty and sensual intimacy, linguistic and visual imagination. Despite all this, this is not a rejection of technology; I use it gratefully everyday. We just need to be aware of its extraordinary power that can overwhelm us.
Greg Foyster — 02 May at 06:54PM
A beautifully crafted argument, Davina. Good decision, too. Harvest has a poetic style and visual aesthetic better suited to print than online. From a marketing perspective, you’ve also created a point of difference – while other mags join the world of pixels, Harvest remains committed to paper and ink. This makes your publication unique.