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Reviewing the Zines

© Heather O'Neil

The Internet has become the first choice spot for publishing poetry. While having a nice, printed paper magazine in your hands is a thrill, it is becoming harder and harder to get published in the regular magazines. Back in my era, the 60's, there was a small press publishing poetry in every basement in America I think. The more controversial the better. The high costs of postage, paper and ink have brought the viability of the small press to an end. The better-known magazines are still out there but are flooded with submissions.

The poets of today are turning to the myriad of ezines on the internet for their publishing needs. This, however, can be a real hit-and-miss situation. Ezines come and go like the wind, here today and then "poof" gone. Where do you submit your work and actually have it seen and read? What zines stand out as solid and reputable? How do you find a great zine to submit your poetry to? Well, you can always do a search. I did one just this week and came up with 63,800 listings. Happy hunting! By the time you visit even a couple of dozen zines, read through the guidelines and peruse the zine, you're beat. It can make a strong woman just weep to think about it. In that huge listing you will probably find that 12% are now defunct, another 30% of the listing are simply pages of links to other links, give another 10% over to zines that are private and do not take submissions and you have quite effectively wasted a couple of days of your time and still don't have any place to publish that poem.

Having been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, I felt that one solution is having a place to go where the reviews of these sites have been done for you. Since I couldn't find one I liked, I decided to put some of my time into making one that would be useful and informative and aimed at the novice poet who is just starting out. All of the sites reviewed here are sites that have been around for a year or more and who accept electronic submissions from both the novice and the previously published poet.

Suggestions before submitting your poetry:

- Read through the site and make sure that your type of poetry is accepted. - Check for present wants and needs of the publisher

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