Literary magazine has suffered from failing sales, interest
MOUNT VERNON, VA – aois21 media, LLC is happy to announce that the fifth aois21 annual will be released this fall, but it will be the last due to weak sales and falling submission rates.
For the past four years, the aois21 annual has brought literary and art works from around the globe together in a concise magazine that we have assembled with great pride. Rising print costs and low sales necessitated a move to an all-digital release the past two years. This allowed us to experiment with different digital presentations and include audio and video submissions. This change, though, also led to an even starker decrease in sales and a 40% decrease in submissions from the previous year.
Past contributors to the aois21 annual have gone on to much success. Michael B. Judkins became an aois21 Creative after submitting material for the 2015 aois21 annual. Brendan Loper drew an original comic for the 2015 annual and now appears regularly in the New Yorker. Dr. Deepan Chatterjee shared some new work beyond his poetry and short fiction and now writes regularly for Huffington Post. And beyond the contributors, two videos recorded for the 2017 annual led to the launch of a new aois21 video series, 21 seconds, capturing real life 21 seconds at a time.
“It is with a heavy heart that we decided it was time to let the annual go,” said Keith F. Shovlin, aois21’s publisher. “When you consider the amount of time and effort that went into creating the magazine, the community reaction was not worth it. Those who submitted their work deserve better, and this will allow them to pursue other journals that can suit them better.”
This year’s annual will be released in October. It has not yet been decided whether it will return to print for this final edition. If so, a crowdfunding campaign would launch in June to help cover the costs of printing. After its release, a launch event will be held at Walls of Books in Washington, DC.
