The explanation given by many magazine editors of magazines not supported by grants or universities, is that they depend on their subscribers - the aspiring and intermediate fiction writers themselves - and stand to lose subscriptions if they print more challenging fiction.

For many developing writers, bland, safe, forgettable writing represents the peak to which they can aspire. Writing courses reinforce this approach, since it produces significant short-term results, so more and more writers end up producing more of the same in a mind-numbing fiction, and the whole cycle picks up momentum and plummets into an ever-descending spiral.

What can be done?

First of all, the problem has to be articulated, recognised and discussed. The obvious place is in the writing communities that are full of writers who have the opportunity for the first time in the history of fiction writing to voice their grievances, share their experiences and collectively do something about it. They can demand more of their peers. Communities are raising the standard of short fiction published in online zines because the writers that use them have been given an extra forum in which to develop their craft on a much faster track than submitting blindly to zines until they start getting accepted. If you want to read beginner's fiction now, there are plenty of opportunities to do so for free in a writing community, and you get to interact with and learn from the authors as well. Just as the techie online forums help web designers to keep up with the latest developments in Javascript or Google algorithms, the writing forums are full of information about writing, publishing and promoting fiction.

Secondly, literary editors will be forced to raise the game and acknowledge the need for greater diversity if their publication is to stand out from the burgeoning crowd of zines. Perhaps an editor's job has changed. It is no longer to give writers what they want but to show them the range of possibilities in truly great fiction. At the same time, as more people are using the Internet for the purposes of entertainment and education, the great prejudice against reading off the screen is fading into background noise. Genuine readers are beginning to appear. At last editors are beginning to reach the audience for which their zines were always intended.

Finally, following the lead from the most successfully marketed publications on the web, zines will have to mark out their own territory by identifying their specific niche and demanding only the very best fiction that fits the bill. This might sound narrow-minded, but due to the extreme proliferation - we're talking thousands of literary journals, zines and online projects - the best way to differentiate your zine from the hoards is to create a strong, tightly-defined identity for your publication and demand the highest quality writing that fits into its niche.

Writers of fiction often seek publication as affirmation. If avoiding the deeper, more challenging fiction means you are more likely to "place" it, your development as a writer might well grind to a halt, but at least you'll get published. If, on the other hand, you are challenged to meet the high demands of a range of tightly-defined fiction journals, which all have their own loyal, hardcore following, you will be challenged to experiment with your idiom, range and approach to writing fiction. This means, writers could go ahead and write something they know will be challenging, in the knowledge that they will be able to find a niche, and a readership, for it.

These niches exist in the literary world; they are just not represented in the literary journals. As Alex Keegan, author and editor of '7th Quark' magazine says, we are left with "barely-readable journals at one end (boring and bland) and barely readable journals at the arts-subsidized end (heavy and elitist). There should be journals out there that have real quality without ivory-tower attitudes."

Short fiction is a dynamic art form, and the Internet is a quickly-evolving forum for artists to develop their craft, experiment and push the envelope. As we enter the Web 2.0 era, the days of hegemony and elitism enjoyed for so long by subsidized literary journals are numbered.

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