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| SFReader Forums > SFReader > Ask The Expert > Another thread about magazine pay rates. | Forum Quick Jump
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tchernabyelo
Acolyte
      
Date Joined Oct 2006
Total Posts : 351
| Posted 4/2/2008 7:13 AM (GMT -4) |   | It seems one needs a Paid account on LJ to achieve this, which I don't have.
Brian Dolton
Yi Qin stories:
"The Box Of Beautiful Things" - IGMS#3
"The Man Who Was Never Afraid" - Abyss and Apex #20
"At Blue Crane Falls" - Abyss and Apex #25 "Where No Wind Blows" - Staffs & Starships #2
"What The Sea Refuses" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"What The Heart Bears" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"Above The Clouds" - Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel (forthcoming)
Other Land Of Wind And Ghosts stories:
"The Dragon Path" - Fictitious Force (forthcoming)
"Three Out Of Four" - Sorcerous Signals Feb-Apr 08
Stories in other settings:
"The Unicorn Hunter" - OG's Speculative Fiction #8
"Call Centre" - Necrotic Tissue #1
"When Winter Came" - ASIM #32
"Cold Fire" - Flashing Swords #9
"St. Saviour And The Devil's Dandy" - Flashing Swords (forthcoming) | | Back to Top | | |
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tchernabyelo
Acolyte
Date Joined Oct 2006
Total Posts : 351
| Posted 3/31/2008 11:07 AM (GMT -4) | | I have clicked that button, and can find no way of making it feed to Livejournal - only to things like My Yahoo, or Google, which is not what I'm looking for.
I read a few RSS feeds in livejournal but I couldn't find any reference there to Every Day Fiction (or various permutations thereof).
Doubtless I am missing something simple and obvious.
Brian Dolton
Yi Qin stories:
"The Box Of Beautiful Things" - IGMS#3
"The Man Who Was Never Afraid" - Abyss and Apex #20
"At Blue Crane Falls" - Abyss and Apex #25 "Where No Wind Blows" - Staffs & Starships #2
"What The Sea Refuses" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"What The Heart Bears" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"Above The Clouds" - Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel (forthcoming)
Other Land Of Wind And Ghosts stories:
"The Dragon Path" - Fictitious Force (forthcoming)
"Three Out Of Four" - Sorcerous Signals Feb-Apr 08
Stories in other settings:
"The Unicorn Hunter" - OG's Speculative Fiction #8
"Call Centre" - Necrotic Tissue #1
"When Winter Came" - ASIM #32
"Cold Fire" - Flashing Swords #9
"St. Saviour And The Devil's Dandy" - Flashing Swords (forthcoming) | | Back to Top | | |
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tchernabyelo
Acolyte
Date Joined Oct 2006
Total Posts : 351
| Posted 3/31/2008 7:02 AM (GMT -4) | | By the way - Jordan, I'd happily switch to take a LiveJournal RSS feed instead of email, but nowhere either on EDF or on Livejournal have I actually found such a feed.
Apologies if I am being a complete idiot, but can you tell me how I go about finding and setting up the feed?
Brian Dolton
Yi Qin stories:
"The Box Of Beautiful Things" - IGMS#3
"The Man Who Was Never Afraid" - Abyss and Apex #20
"At Blue Crane Falls" - Abyss and Apex #25 "Where No Wind Blows" - Staffs & Starships #2
"What The Sea Refuses" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"What The Heart Bears" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"Above The Clouds" - Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel (forthcoming)
Other Land Of Wind And Ghosts stories:
"The Dragon Path" - Fictitious Force (forthcoming)
"Three Out Of Four" - Sorcerous Signals Feb-Apr 08
Stories in other settings:
"The Unicorn Hunter" - OG's Speculative Fiction #8
"Call Centre" - Necrotic Tissue #1
"When Winter Came" - ASIM #32
"Cold Fire" - Flashing Swords #9
"St. Saviour And The Devil's Dandy" - Flashing Swords (forthcoming) | | Back to Top | | |
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tchernabyelo
Acolyte
Date Joined Oct 2006
Total Posts : 351
| Posted 3/31/2008 6:29 AM (GMT -4) | |
nathan said...
Clarke said...
There are some authors that we can't get at 10 cents per word. If we jumped to 25, it would definitely open some doors within that crowd, and yes, those people would definitely raise our visibility. ...
Who are these guys? If they're just pro authors looking for free marketing for their longer prose--why the quarter cut off? If they're not and they're actually making a go of it as short writers (and it would be inferred I would guess that if you won't even deign to play for less than .25 centsyou've had *some* kind of success. Yeah?) then why turn down cash money--ecspecially when solicitied directly?
... Cost/benefit analysis. What else could they be doing with the time it would take to write that story, and in what way would the benefit from one activity over another?
I'm guessing we are talking authors here who don't NEED Clarkesworld, or other markets at that level; writers for whom, to be honest, even $0.25 per word may not be entirely exciting. Yes, there are such writers out there. But while they do write short stories, that isn't where the majority of their income derives, and they are sufficiently well-known that magazine appearances wouldn't increase their exposure one iota.
Yi Qin stories:
"The Box Of Beautiful Things" - IGMS#3
"The Man Who Was Never Afraid" - Abyss and Apex #20
"At Blue Crane Falls" - Abyss and Apex #25 "Where No Wind Blows" - Staffs & Starships #2
"What The Sea Refuses" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"What The Heart Bears" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"Above The Clouds" - Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel (forthcoming)
Other Land Of Wind And Ghosts stories:
"The Dragon Path" - Fictitious Force (forthcoming)
"Three Out Of Four" - Sorcerous Signals Feb-Apr 08
Stories in other settings:
"The Unicorn Hunter" - OG's Speculative Fiction #8
"Call Centre" - Necrotic Tissue #1
"When Winter Came" - ASIM #32
"Cold Fire" - Flashing Swords #9
"St. Saviour And The Devil's Dandy" - Flashing Swords (forthcoming) | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4441
| Posted 3/30/2008 8:58 PM (GMT -4) | | Nathan,
A conversation something like this several years ago lead to the creation of Jim Baen's Universe.
Here is the economics;
Author X started out, like most writers do, writing short stories. He was pretty good at it, but eventually moved on to writing novels because there was no money in writing short stuff and it seemed like the thing to do. As it turned out it was the thing to do, and his novels sold very well indeed. Well enough that his publisher signed him on to a multi-book contract with a nice three stage advance on each book adding up to a modest five figures per. It takes him three to four months to write out a novel, with another month on either end outlining and polishing/editing, with another couple of weeks after his editor goes over it.
All of this adds up to a nice living and a full time job writing, which is great as far as it goes. Only every now and then X gets an idea that is a little to small to make it as a novel, yet too self contained to work into an existing plotline. He'd like to turn a couple of these into short stories.
Unfortunatly, even though he's doing well from the writing, his lifestyle has kept up, he still has a morgage, college tuition for the kids, alimoney for the wife that left him when he was staying up all night for weeks on end writing while barely covering the bills with a crappy day job, etc etc, and writing short stories, while rewarding as hell on a personal level, takes more time per story length than writing novels does and the renumeration is far, far lower. Even his advance money works out to .20/word on a contracted novel, not considering what he gets down the road when the book pays out. He might make a sacrifice just to get the idea out of his head so he can get on with his work, but doing so too often is taking food out of the mouth of his daughter's college dean, so he doesn't produce much short fiction, if he can help it.
But his books sell well enough to make writing shorts an ill afforded luxury-- minimum of ten K hard back, one hundred K paper sales. Meaning he has a readership about three times minimum what the best circulated SF magazines get. So when he does produce a story, its a winfall for who ever puts it out, as about twenty percent of his readers pick up the magazine. Thats an increase of exposure for the market, at the expense of the author.
So now we have several magazines paying significantly more than the big three to established authors. This is to encourage more authors to write more short fiction while exposing the readers of said authors to the short fiction of other authors. No surprise the publishers of said magazines are in fact, book publishers for many of the authors as well. Top selling authors still take a loss in a strict time spent to money earned standing, but not so much they feel they are depriving their families. Readers are enthusiastic because not only do they get new stories by favorite writers in their favorite universes, but they get exposed to a whole bunch of other great writers at a minimal expense. And the writing really is better than the average "pro" magazines because, talent aside, this is the group of writers who have spent the most time and effort, and had the greatest success, developing audience pleasing writing skills. Otherwise they wouldn't have tens of thousands of consistent readers.
And hell yes, this is what I eventually want to be doing. You don't have to be a NYT bestseller to fall into this group either. A strong mid-lister sells well enough to have this dilemma.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php
"Stains" in Tales of the Talisman 3-1 www.zianet.com/hadrosaur/index.html
"Morning Coffee" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/morning-coffee-by-michael-d-turner/
"The Jewel Below" in Flashing Swords
flashingswords.sfreader.com/issues/issue8/vol2-iss8-05.htm
"Happy Landings" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/happy-landings-by-michael-d-turner/
"Teller of Tales" in Every day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/teller-of-tales-by-michael-d-turner/
Read "Silver Shells" In Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/silver-shells-by-michael-d-turner/ | | Back to Top | | |
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2110
| Posted 3/30/2008 8:18 PM (GMT -4) | |
Clarke said...
There are some authors that we can't get at 10 cents per word. If we jumped to 25, it would definitely open some doors within that crowd, and yes, those people would definitely raise our visibility. Within the context of this thread this quote by Neil really jumped out at me--and I know were only dealing with speculation on our part because we don't know per se who he means...but it seems interesting.
There are (as we discuss these matters amongst our selves) authors of short stories who, even if directly solicited, wouldn't submit a story for less than quarter a word. The implication is they wouldn't put it in a slush pile on their own voliation either.
Who are these guys? If they're just pro authors looking for free marketing for their longer prose--why the quarter cut off? If they're not and they're actually making a go of it as short writers (and it would be inferred I would guess that if you won't even deign to play for less than .25 centsyou've had *some* kind of success. Yeah?) then why turn down cash money--ecspecially when solicitied directly?
Also he Neil says that if he did open the doors with that "crowd" then their visibility would be raised, which I think he's saying is a good thing.
So would this idea of paying more money to get at not just a better story, but a better "crowd" still be a viable model for an EDF (or 'EDF-like', whomever) or in the general climate that darkbow is putting forth.
Note: I'm a bit gun shy after being in some other unrelated threads so let me stress (probablly unnecessarily) that I mean this as a general, conversational question only.
Is it the general goal of the average SFReader writer to 'move up' to the company of a crowd that would only work for a .25 cent a word rate? If so at what point do you stop submitting--and even if solicited--to anyone who pays less. Do you do it in a big jump--one day you're taken the token payment and the next you're calculating the sale of your shorts in the thousands of dollars or do you start out dropping free. Then token. Then 1/2 cent, then 2-cent, then 10-cent, etc all.
I just got the feeling from reading that there could be some writers out there who've had a whole different experience at this short gig than some of us here.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4441
| Posted 3/30/2008 8:00 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Jordan Lapp
ppaL nadroJ
Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 2436
| Posted 3/30/2008 7:11 PM (GMT -4) | | | Just to let you guys know, Neil Clarke from Clarkesworld Magazine weighed in with his thoughts on magazine pay rates.
As few of you know, I've been a huge fan of the magazine ever since I read the Third Bear by Jeff Vandermeer, and I've been submitting work to them ever since, so having him share his thoughts on our little forum is a huge honor.
The guy is a class act, through and through.
Jordan Lapp Managing Editor
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4441
| Posted 3/30/2008 9:47 AM (GMT -4) | | darkbow said...
7 stories a week, or a story a day, 364 stories a year. At $40,000 a year, I'd need to make nearly $110 per story. With an average word count of 3,000 words per story, I'd need a little more than 27 cents per word.
Maybe that money doesn't sound too outrageous, but then I'd have to find 364 markets for all my stories. To be fair. I could maybe get by with only a couple of hundred markets, my thinking being I'd sell more than one story to a fair number of publications.
And that would mean I'd probably have to put in another 5 to 10 hours a week (a rough estimate) to find those markets, do rewrites, deal with my taxes, answer editors' e-mails, etc. etc.
And that's just making $40,000 a year.
Uh, Ty? 3000 words for 110 dollars comes out to, like, .04/wd. Twenty-seven cents a word would make you average 2410$ a story. Its not that hard, man.
Eventually you have enough stories to have a Collection out in book form. You don't need to be Ray Bradbury or Steven King to do this. Tim Curran, Jeff Van Pelt and many others have had a collection or two, some have done quite well.
Once you have done that, you have old work competeing on the bookshelf with Novels and self-help books, and you stop worryig whether Weird Tales pays you three cents a word or four, because now its all about how the collection sells. Paperback Royalties (5% of the cover price for the first 10000 copies, 7% after that, less a percentage withheld against returns -- which most writers will swear is at least fifty percent but is actually less.) If you sell 30000 out of 50000 paperback @ 6.99 per unit that is 13281 dollars, less 40% that they hold, good luck getting that paid out, is $7968.60. If you put 100K into the collection that is just under eight cents a word, all old work that you have all ready been paid for once.
Which would mean that you only have to earn $32031.40 off your new work this year.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php
"Stains" in Tales of the Talisman 3-1 www.zianet.com/hadrosaur/index.html
"Morning Coffee" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/morning-coffee-by-michael-d-turner/
"The Jewel Below" in Flashing Swords
flashingswords.sfreader.com/issues/issue8/vol2-iss8-05.htm
"Happy Landings" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/happy-landings-by-michael-d-turner/
"Teller of Tales" in Every day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/teller-of-tales-by-michael-d-turner/
Read "Silver Shells" In Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/silver-shells-by-michael-d-turner/ | | Back to Top | | |
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crystalwizard
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 4142
| Posted 3/29/2008 11:49 PM (GMT -4) | | round and round and round and round and round and...
have you guys not noticed that things go in cycles?
Someone isn't paying very close attention to the marketing world.
To be successful in business, find a need and fill it. Or create a need and fill it.
If there are no markets, then start up a magazine to fill it. Let people know it exists. If no one responses, use 'publicity and marketing' to convince them that they NEED it.
(how else do you think it's possible to make you want 15 different kinds of breakfast cereal and 30 different kinds of potato chips?)
So, Ty's right there are no markets, but that's a temporary situation.
And Nathan, that's why magazines are starting up. Because no one else is currently covering what will be a market before long. | | Back to Top | | |
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darkbow
Rabbit lord
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1392
| Posted 3/29/2008 9:41 PM (GMT -4) | | Si, senor, yo no ... okay, it's been way too long since I've had to use any Spanish. But no, I didn't mean to exploit the poor writers. Heck, I'm one of them.
I think magazines and other forms of smaller publications are starting up for a lot of reasons. Some are started just for the love. Others are started out of desperation, writers who can't make it and decide to become editors, for one example. And I think there are a few who start up with pictures of big money in their heads, but that's rather foolish. I also think there are a few, with decent business plans, who are picturing money, but way way way down the road, probably with plans of branching into multiple publications and other forms of publishing, such as book publishing.
Mostly I think it's for the love. If not for the love, then publishing is the wrong business to go into ... why not make taco sauce or frisbees or something? There's probably a better, or at least an "already made," market for taco sauce or frisbees.
"Steven Spielberg and The Magic Box" upcoming at The Ranfurly Review.
"Peter Piker the Pankin Man" upcoming at Big Pulp
"Walking Between the Rain" at Every Day Fiction
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2110
| Posted 3/29/2008 9:27 PM (GMT -4) | |
darkbow said...
I think it's realistic in that there's no market. Then why are new magazines starting?
Don't misunderstand I think we're agreeing--short stories are becoming like poetry, it's done on a smaller scale mostly for personal reasons. It's no longer (and hasn't been for awhile) a professional endeavour in more than a part-time sense and then only for a handful.
If what is happening is that you have magazines starting up to become like literary journals or poetry journals where the whole effort is basically for the love (meant 100% in a good way) then you are right.
If however you (not "you" you the generic you) were starting a magazine to make money and you can't afford to pay your labor, and you in fact think you're somehow doing the labor a favor by allowing them to labor for you then BS. Either you can afford to pay the labor a living wage (if you can call "pro-rates" a "living wage") or you can't afford to go into business.
--but I let me hasten to add I don't think you meant you want to exploit the "illegal immigrant" of the labor force in a literary sweatshop so that management can make money. I assume you meant the whole paradigm has shifted to look more like, say, the poetry scene.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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