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Editor Interview: Entropy Magazine

This interview is provided for archival purposes. The listing is not currently active.

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

A: Literary and non-literary

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: Entropy's admiration is mutual with Civil Coping Mechanisms and Writ Large Press, its sibling publishing entities, collectively known as THE ACCOMPLICES. Additionally, Entropy is well known for its support of small press publishing, and the Entropy website houses an extensive database of the small presses that excite us most.

Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

A: Entropy is an expanding community of creators across multiple medias, and as such our favorites are somewhat diverse. In general we are excited about experimental, cross-genre, and new media works, but we can just as easily be swayed by memoir, pop culture criticism, or an impassioned book review. We accept everything from poetry to journalism, from arthouse videos to sci fi comic strips. If we like it, we'll find a place for it.

Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?

A: Entropy is a community space that happens to take the form of an online journal, and we are excited to share our knowledge of small press publishing with our readers and contributors. We're not precious about maintaining a specific tone around what we publish -- our only concern is that we publish work we'd want to see online ourselves. Each of our editors is free to be as autonomous or as collaborative with other editors as they choose, which makes for a broad array of diverse work on display on any given day.

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: As with any journal, it's most advisable to read through what we've published in different genres. We have ongoing features listed on our site's front page, as well as our most recent posts in various categories (this information is also available in the 'categories' section). If you're a potential contributor who has reviewed all these things, and you still aren't sure if your work fits, contact the editor who seems most likely to review content similar to yours. If we like your work (or if we know one of the other editors who will), we'll take it from there.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: An ideal submission should begin by saying that you're submitting to Entropy, and which section (or its closest approximate) that you're submitting to. (You'd be surprised how often we get submissions without any context at all.) It's nice if you have something to say about our journal that demonstrates that you've looked at it, and that explains why you think you'd be a good fit. A publishing bio, if you have one, also doesn't hurt. Text and low-res art submissions should be attached as a doc or pdf, and larger multimedia submissions can simply link to a website if that's easier. Please proofread your work before submitting, and don't send an enormous body of material in the hopes that we'll sift through it and pull out 'the good stuff.'

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: The big difficulty is when submitters think that our only job is being an Entropy editor, and that we'll automatically understand and know what to do with anything we receive. Being able to contextualize your work in order to make it easy for us to review it is an important (and often overlooked) prerequisite for hearing back from us.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: A short creative bio is mostly useful so that if we decide to accept your work, we already have everything we need from you. We're always excited to see where our contributors are publishing, but a lack of significant publication credits (or even any credits at all) is by no means a dealbreaker. It's most important that you've reviewed our journal before submitting, and that you genuinely feel a kinship with what we're doing.

Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

A: As we're publishing online, we rarely publish a piece that we can't read in one sitting. It's not impossible that an editor might reject a piece on sight, but in most cases that's because the material is too long for online publication in the first place. As long as it's legible (and it's not a book-length project), we're going to read all of it before deciding.

Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

A: New editors will usually send their potential acceptances to one of our senior editors for review before officially accepting work, and sometimes even our established editors will consult with one another on work they're unsure about. Editors might also, on occasion, ask for edits from contributors before work is accepted. Other than that, editors are free to make decisions on acceptances autonomously. After an acceptance, it's just a matter of finding a good publishing spot on our calendar.

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: Each editor has a different submissions load, but in general our role as editors is just one of many things we're doing as publishing creatives ourselves. As such, if you're submitting to someone who's a teacher in the middle of grading finals, or a writer who's on a book tour, the reading process is going to be somewhat haphazard. If you catch us on a slow day, we might read your work immediately and get back to you within an hour. But unless we're doing a special project for the journal, we're usually working, reading, and corresponding with contributors relatively autonomously, as quickly as our schedules allow.

Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?

A: Entropy survives almost entirely on current technologies -- we are a network of email addresses, social media accounts, and shared websites. We wouldn't have found each other, or be able to continue to collaborate with each other, without these technologies, and many of the small presses we work with couldn't manage overhead costs without POD and electronic publishing options. That said, even "traditional" publishing requires these technologies in one form or another -- no matter a publisher's size, "traditional" certainly doesn't mean "analog."

Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?

A: This is based entirely on the submission, and on the editor a contributor is working with. In general, we like to leave work as-is, but we will copyedit and proofread as needed. Some of our editors are more collaborative, but this is more often the case with frequent contributors who've established a relationship with us. On the occasion that we feel a piece needs heavier edits and a contributor disagrees, they are free to take their work elsewhere.

Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?

A: Our editors have the authority to do so, and we have occasionally nominated contributors in the past. At present it's not a standardized practice, but it's something we're working on. In the meantime, we're very happy to speak up for enterprising contributors whose work we feel strongly about, particularly with regard to awards in new and emerging genres that we may not otherwise be familiar with.