I’m always interested in A) New ideas; and B) Saving money; and C) Great writing. Not that I want to be all cheapskate-ish with a literary journal, but this is A) A great idea that B) Will help make an excellent literary journal more affordable for financially struggling writers who appreciate C) Great writing. Check out this announcement from Fence*:
"We at Fence love Radiohead, and so jumped at the chance to buy their newest album (I'm so old I call it an "album") at the price of our choosing. One of us paid $1 for it; another of us paid $17 for it; these seemed like fair prices. We have heard some paid two months' salary.
"And now we're offering a similar opportunity for you to choose your own price for subscribing to Fence (or re-upping your current subscription). It's very important to us that Fence have readers--that the work inside Fence have readers, really--and so we want you to pay us whatever you want for your year's subscription.All you have to do is go here and click on "donate," then choose your level. Payments are processed by PayPal (it's free and easy to set up an account if you don't already have one: http://www.paypal.com). Anyone who chooses to pay $300 or more, god bless you, will, as always, become a lifetime subscriber, and receive a receipt for your tax-deductible donation.
"This offer will be good from now through April 30th. If you take us up on it you will receive your brand new Spring/Summer 2008 issue of Fence sometime in May."
*Note: Here’s what our friends at Wikipedia say about Fence: “Fence magazine is a print and online literary publication containing both original work and critical and journalistic coverage of what may be largely termed "experimental" or "avant garde" material. Conceived by Rebecca Wolff in 1997 [1] and first printed in 1998 (receiving coverage from Poets and Writers [2]), its editors have included Jonathan Lethem and Ben Marcus (fiction), Matthew Rohrer and Caroline Crumpacker (poetry), and Frances Richard (non-fiction).”
