CLMP and Small Press Distribution Announce New Readers for New Writers

A Pilot Magazine Distribution Program for Literary Magazines

New York City — Small Press Distribution (SPD) and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) have announced the launch of a pilot magazine distribution program for literary magazines with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds. CLMP and SPD are inviting literary magazines nationwide to apply to New Readers for New Writers, a one-year pilot program which offers subsidized distribution contracts with the country's leading nonprofit wholesaler (SPD) and a concurrent series of marketing activities. The program aims to make literary magazines more readily available to bookstores, libraries, and individual buyers and thus raise the profile of what is perhaps the single greatest source of new and challenging literature.

New Readers for New Writers' marketing activities will include The Literary Magazine Kiosk, (www.litmagkiosk.com) an independent single-copy sales website linked directly to SPD's online fulfillment system. The kiosk will feature a home page and subsequent "catalogue" pages, which will include reduced-size facsimiles of magazine covers, descriptions of current issues and direct links to individual magazine websites. The home page will have search capabilities allowing users to browse the catalogue pages by genre and subject.  Single-copy purchases will be made with a simple "click" which will take the user to a special SPD magazine shopping cart area.

"Distribution is one of the most difficult challenges facing literary magazines today," according to Susan Kenny, CLMP's Literary Magazine Specialist. "In a marketplace dominated by mainstream publications and mainstream distributors interested only in giant circulation magazines, literary magazines simply get lost in the morass. New Readers for New Writers is a way to at least begin the process of addressing the problem of distribution and testing inventive ways of finding new audiences."

Participating magazines will be featured in a targeted national advertising campaign and a national direct mail campaign to encourage booksellers, librarians and consumers to order magazines through SPD.  The program will also work to educate booksellers about the importance and value of carrying literary magazines.  At the 2001 BookExpo America convention in Chicago, CLMP and SPD will feature the magazines prominently in their booths and will host a panel discussion for booksellers on how to successfully carry literary magazines in their stores. 

Applications for New Readers for New Writers were mailed to more than 800 magazines in early April and program activities will officially begin in late June.  The program is open to non-commercial literary magazines that are based in the United States, publish at least two issues per year, and are primarily literary in nature (i.e., over half the content of each issue consists of poetry, fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, literary reviews and/or essays).  SPD and CLMP encourage applications from the widest possible range of disciplines, genres, and aesthetics.  While the program is competitive, applications from magazines of all circulation sizes will be given equal consideration and pre-existing distribution contracts—or lack thereof—will not figure in the evaluation process.  For more information, contact Susan Kenny, CLMP's Literary Magazine Specialist and the New Readers for New Writers director at or 212-741-9110.

Small Press Distribution, based in Berkeley, California, is the only non-profit wholesaler of literary presses and magazines in the nation and represents more than 500 publishers nationwide.  The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses is the national service organization for independent publishers of our finest fiction, poetry and prose which exists to serve, support, and promote independent publishers of literature, including literary magazines and presses.

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