From the Editors

It's said a million good ideas have been born in bars. If that's true, then it's likely a billion bad ones have been broached over a malty beverage, and a trillion resulting "resolutions" have failed to survive subsequent hangovers. Yet five years after its inception, failbetter is still going... and growing.

Ever tried…

In the spring of 2000, two men found themselves in a bar in Brooklyn. The first turned to his friend and said, "You know, we should start our own literary magazine." For a few seconds, said friend pondered the possibility. Then, after finishing his beer, he replied, with absolute conviction, "Sure, why not?"

Ever failed…

Of course, we had no idea what we were getting into--we had our inspirational quote from Mr. Beckett, a rather eclectic editorial slant, and the understanding that under no circumstances would we, writers ourselves, publish our own work. And that was it. But after another evening of over-imbibing, the notion remained stuck in our brains, and we knew we had to go through with our plan. And so failbetter.com was born.

No matter…

How did a couple of bookstore vagabonds with little technical know-how found an online magazine-and one that thrives five years later?

Back at the turn of the millennium, several of our friends started up traditional print publications, only to go belly-up after an issue or two. Chastened by their examples, we chose to go online, because we figured the ease and low cost of web publishing would enable us to avoid their fate, and stick it out for the long haul.

Try again…

After a successful couple of years, Mr. McLendon, my co-founding cohort, went off to concentrate on his own writing. Since that time, the failbetter.com family has been joined by many a helping hand, and has turned from an artistic hobby into something of more professional operation. Andrew Day, who had first helped us get on the Web, came back to the fold in 2003, this time, in the much-needed (and more crucial) capacity of Managing Editor And our initial group of editors, consultants and readers—starting with Sir Speed and others—soon came to be spearheaded by our fiction friend, Margo Rabb, and on the poetic side, Miss Meghan Cleary.

Fail again…

Of course, the real life-blood of the publication came from the writers and artists that appeared on our pages. In the first few years, we were fortunate to interview back-to-back Pulitzer winners (Michael Chabon and Richard Russo) just months before each won the award (those were very good "hit" months, indeed). failbetter.com found a home for up-and-coming voices like Sam Lipsyte, Myla Goldberg, and the late Amanda Davis; helped uncover new work from such old names as Ross Bleckner, Dick Davis, Peter Christopher, David Ohle; and interviewed contemporary literary legends in Paul Auster, TC Boyle, Charles Baxter, and Marie Ponsot. Of course, there was the issue that featured photographs of surgically dissected cheese (still one of my personal favorites, reader protests notwithstanding) but more often than not, the work displayed on failbetter.com has been read, praised and re-published elsewhere… and gotten us an avid and expansive readership of nearly 30,000-plus folks an issue.

Fail better

Now we offer you, faithful reader, a special redux issue. For the first time, we have gone back to our alumni to publish new work by some familiar failbetter.com faces: Almond and Shepard, Hayes and Holman, and a few others (including artwork by our first featured artist, Doug Malone).

Five failbetter.com years… and counting. As in life, sometimes you don't know what you have until you've had it for a while. We here in the failbetter.com family know we've got a good thing going.

We thank you for recognizing that too, and look forward to the next five years,

Thom Didato