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You don't seem to be thinking of it in these terms, so I'll spell it out: You're running a science fiction magazine where only one author gets paid for their wo

You don't seem to be thinking of it in these terms, so I'll spell it out: You're running a science fiction magazine where only one author gets paid for their work. This is exploitative. There will be a backlash from professional science fiction writers, if they even notice you. It's a major disservice to writers who _don't_ win your prize. They could've submitted to another venue had you not exhausted all of their commercial rights in exchange. It sounds like you plan on "publishing" everything that gets submitted. Having read slush before I wouldn't encourage this approach. A huge portion of submissions are simply not ready for publication and even the strongest stories need editing.

keiferski 5y ago
Part of the reason that we started this was because current sci-fi magazines are frankly…terrible… for everyone involved. - Terrible for readers, as stories are all locked behind paid magazines, most of which have confusing 1995-era websites. There is also no way to see what a story is about before reading it. E.g. I can’t just say, “I want to read sci-fi about biology” and get results. I can’t even fund things I want to read about via the magazine model. - Terrible for writers, as the process is a black box that takes 2-3 months to get a reply + you only end up getting paid $100, tops. Magazines also usually take the rights to your story. As a result, the genre is largely a niche thing that scares away outsiders. I wrote a bit about this on the About page. Sci-fi has a huge impact on contemporary and future culture, but I don’t think a century-old magazine model is the way forward. Instead, our goal is to get enough sponsors that we can pay vastly more than current magazines, while also channeling their content for a positive cause (promoting science.) > “ It sounds like you plan…” No, we don’t plan on publishing everything that gets submitted and this is mentioned in the submission form. We explicitly ask if people want us to publish their story, even if they don’t win. I only added the question because we just launched and could use some more content; the ultimate goal is to publish many stories and give rewards for each one. But, since this seems unclear, I will put this in the FAQ. Ultimately, the goal is to promote science and tech. To do this, we fund a ton of high-quality, open-access sci-fi while generously rewarding writers that contribute. It’s not to fund the private careers of a handful of professional sci-fi writers in magazines that only a small audience reads. Even then, I foresee us being a sort of “farm league” where non-professionals can build up an audience and then later sign a real book deal with a traditional publisher (or we will become a better version of that publisher ourselves.)
- bhickey 5y ago
  Having done this before myself, let me preface this by saying that I want you to succeed. Publishing short fiction is a thankless, time consuming slog. > Terrible for readers, as stories are all locked behind paid magazines We must be reading different things. For example, Clarkesworld (https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/) and (https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/ https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/) Tor make a huge amount of material available. > the process is a black box that takes 2-3 months to get a reply Reading slush is hard. Anyone offering non-token payment is going to get buried in submissions. I've discussed this at length with the editor of a top literary magazine. His magazine receives over 40,000 submissions per year. Without a large staff it's simply impossible to handle that volume. > you only end up getting paid $100, tops This is market dependent. You're right that most very short fiction won't pay more than $100. The going rate is 8-12 cents per word. Occasionally I've seen markets paying 25 cents per word, like Terraform, but those are outliers. > Magazines also usually take the rights to your story. ... We explicitly ask if people want us to publish their story, even if they don’t win. Professional magazines pay authors for rights. They only acquire those rights from people they pay. Without payment, there's no transfer of rights. You should clarify that only published submissions are CC licensed. > It’s not to fund the private careers of a handful of professional sci-fi writers in magazines that only a small audience reads. I think you're misunderstanding magazine publishing. Science fiction magazines are the farm league. Publish a few stories and maybe you'll win the lottery with a book deal. To my knowledge the only person in the world making a career out of sci-fi magazines is Neil Clarke.
  - keiferski 5y ago
    > We must be reading different things. For example, Clarkesworld (https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/) and (https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/ https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/) Tor make a huge amount of material available. They make some material available. But there is no downloadable eBook version and in most magazines, it’s impossible to tell what the story is about without reading it. The reading experience is simply not very good. Our project, on the other hand, is essentially building a huge library of free-to-read, easily navigable fiction on science and tech. Very different from a magazine with some freebies. > Reading slush is hard… By black box, I meant that the selection process is basically, “Send it in and hope the owner of the magazine likes it, wait 3 months, maybe get published, earn $100, and be read by a few hundred people.” There’s very little insight into the selection process and essentially zero greater mission, such as promoting interest in science. It’s also almost entirely open-ended random stories, as opposed to our sponsored, narrow focus on particular topics that relate to real world science and tech. As I mention in a few other comments, the goal here is to build multiple systems of evaluation, not simply have a team of editors read 40,000 submissions and pick the 10 they arbitrarily like. Instead of languishing in obscurity and being rewarded with peanuts, writers will earn 10x the prize amount, get 100x the amount of readers, and support a good cause. Plus, entering a contest in the first place is more transparent and accessible. I really do not see how that is “exploitative” in any way. Nor is it really similar to a magazine. > You should clarify that only published submissions are CC licensed. Yes, that is already how we are operating but I will add a clarification that spells it out more clearly. The main concern here is to just make sure they don’t submit the story to a magazine/publisher before we conclude the contest. > Science fiction magazines are the farm league. Publish a few stories and maybe you'll win the lottery with a book deal I guess, but again, the amount of people that reads these magazines is basically zero in comparison to the reading public at large. It’s the farm club of a tiny niche genre of books that a small group of people read, not the farm club of literature that can be read by anyone in the world online. The purpose of this project is to promote science and tech to a broad audience, so almost by definition we need to make stories accessible. In our view, the magazine model is simply outdated, inefficient, and bad for everyone – for the reasons that I mentioned above.

keiferski 5y ago

Part of the reason that we started this was because current sci-fi magazines are frankly…terrible… for everyone involved. - Terrible for readers, as stories are all locked behind paid magazines, most of which have confusing 1995-era websites. There is also no way to see what a story is about before reading it. E.g. I can’t just say, “I want to read sci-fi about biology” and get results. I can’t even fund things I want to read about via the magazine model. - Terrible for writers, as the process is a black box that takes 2-3 months to get a reply + you only end up getting paid $100, tops. Magazines also usually take the rights to your story. As a result, the genre is largely a niche thing that scares away outsiders. I wrote a bit about this on the About page. Sci-fi has a huge impact on contemporary and future culture, but I don’t think a century-old magazine model is the way forward. Instead, our goal is to get enough sponsors that we can pay vastly more than current magazines, while also channeling their content for a positive cause (promoting science.) > “ It sounds like you plan…” No, we don’t plan on publishing everything that gets submitted and this is mentioned in the submission form. We explicitly ask if people want us to publish their story, even if they don’t win. I only added the question because we just launched and could use some more content; the ultimate goal is to publish many stories and give rewards for each one. But, since this seems unclear, I will put this in the FAQ. Ultimately, the goal is to promote science and tech. To do this, we fund a ton of high-quality, open-access sci-fi while generously rewarding writers that contribute. It’s not to fund the private careers of a handful of professional sci-fi writers in magazines that only a small audience reads. Even then, I foresee us being a sort of “farm league” where non-professionals can build up an audience and then later sign a real book deal with a traditional publisher (or we will become a better version of that publisher ourselves.)

bhickey 5y ago
Having done this before myself, let me preface this by saying that I want you to succeed. Publishing short fiction is a thankless, time consuming slog. > Terrible for readers, as stories are all locked behind paid magazines We must be reading different things. For example, Clarkesworld (https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/) and (https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/ https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/) Tor make a huge amount of material available. > the process is a black box that takes 2-3 months to get a reply Reading slush is hard. Anyone offering non-token payment is going to get buried in submissions. I've discussed this at length with the editor of a top literary magazine. His magazine receives over 40,000 submissions per year. Without a large staff it's simply impossible to handle that volume. > you only end up getting paid $100, tops This is market dependent. You're right that most very short fiction won't pay more than $100. The going rate is 8-12 cents per word. Occasionally I've seen markets paying 25 cents per word, like Terraform, but those are outliers. > Magazines also usually take the rights to your story. ... We explicitly ask if people want us to publish their story, even if they don’t win. Professional magazines pay authors for rights. They only acquire those rights from people they pay. Without payment, there's no transfer of rights. You should clarify that only published submissions are CC licensed. > It’s not to fund the private careers of a handful of professional sci-fi writers in magazines that only a small audience reads. I think you're misunderstanding magazine publishing. Science fiction magazines are the farm league. Publish a few stories and maybe you'll win the lottery with a book deal. To my knowledge the only person in the world making a career out of sci-fi magazines is Neil Clarke.
- keiferski 5y ago
  > We must be reading different things. For example, Clarkesworld (https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/) and (https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/ https://www.tor.com/category/all-fiction/) Tor make a huge amount of material available. They make some material available. But there is no downloadable eBook version and in most magazines, it’s impossible to tell what the story is about without reading it. The reading experience is simply not very good. Our project, on the other hand, is essentially building a huge library of free-to-read, easily navigable fiction on science and tech. Very different from a magazine with some freebies. > Reading slush is hard… By black box, I meant that the selection process is basically, “Send it in and hope the owner of the magazine likes it, wait 3 months, maybe get published, earn $100, and be read by a few hundred people.” There’s very little insight into the selection process and essentially zero greater mission, such as promoting interest in science. It’s also almost entirely open-ended random stories, as opposed to our sponsored, narrow focus on particular topics that relate to real world science and tech. As I mention in a few other comments, the goal here is to build multiple systems of evaluation, not simply have a team of editors read 40,000 submissions and pick the 10 they arbitrarily like. Instead of languishing in obscurity and being rewarded with peanuts, writers will earn 10x the prize amount, get 100x the amount of readers, and support a good cause. Plus, entering a contest in the first place is more transparent and accessible. I really do not see how that is “exploitative” in any way. Nor is it really similar to a magazine. > You should clarify that only published submissions are CC licensed. Yes, that is already how we are operating but I will add a clarification that spells it out more clearly. The main concern here is to just make sure they don’t submit the story to a magazine/publisher before we conclude the contest. > Science fiction magazines are the farm league. Publish a few stories and maybe you'll win the lottery with a book deal I guess, but again, the amount of people that reads these magazines is basically zero in comparison to the reading public at large. It’s the farm club of a tiny niche genre of books that a small group of people read, not the farm club of literature that can be read by anyone in the world online. The purpose of this project is to promote science and tech to a broad audience, so almost by definition we need to make stories accessible. In our view, the magazine model is simply outdated, inefficient, and bad for everyone – for the reasons that I mentioned above.