submishmash visits the HTMLGIANT. And goodness ensues.

Quite nice to see the always awesome Michael A. Fitzgerald interviewed about submishmash at the HTMLGIANT this week. This Zine Will Change Your Life is a proud member of the submishmash revolution and we hope you will take a look. In the interim though please feel free to peruse the below excerpt.

I want to go back to something you said earlier. The idea that you can make things easier for writers by making things easier for publishers really blows me away. It’s so forward-thinking. I think people (like me) who agonize over ways to make literature viable work hard at making their stories great or their presses great—but in the meantime it’s extremely difficult to manage the administrative tasks. It’s becoming clear that literature doesn’t just depend on writers and publishers—even indie literature is developing a structure. Booksellers are getting into the mix, and lately a lot of developers have joined the charge with sites primarily for writers/readers—like Fictionaut or ambitious online journals like Electric Literature. But Submishmash is really back end, since your focus is on the publisher. To me this is absolutely essential, but is it thankless?

No, not thankless at all. John’s band Oblio Joes (click here to listen to a super cool indie rock song from the Oblio Joes) was around for 12 years. Bruce has spent the last 5 years working on a documentary about Travis Bean guitars. Radiant Days took me 8 years. More people have used Submishmash in the last month than heard of any of these projects. And whether they know it or not, they’re using Submishmash to make literature happen. And isn’t this interview being posted on the Internet Literature Magazine Blog of the Future? We feel pretty good.

But, to the first part of the question: Yeah, that’s exactly right. The arts are ripe for technological innovation because the big brains are all focused on the outward-facing parts of art itself. But successful ideas (not saying this is one) are always about simple solutions to difficult problems. How do I search the internet? How do I send information to my mom? How do small publishers get paid? How do they pay their writers? With few resources (which is starting to be any publisher that matters), how do they deal with endless piles of submissions?

successful ideas (not saying this is one) are always about simple solutions to difficult problems . . . Most software fails because it tries to do too much or it’s just what the designer or developer might think is ‘cool’.

Most software fails because it tries to do too much or it’s just what the designer or developer might think is ‘cool’. It becomes a pile of weird features rather than a simple tool that lets users complete a straight-forward goal. (In the software world, this is all 101. Sort of like a writer saying, Show, don’t tell.) But the best software is the software you don’t even notice you’re using. (Incidentally, writing can be the same way.)