Shortie subscriptions: get your weekly dose of literature!

On another note, Galley Beggar Press have announced in their newsletter that they're contemplating a Singles Club subscription, which I think is a great idea - not at least because I've been talking about something similar for months now and my secretly hot air balloon-sized ego still likes its own ideas best. However, such a subscription scheme might simply prove great for all agents involved: writers see their shorter texts, including poems, reach an audience they otherwise would probably struggle to attract outside of - let's face it - rather niche specialized magazines; readers get the opportunity to discover new voices they like without having to comb the net; and publishers are able to establish a closer relationship with their customers and at the same time can cut the distribution chain in the case of digital subscriptions - and communicate with people's email inboxes or mobile devices right away.

And, perhaps, physical book lovers like me could book a nice little extra of getting the most popular stories/poems of a year in a lovely little anthology? Just a thought.... Anyway: I'm in.

First things first: What to call a blog?

Hello. This is my Gespinstbauplatz.

For those not familiar with German compounds, Gespinstbauplatz is a direct translation of the English 'website'; incorrect, but rather beautiful. I didn't come up with it myself - I'm not that clever - but discovered it in an email sent to me years ago by an English-speaking grad student, who took the pain of enquiring after some enrolment regulations in German. He couldn't think of a German word for website (no wonder - we don't have one and therefore simply use half of the English term: Webseite), so he quite rightly decided to translate its components:

web - Netz, Gespinst (das)
site - Bauplatz (der)

Now, Gespinst connotates the ephemeral quality of cobwebs rather than any other kind of more permanent web, and ein Bauplatz is a construction site, so the compound he came up with is mentally a good deal removed from the concept of a homepage. But then again, I find it almost eerily fits my purposes - a blog is after all always under construction, to be built, filled, updated, never quite finished. And the web's connections are fairly fragile too, so perhaps Gespinstbauplatz is after all the right word for my little project - my blog.

I hope I'm not going to bore anybody with my entries and I'll be able to update it regularly. My plan is (as far as I have one) to publish some of the reviews, interviews and other little pieces of writing that have no place elsewhere - textual byproducts of the stuff I do elsewhere, so to speak.

Please feel free to get in touch and comment on posts.

And now, to get Gespinstbauplatz into a proper dictionary: Duden - over to you!