Canadian Magazine Publishers Association 

This site is divided in to two parts: pages for Magazine Readers and pages 
for Magazine Publishers.

The section for magazine readers, "The CMPA Reading Room" which 
provides an index of member magazines listed alphabetically by titles 
and by subject. The titles of the magazines are clickable and link to 
pages dedicated to that magazine (on the CMPA site). This page 
features a picture of a cover from a recent edition of the magazine with 
a mail address and a brief description of the magazine and 
subscription information. For some magazines there are also links 
to email addresses and web sites run by the magazine. The Reading 
Room also features "The Skimming Pool: this month's featured articles". 
It is a disappointment because the reader does not get real articles, but 
finds teasers instead.

The "Magazine Publishers" section is aimed at CMPA members. 
Links include "CMPA Media Guide," "Employment Opportunities", and 
"Member Services". Of possible interest to scholars is a document 
titled "Vitality and Vulnerability: Small- and medium-sized 
magazines (SMMS) A profile and Gap Analysis". An executive summary 
is available online and the entire 
report can be downloaded in pdf format. The file is 273K in size.

Literary Publishing Houses

The web sites for most literary presses feature a standard list of items: 
new titles, the backlist, the names of their authors, dates of readings, 
awards the press has won, the press's submission policies, and information 
on how and where to buy their books.  

My intention here is to talk about those literary press sites that have 
extras, "value added" features that might be of interest to students 
or scholars of Canadian literature. For an extensive list of Canadian literary publishers,
consult the page maintained by the University of Toronto Library.

The House of Anansi Press offers "Making Literary History," Roy 
MacSkimming's long and interesting history of the press. 
Arsenal Pulp Press also features a brief but informative 
history of itself at its web site along with brief biographies of its authors. 
The latter is difficult to navigate because the anchors do not work. 
Gutter Press goes one better and offers pictures to accompany its 
author biographies. 

An admirable value added feature which more publishers should 
emulate is Press Gang Publishers' "audio of the week". Every week 
they offer up an audio clip of one of their authors reading from their works. 
The clips are available in .wav format for Windows users and .au 
format for Macintosh. The same web site also allows the visitor to send
a postcard to other internet users. The postcard features artwork 
from one of Press Gang's books. TSAR Books offers a Poets' Corner featuring
selections from recent issues of The Toronto Review.

Of all the literary publishers, Vehicule Press and Watershed Books offer
the best interactive features. Vehicule's site features something 
called the Virtual Chapbook. According to the site "Our intention is to 
provide writers of poetry and prose the opportunity to receive feedback 
on new work or on work commissioned specifically for the Virtual 
Chapbook." The visitor can read a poem, type in comments about it, 
and read comments others have posted. This must be a 
recently added feature since the only poem in the Chapbook, "In a Cloud 
Forest" by Mark Abley, is also the only poem in the archive file. 
Watershed Books offers links to an "online magazine" with 
no apparent title [discussed elsewhere] and, as an interactive offering, to the 
Pheonix Poets' Workshop. Unfortunately the link to the message 
forum did not work when I tried it and the chat room was not active.