Meta pageThis page serves as a means for me to post updates that I have made for the website and magazine. It is also a place where I can put my thoughts down in relation to the website and magazine. If I make changes to the website, I will list them out here. You can always email me if you have suggestions and thoughts. I will consider them.Mid March Update
I accepted 18 pieces for the April Issue out of 187 submissions. That means that the April Issue had a 9.63% acceptance rate. Which is significantly lower than the December edition.I have finished the cover. I had accepted a cover from someone, but they did not respond to my email. So unfortunately, I had to pick one from Unsplash.The amount of AI generated submissions I receive in the form of visual art is baffling. I need to reach out to other journals and see if this is something that they are dealing with as well. They have to be, right?Because I will be moving to West Virginia for my PhD in July, I will have a delay on responses to submissions for the September issue. I need a better website besides Caard.I am a dork.Late February Update
So far, for the April Issue, I have an 18%(ish) acceptance rate. I have received a lot more submissions than I did for the December addition. What I noticed is that my emailing local community college professors and English Departments did not actually result in any submissions from Michigan based students.Caard continues to be a giant pain in the ass for me. I am very likely going to move to Ghost in May. I think the transition will happen in early August. But I am going to rebuild the website a bit more so I have better control of the UI.I will begin the process of moving to either Duotrope or Submittable for the September or December 2026 issue. I like the idea of having a more formalized system for authors and artists to submit work. I do like the email system though. I need to think about it.I want to create a newsletter system. This will likely start off in the form of a Google Form, but maybe not. I need to research some ways to do this. I would like do to a biweekly newsletter.I like the idea of having people wanting to be involved. Not necessarily as content readers, but maybe as people who want to want to be credited as co-editors for different parts of the design of the magazine. This is something that I want to further examine.Mid-December UpdateBecause I am a giant dork, I accidently deleted the submissions page yesterday. So, I rewrote it. However, upon rewriting it, I realized that I entirely forgot to add in author and artist rights. So I created a terms page for authors and artists .
I think that I will add a "best poem" "micro-fiction" and "visual art" award with a $20 payment and honorary mention in the issue.I will likely start a rolling submissions model. I like the idea of accepting 25 pieces per issue. I want to be selective. I may/may not come up with a blind submission model for September. I think it would be cool to design and execute a blind submission model. Even just to try.Considering reaching out to other indie lit mags to see if we can do a cross promotional event. Not sure what that would look like. Baby Steps.
It is on my agenda in the next several months to craft a mission statement. I have applied for an ISSN for the OTR.Debating how accessible I want to make myself to people who email and reach out.I added the CLMP and Chill Subs logo onto the main page. I reviewed other literature reviews and I liked the professional aspect of having these logos.Meta Updates, December 2025 IssueAuthor Bios: Now must be 2 - 3 sentences and under 120 words. - I had difficulty formatting the Author Bios into Photoshop on the page templates. I will start enforcing this and Revise/Revision work if the author bio does not meet this.Cover Page Payment: I think that instead of utilizing Unsplash, I will start offering payment of $25? I have to come up with a number for this. Starting in the April issue, I will provide a $40 payment as an award for a cover artist.Graphical Art: Because we're a digital publication, I do not believe we need to have 300 DPI. I will change this accordingly.Poetry: Any poetry that goes beyond what I can fit on a page, I will communicate with author to see how they want me to format it. Ideally, I will set guidelines for this in the submissions, but I have not entirely decided what that will look like.Prose: I may impose a character limit. Keeping it under 1k words is mandatory regardless. It was difficult to properly format it on the template that I designed.Submitted Work: I will mandate that each poem/prose has a word count attached to it. This way I can in the upcoming issues put this with the poem. (Maybe, I need to go look at other lit reviews).Community Development: Maybe I want a Discord Server?No idea. This is a small lit review that I run on my own and I do not know if I want the additional responsibilities associated with moderating/administering a Discord Server. No. I do not want a Discord Server at this time.Age Limits: Authors will continue to have to be 18 years old to submit here. I like that and it saves me headaches.Limitations: I think keeping a page limit for the publication at 30 is solid. This allows for me to be selective and publish about 25 pieces. But I am not sure. I will cap it at 30 pages total for the April Issue and make a determination for the September Issue. This may be on an issue by issue basis.Caard: I don't really like the Caard Layout and setup. While I am okay using it for this year, I will undoubtedly want to upgrade to Wordpress or Ghost.