I have a question for Mary Gannon, Editorial Director for Poets & Writers — who happens to be sitting next to me. Mary: How do you decide how much of your print articles to put on online?I noticed your online article on MFA Program Rankings contained much, but not all, of the print article — it was certainly more of a teaser, but made me want to go to the article to read the rest.
We post all of our News & Trends articles from each issue, as well as one feature, typically. The theory is to give potential subscribers a sample of the editorial content and also to post articles that are shorter and, therefore, easier to read online. Finally, we have a very writer-friendly policy, so we pay for electronic rights, and as a nonprofit we can only afford a certain amount. Regarding the MFA rankings article by Seth Abramson, we posted the rankings without the data and a condensed version of the article because, frankly, we couldn’t technologically reproduce the entire rankings/data chart online. And we wanted the piece online because we hoped it would drive traffic to the site and begin a conversation about the subject. If you only provide promotional copy to entice people to buy in print, people can’t fully engage with the content. And they may stop coming back to the site.