If your primary incentive is the per-word fee, I imagine hacker news is not your target market. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of programmers who

If your primary incentive is the per-word fee, I imagine hacker news is not your target market. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of programmers who enjoy sci-fi, both in creation and consumption, but the differential between market rate for programmer time and writer time is so great that until you are huge, what you get paid as a writer is symbolic if your dayjob is at a bay-area tech-company. I am a wanna-be writer of fiction who works as a computer nerd. I have written a technical book, so I have some experience, and I really want to write some fiction. (I have a whole series of elaborate fantasies surrounding the idea of rejection letters) - but I write for ego, for self-actualization, whatever you want to call it. I write for emotional, non-financial reasons. Sure, sure, if I do luck into a '50 shades of grey' I want a piece of the action, but in the ordinary case, any payment is symbolic. If you want to compete for my work (and I'm not saying you do; my fiction, so far, is so bad that I'm not willing to admit to any of it,) then you have to compete on something other than money. Assuming you aren't going to assign me an editor who will ride my ass until I finish the goddamn thing[1], the things I will look at are prestige and distribution. The prestige you give me is largely dependent on how good the other authors you publish are. Distribution is also an incentive; but you have to convince me that more people will see my work if it goes through you than if I just release it for free online. I mean, I guess the plan is to release an issue #1 with either known-good authors or really good unknowns... but between now and then, I'd suggest talking up your distribution. [1]If you are willing to do that, I'm sold. Sign me up.