Critique #3 Online Literary Journals

For this assignment, I decided to take a look at the online literary journal called 2RIVER. This is becuase it focuses on not only novels and short stories but allows submissions of artwork and poetry, which both stimulate my interests. After navigating through several pages and taking a look at a few pieces I've concluded that the benefits of a free online journal such as this one far outweigh the negative aspects, however free online journals pose a problem for the future of the industry.
Firstly, the layout of the website is not particularly visual, however I believe this is an understood sacrifice to allow easier navigation through the many accepted submissions. The main page displays recent publications that the site has chosen to highlight, alongside a tool bar that provides links to specific categories ofpast publications. You can navigate through just poems are art pieces for example, as aspect I find particularly useful to students or people with a passion for one genre over the other. The way this website takes advantage of technology is by allowing free emailed submissions to the site making it easier to submit works to get published easier then other venues.
However with the growing publictions online, there is less room for other venues to gain profit from their own publications. There will be less drive to subscribe for any fee whatsoever to online as well as tangible literary journals as the possible venues for publications increase. In one hand sites like 2River are helping to get more peoples creative works publicised and with that the invaluable gowth of common knowledge which I think is a great thing for all writers. Still, the industry itself is struggling to get a grasp of how to profit from online publications and as the increase of online journals continue, the number of journals printed quarterly or monthly decrease.
In comparison to other online journals, 2River seems to put the focus on the works themselves. As seen in the layout of the site as well as the number of accepted genres of work. The pieces are easily accessed and the site does well to share as many works as possible in the simplest way concieved. There are links for relevant articles and even a venue to publish cards. These are both innovative applications used by 2River to set it apart from the other spreading online literary journals.