A new services page will also be added. The aim of this will be to offer support and background services to writers and poets who need a little help. We want to help you get your work published. We want to help you feel confident that your work is great. These services will be offered by a small group of native speaker/writers based in developing countries. That means the prices will be a lot more affordable for many.

We also have a serialization coming up in the second half of the year and a small special issue celebrating the poetry of the African diaspora in Hong Kong.

All the details of this literature news 2016 are below.

Partnerships with Other Journals

Eastlit is looking for partnerships with other similar journals covering the following regions:

• Africa
• Middle-East
• Latin America
• Central Asia
• Eastern Europe

The plan is to work as partners to announce each issue of each others journals. But more than this, the idea is that every year we will each run one or two special issues highlighting the work of selected poets and writers from each of our diasporas. This will hopefully help build far bigger audiences for each of our local writers.

I am looking to partner with online journals of a similar nature to Eastlit. That means:

• Not affiliated to any organization, company or institution.
• Established for at least a year with at least 4 issues published.
• With some form of editorial board.
• But mostly with a desire to see the literatrue of your locality get the readership it deserves.

Journal owners etc please contact Graham if interested or use the Eastlit contact page.

Services

I will soon be adding a special page for these. However, they are all ready to run now. So if you want to get in early drop me a line. The services that will be offered are:

• Writing Mentor Service
• Editing
• Proofreading
• Publishing and Printing Service covering India and the sub-Continent:
  • If you are interested in publication, marketing and distribution service in this locale, let me know.
• Creative Writing classes.
• Developing Creativity classes.

All of the above are at special rates more suited to Asia than the West. For example, many are about 30% of what you would pay in a western country, but still done by a native speaker/writer.

Eastlit Literature News 2016: Eastlit Extras

As mentioned above, in the next couple of months a special slim poetry of the African diaspora in Hong Kong will be published byEastlit. We are also interested in publishing other special issues to highlight particular groups. Years ago we had the chance to publish literature from a Burmese refugee camp until demands for corruption money descended. It would be nice to get back to this kind of opportunity.

In the second half of the year, we will serialize a collection of shorts plus artwork by one of Eastlit’s old regular contributors.

Other Literature News 2016

Remember if you want e-mail notifications of when the next issue Eastlit is out, you can sign up for our Eastlit Newsletter. We only use this to inform people of an issue coming out, or a news post like this coming out. You will not be inundated with rubbish. There are also our usual social media links.

Eastlit readership is currently up 18% on last year. It is also at all time record levels. I am predicting growth of 30% for the year based on acceleration of readership and that last year we only published 10 issues. We will see, but it will definitely be a good year for our contributors in getting their work read!

I got this piece of news from Kristine Ong Muslim whose piece Dark Clocks was published by Eastlit in January 2015:

My short story collection Age of Blight (Unnamed Press, 2016) has just been released.

My book A Room Full of Machines (ELJ Publications, 2015) contained the poem “Dark Clocks,” which appeared in the January 2015 issue of Eastlit.

Lifeboat (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2015) is another poetry collection.

Ok well that is all the development and literature news 2016. I hope 2016 is going well for everyone and you continue to enjoy Eastlit.

Cheers

Graham

The post Eastlit Literature News 2016 appeared first on Eastlit.

The main changes to the Eastlit look are:

• The Eastlit tagline (below the name on each page) has been changed to Creative Writing, Literature and Art focused on East and South East Asia. It used to be: English literature from or connected to East and South East Asia.
• The colour of the links on Eastlit pages is now Eastlit red. It used to be default blue.
• The order of the Home page has been changed. Now the latest news and latest issue are almost first thing.
• The order and detail on the About page has been changed.
• Some information such as the statement on Asian writing has been moved form the Home page to the About page.
• The picture at the top of this page is the new Eastlit logo which has been around on some pages for a while now. I have not yet replaced the banned logo with this one though, and have mixed feelings on whether to or not. This logo is also now used on many of the social media and supporting sites Eastlit uses.

Eastlit Look Changes Rationale:

These changes to the Eastlit look are not huge but are aimed at improving:

• first contact.
• creating a more balanced Eastlit brand.
• identifying more accurately what Eastlit is about.
• Putting information where it goes best.

Over the next few weeks I will be making other subtle changes to the Eastlit look. These will be aimed at completing this process. I would appreciate any feedback or comments via the editors mail. After all it is you as readers or contributors who are more affected by these things. I am wary of making any big changes as Eastlit is still growing in readership and comments are generally positive. So the aim is gradual improvement.

One last thing on this post. The first issue is now available in a downloadable e-book form. It is in e-pub and mobi formats. We have tested it on iPhone, iPad, Kindle and some android devices. There are a few formatting issues with poetry on some devices. However, if you would like to take a look and give any feedback, please contact us on the editors e-mail.

Have a great Thai New Year if you celebrate it.

Cheers.

Graham

The post Eastlit Look appeared first on Eastlit.

Eastlit Journal – How it Works, Submission.

Every morning an administrator, usually me, checks the submissions and editors e-mail accounts. New submissions come through the submissions route, while amended ones or bio’s usually come through the editor’s e-mail. Let’s take a look at what happens when a submission comes in.

Each morning there may be several submissions. The first thing that happens is they are checked against our submission criteria.

If they meet the criteria, they will be assigned to a folder for consideration. There are separate journal folders for each month of the year. They usually go into consideration for the next month. However, before doing this, we do have to check whether an author has been previously published. If they have, we must make sure they are not being considered for consecutive issues of Eastlit. The final check will be to see whether a bio was included or not. Then the administrator will e-mail the author to confirm receiving the piece and letting them know which issue they are being considered for. If necessary we will also request a bio at this point.

If they do not meet our criteria, there are several things that may happen:

1. Overt erotica will be deleted. The author will receive no response. We make it clear in our journal guidelines, that we do not accept erotica.
2. Submissions from outside the regions with no obvious connection to the region will receive a response. The administrator will request a short justification from the author as to what the connection to East and/or South East Asia is. If this request is met and we accept the justification, we will then assign the piece for consideration and notify the author. Each case is individually considered.

Eastlit Journal – How it Works, Editorial Board and the Decision to Publish or Not.

On the 21st of each month the pieces for consideration for the month after next are assigned to several editorial board members. They then have until the 21st of the month, before the issue will be published, to vote on each piece they receive. For example, for the December issue board members will receive the pieces on 21st October and have until the 21st November to read and vote. The December issue will then be put together and published for December 1.

Board members have wide latitude on how to judge things. We want to have as much variety as possible in the Eastlit journal. Not every piece goes to every member of the journal’s board. We divide the pieces for consideration up and make groups of board members. Each group receives some pieces, but not all, to decide on. The make up of groups is varied by issue. Each group member has one vote. They can vote yes, no or not sure. The vote is completely secret. The administrators add up the scores to see if the piece is rejected or will be published. If there is no clear result then a long term Eastlit journal member, usually not me, will get a casting vote.

Eastlit Journal – How it Works, Notifying Authors.

When all the votes and decisions are in, there are only 9 or ten days until publication. Things get a little crazy. This is when I get very busy as I am the one who puts the journal together. After we are sure what will be published and what will not, all authors are sent an e-mail. They are either told they will be published or they have been rejected. If to be published, and they haven’t sent a bio in, then we will request one again. If rejected, we will usually encourage them to keep writing and to feel free to submit more work. There are also another couple of cases:

• Non-native writers whose work needs editing. We may offer free editorial help with publication in a future issue.
• Writers who have more than one piece of prose or more than 5 poems that we want to publish. We will publish some now and some in a future issue. The authors will be informed of this.

Eastlit Journal – How it Works, Making an Issue of Eastlit.

Then it is time to put the issue together. This means making a cover page, contents page, contributors page, a page for each piece or poetry collection, an editorial page (if we do one), and a page for any special series such as Steve Rosse’s How not to Write series.

The page for each piece is fairly straightforward is it has been submitted with no weird html formatting, has no pictures with it and has no spacing/indentation requirements. Some poetry has this. Inserting pictures is easy enough, getting rid of odd html formatting is easy but hard on the eyes. The hardest thing to do is actually insert html to create formatting for poems. It takes time. However, to date we have managed to always get this done when needed. Or at least nobody has complained! We also do individual SEO work on every piece of writing page to try and make sure your work is as visible as possible in searches. This takes a little time. We also do individual SEO work on every picture in a piece too.

The editorial, special series and contributors pages are fairly easy to make. They also have individual SEO work done on them.

The contents page is easy enough to make, but as it contains many links, we have to check them all!

The last made is usually the cover page. The picture is the one thing, I always choose. If we have pictures sent in by either writing or photographic contributors, it will always be selected from these. If not, it will usually be one of mine. Then there is the Photoshop work to actually create the cover. This takes a while as it needs care. I have learnt to double check spellings as changing them on the cover is a pain after the actual release of the Eastlit monthly journal. When the cover is designed the actual creation of the page is easy. Very careful SEO work is done on this page including SEO work on the picture to get it into picture searches too.

Eastlit Journal – How it Works, Publishing the Journal.

Then when the issue is ready, the home page needs to be updated, and an issue removed from the page tabs into the archive. We always keep the current issue plus the previous two months issues in the navigation bar. Then we can publish the issue.

It doesn’t all end there as when the issue is published we market it through social networks, e-mail list and via things such as Line. We hope our authors, editors and supporters push Eastlit this way too. And then I wait to see if anyone has spotted a typo, misspelt name or broken link. I usually hear of this within 48 hours of publication. Changes are made as soon as possible.

OK I will leave it there. There are many other cases, but this gives an idea of the basics of publishing an issue of Eastlit journal. And remember this is repeated every month!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Graham.

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