New Blogging Gig!

I’m excited to report that as one of the acclaimed literary magazine Washington Square‘s web editors, I’ll be one of the contributors to its new blog. We’ve been working on a brand new site design that will be launching very soon (in the next week), and I’m busy collecting blog posts for the big day. Those posts will be very relevant to what I do here at the Corner, being mostly about the literary life in New York and the world of literary magazines, so I’ll highlight new posts I write there whenever one pops up. For today, take a look at an excerpt from the first post I’ve written, reflecting on what the iPad means for the future of small-press publishing:

These days, the publishing and writing worlds are in flux. Amazon’s at-a-loss prices, the Kindle, Twitter, and a bundle of other web 2.0 forces are challenging existing publishing models. Even literary magazines like us are watching the tech news anxiously, trying to figure out what the future of literary publishing will be. But before we start panicking, let’s try and look at the bright side. Just as book publishers have to adapt to new audiences and new technology, literary magazines do too, and that might mean getting cozy with the Apple iPad.

If you’ve been living anywhere in this solar system lately, you know the iPad came out this week, and it’s supposed to revolutionize the way we read books. The reviews either love it or hate it (or for the New York Times’ David Pogue, both), but one thing’s for certain: it’s selling like hot cakes. And it’s going to bring ebooks into the mainstream. But what does that mean for the future of publishing? Here are a few things to consider.

1. Content will be more interactive. Devices like the iPad will be terrific for non-fiction outlets like the New York Times or school textbooks. If you’re reading about evolution, touch a link and you can watch a video of the circulatory system. Reading an article about the economic downturn? Touch a link and look at the stock market for that day. Images, video and text will be integrated in a way that they never have before. That could also be good news for the arts. Washington Square’s collaborative award, for example, wants to celebrate the mixing of media, and devices like the iPad would make that possible for a wide audience.

To read more, be sure to check out Washington Square‘s new web site next week!