Narrative in the News

The SF Chron has an article on the online literary journal Narrative, which clocks 40,000 users.

Five years ago this summer, the two set out to test their theory. Over 10 days during a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, they assembled a free online magazine called Narrative ( www.narrativemagazine.com) with selections from writer friends such as Jane Smiley, Tobias Wolff and Joyce Carol Oates. The magazine's primary goal: to connect more readers to more literary writers. They even taglined the publication "The Future of Reading."

Initially, the nonprofit publication claimed a circulation of 1,200, culled mostly from Jenks and Edgarian's personal e-mail address books. By the end of the first year, 12,000 people had registered to read Narrative and currently there are almost 40,000 registered readers. For the past two months, says Jenks, the magazine has received 25,000 unique visits.

For more on this, see Sam Miller's essay in The Quarterly Conversation.