There were a number of possible publishing outlets available to the Beat writers. The categories described below are primarily for the convenience of discussion: their boundaries are not clearly defined and there is much overlap. Although these outlets exist simultaneously, and each finds a different readership, they can be seen as steps in a progression.
The underground magazines and presses were the outlets most open to new writers, but their readership was small. Literary (but "above ground") magazines had the next largest audience, while certain of the small literary presses were the most visible of the alternative outlets. Finally, the mainstream publishers represented the publishing establishment, and brought an accompanying increase in readership and sales.
As we shall see, the writers of the Beat Generation published in all of these categories at different times. As they went from being avant-garde "dissident" voices, progressing through many media transformations to their present status as literary "elder statesmen," their works were published in roughly the sequence of categories discussed below.
The categories used here can be described as a kind of "literary food chain," where the smaller fish at the bottom are consumed by larger fish, all the way up the chain. What I am calling the "underground magazines" were the first stage in this food chain: experimental writing would often first appear in print here. The alternative presses with an interest in the avant-garde would look to these magazines to see what was emerging over the horizon. Beat writer LeRoi Jones, publisher of Yugen magazine from 1958 to 1962, pointed out in a 1963 interview that Evergreen Review, the quarterly literary review which was an offshoot of Grove Press, "to a great extent has picked up on things that I've done already and that have appeared in magazines like Black Mountain Review and Neon" (Ossman 1978). The underground magazines were the ones which led the way.