To furthur demonstrate my insanity, I’ve decided to start an mp3 format lit mag.
Obviously, this is still in very early planning stages. The basic idea here is to publish spoken word stories and slam poetry on Mperia. There’s a lot to be worked out still.
1. I’d kinda like to do only stories, fiction and creative non-fiction. But I do like the idea of having lots of stuff: interviews, essays, slam and/or spoken word poetry. If I include poetry, I’d like to have another editor dedicated strictly to poetry.
2. I think it would be fun to have perhaps one track of music per issue. But I’m not sure.
3. There’s the matter of recording standards and so forth. One person I talked to about this wants to include music with his submission. Others probably won’t. Should I prohibit music in order to keep the tracks consistent? Or should I try to compile a large amount of music that the voice tracks can be mixed with so that all tracks have music.
4. Will I take text submissions and try to match them with voice talent? Or only take submissions in which the writer does their own reading? Or require writers who don’t want to read themselves to find their own voice talent?
5. Mastering. I don’t really know much about mastering, or how difficult a process this will be. Is it really necessary for a project like this? Is it such a difficult project that no one would volunteer to do this for free?
6. Money and copyright. Ideally, I’d like to offer most of the money from mperia sales to the writers and voice talent. Keep a small percentage for operational costs. Leave the copyrights to the creators, so long as they agree to a Creative Commons license that allows for the mp3s to be freely distributed. There’s the kicker there, though. I’d like to encourage people to share the mp3s once they’ve downloaded them, maybe even link to free mirros of the tracks. Not sure if anyone would go for this, though.
7. “Cover art” would be nice to have for each issue.
There’s a few lit mags that already publish stuff in audio on the web: here are a few. The Corpse also has an audio section (probably the closest thing to what I’d like to do). But I think this will be something different and new. An edgy collection of works by new and newish writers, purely distributed through audio tracks that can be used anyway the listener would like (on an iPod, on a CD, on their computer, etc.).
So. What do you think?