̶1̶0̶ 9 Things You’ll Never Encounter In Our Publication

a manisticle (manifesto listicle)

artist: Leon Wyczolkowski (1898)

1. A signup form for a newsletter at the tail end of your published story or poem. It’s an eyesore, and, moreover, who needs another recurring email in their inbox?
2. A story featuring our writers with links to their pieces, behind the paywall. We do run digests, about once every two months, to give a shout-out to first-time contributors and such. But never behind the paywall. Because let’s face it, that amounts to manipulative harvesting of claps for a trickle of extra income to the editor.
3. A Patreon solicitation. (Not knocking other publications who do this. Granted, it is a lot more time-consuming to properly edit and curate long form prose than our bread and butter, poems. Now, as for the small-volume poetry publications that still solicit for patronage? C’mon, that’s some weak-ass sauce, y’all.)
4. A cult of personality, around the founder, or any of our editorial team. Because we are no different from our contributors. We are poets, with a passion to create, a predilection for humor, and a desire to collaborate. And to make a mark. And establish a legacy. You know, like regular folks.
5. ̶A̶̶̶ ̶̶̶l̶̶̶i̶̶̶s̶̶̶t̶̶̶i̶̶̶c̶̶̶l̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶,̶ ̶̶̶e̶x̶p̶a̶i̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶e̶d̶i̶t̶o̶r̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶h̶i̶l̶o̶s̶o̶p̶h̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶̶̶a̶̶̶t̶̶̶t̶̶̶i̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶ ̶̶̶o̶̶̶u̶̶̶r̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶l̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶b̶̶̶a̶̶̶c̶̶̶k̶̶̶,̶̶̶ ̶̶̶j̶̶̶u̶̶̶s̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶̶̶a̶̶̶ ̶̶̶l̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶t̶̶̶l̶̶̶e̶̶̶.
6. A rejection of your submitted piece, without polite constructive feedback. We do reject submissions. We don’t keep track but historically it’s been roughly 10–15 percent of everything we receive. And here is the amazing thing we learned: Rejection is rarely met with anger or a souring of the relationship between writer and editor. On the contrary, we’ve been pleasantly surprised that in almost every case, the writer we initially turned down came back to us with a submission that was better suited to our style and which we gladly gave a thumbs up to.
7. A removal of your account from our roster of writers — unless you were really asking for it. Like, by blatantly disregarding our submission guidelines, on more than one occasion, and then giving us attitude about the perceived injustice you suffered. Luckily, this has happened in only one instance in our twenty-month history.
8. Flattering, self-promoting claims about ourselves, for behaviors that are par for the course for any respectable Medium publication, and which most editors worth their weight in claps already practice. This can be observed with some large growth-oriented pyramid scheme pubs, that proudly advertise how they accept submissions from around the world, or that they don’t restrict their writers from publishing elsewhere. Like, duh … of course.
9. Tabs on our publication’s homepage — that precious, finite resource — permanently dedicated to just a few big-name writers. I mean, what the actual fuck, P.S. I Love You? P.S., we still love you, for your mission and quality editorial standards, but that one thing bugs the proverbial bejesus out of us.
10. Prompts. Writing prompts are wonderful triggers for creativity, it’s just not how we roll. We prefer spontaneous, unsolicited poetic pile-ons.

For more on that last point, see:

Poetic Flash Mobs

Yours Truly,

Joe

Mary

Laura

Harper