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| Posted By : nathan - 4/1/2008 6:48 PM | |
This is taken from another thread to avoid a hijack there. There is a bit of a growing pet peeve of mine:
Submission guidelines that scoll on and on placing one qualification hoop after another for a story to jump through to be "considered" followed by formating guidelines that make MLA rules look casual.
Followed by payment rates that wouldn't fill my car's gas tank once its said and done.
What the hell ever happened to getting what you paid for?
"I want top notch stories for spit" is starting to frustrate the hell out of me in a philosphical sense lately as I presuse my Ralan's.
If you want to pay 1/10 cents a word perhaps your level of discernment ought to be equitable? Maybe at that rate you shouldn't be putting qualifications on the guidelines but just sending out thank yous when you don't get subs in crayon.
This isn't directed at anyone per se. I literally haven't been at Ralan's in awhile and some of what I just saw there just seemed like people looking to get something for nothing.
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." |
| Posted By : SC Bryce - 4/1/2008 7:20 PM | I've noticed the same thing. It's very frustrating. I've often wondered if some of the crazy formatting restrictions are just to reduce the number of subs coming through. As if it's a test of endurance. After all, it seems to me that the editors could just as easily ask for standard manuscript format and then ask for further formating (if they need the author to do it) after acceptance.
SC Bryce
www.SCBryce.com |
| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 4/1/2008 7:23 PM | Well, I have almost no time as it is, and I have to spend a whack of it formatting people's stories.
Now, we're trying to make it as easy as possible to submit in correct format (with our Rich Text Submission box), and we really don't protest if people don't format it correctly.
But nathan, this is a labour of love.
If a mag is making all kinds of profit off their authors' stories I could understand your gripe. But frequently, editors are losing money and time publishing these stories. Why add to their workload?
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : crystalwizard - 4/1/2008 7:26 PM | To answer the gripe that got Nathan to start this thread, I require the story pasted into the body of the email.
The first time you send me something.
I want to know that the stranger who just put email in my mail box didn't attach something that looks like a real story until I open it up and it runs nasty word macros.
Once I know you, I want attachments.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : nathan - 4/1/2008 8:24 PM | As a general statement I don't think people should expect professional standards from one-half of a work arraingment if they're not getting pro standards from the other half.
I mean that as a simple thought equation.
In the specific, as I write this there's a guy on a rooftop in Queens NYC throwing Molotov cocktails at cars so maybe I should just let the peeve go with a shot of perspective and only submit where I feel like submitting--larger questions aside.
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." |
| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 4/1/2008 8:31 PM | Agreed.... however formatting a document is not exactly a "pro-level" task. It's a couple of clicks of a mouse.
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : SC Bryce - 4/1/2008 8:38 PM | I can tell you that I've decided not to submit to (a very few) markets based on the restrictions. In one case, I spent almost 30 minutes reformatting my document -- this zine had guidelines for margins, tags, font, size, emphasis, quotes... nearly everything you can imagine. I finally decided to forget it. Thankfully, I haven't run into such an extreme case again. Will the publication notice or care that I'm not submitting? Unfortunately, no.
My beef with submissions pasted into the body of the email is that, sometimes, the story will be truncated by the email system. Very annoying.
I think the big problem with the professional standards equation is that the sides aren't equal. The editor/publisher is bearing all the financial risk, has limited time, and has a limited possibility of financial reward. The editor/publisher also has unlimited authors to choose work from. Moreover, there are a limited number of editors/publishers.
On the other hand, there are myriad wannabes out there (like me) willing to submit their stuff, on the off-chance it will be published, in order to assure them that their talent is not completely imagined (pardon the double-entendre) and to feed their dreams of Making It Big.
Es la vida.
SC Bryce
www.SCBryce.com |
| Posted By : MichaelEhart - 4/1/2008 9:39 PM | You know, my experience with better paying markets (the specific genre is called non-fiction) has been far less hoop jumping needed. But my experience most likely varies--- I have written for money for nearly 40 years, off and on. I write fiction now because I can afford to. Before, the amount of time spent in front of a keyboard required the justification of a reasonable return, which pretty much ruled out fiction writing.
I write now because there are stories I would like to tell, not to any expectation that I will be the next Dan Brown, or that I will ever make even the money that I made in the 90's as a freelancer. It would be nice to see the movie tie-in edition of The Servant on everyone's coffee table --- but that it is unlikely doesn't discourage me.
If I don't like the set of hoops, I just don't submit. They will never know, and even if they did I suspect their reaction would be "Mitchel Harte? Never heard of him."
Click here to buy my book!
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"Without Napier" Every Day Fiction, TBA
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"To Destroy All Flesh" Return of the Sword, Flashing Swords Press, Spring 2008
"Only His Name" Every Day Fiction, March 30
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" They Are Not What They Seem, Janrae Frank, ed., TBA
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Still in print!
"The Stars by Law Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, Journey Books, 2007
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Tenoka Press, 2007
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| Posted By : nathan - 4/1/2008 9:43 PM |
SC Bryce said...
I can tell you that I've decided not to submit to (a very few) markets based on the restrictions. In one case, I spent almost 30 minutes reformatting my document -- this zine had guidelines for margins, tags, font, size, emphasis, quotes... nearly everything you can imagine. I finally decided to forget it. Thankfully, I haven't run into such an extreme case again. Will the publication notice or care that I'm not submitting? Unfortunately, no.
I think the big problem with the professional standards equation is that the sides aren't equal. The editor/publisher is bearing all the financial risk, has limited time, and has a limited possibility of financial reward. The editor/publisher also has unlimited authors to choose work from. Moreover, there are a limited number of editors/publishers.
On the other hand, there are myriad wannabes out there (like me) willing to submit their stuff, on the off-chance it will be published, in order to assure them that their talent is not completely imagined (pardon the double-entendre) and to feed their dreams of Making It Big.
Es la vida. I know exactly which pub you mean and I had exactly the same experience. I started out then I looked at the clock and thought this is ridiculous it doesn't = a good efficent use of my time.
Same for rewrites (I decided) if an editor wants rewrites which = more time on the piece then I will only do it if it still makes the story econmically viable. Otherwise just send it on. I do it without emotion (I do not think editors asking for rewrites is crazy behavior, I just come down to effort vs. reward) not anger or anything, just an eye toward how much doing what they ask is going to cost me.
On your second point about many wannabes and few publishers: they know it. Wannabe just means you haven't scored yet--not that you don't have talent. Talent is out there waiting to be found.
I'm well acquainted via the internet with a fellow Gold Eagle author, Mark Ellis (though "fellow" his resume far far out stripes mine). He created and kept popular a series of books called Outlanders--good fun SF.
He was contacted by the studio to do a tie-in novel for Stargate as there are some obvious similarities between the two worlds and crossover among the fans--mutual benifit. But they didn't want to pay that well and they wanted a lot of the initial prep work done on spec. He told them no, he was a professional and he couldn't justify that much work pre-contract. The reply was they had 6 ft of unsolicited submissions sitting in their mail room--she could get a fanfic to do it for 30% of what she'd offered him. He told her if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
But I think he was wrong. I think there's the next Orson Scott Card sitting out there hungry who'll *pay* the studio for a chance to turn in top notch pro level work that they've already written "for the love" and would just be glad to see in print--until they learn something about the business.
Editors are not bad people (ecspecially the ones who appear on this board) but they're usually not stupid either. There is a profusion of acceptable level talent floating around and not a drought of great talent. They know that and unless writers form themselves into basic camps there'll always be an unkown ready to undercut a known for the sheer thrill of being "published."
Hey. Me too. I would have taken that Stargate gig. I don't really have a point in that ramble such making observations. In other news ice is cold and water is wet.
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." |
| Posted By : Nik - 4/1/2008 10:06 PM | You know, nathan, a submission in crayon might actually jump out at the editors....
Nicholas Ian Hawkins
Forthcoming
"Knowledge and Dust," in Magic & Mechanica, from Ricasso Press, Spring 2008
Published
"What Heroes Leave Behind," in Return of the Sword, Flashing Swords Press, March 2008
"The Weald Maiden's Will," in Every Day Fiction, March 5, 2008
"Relativity," in FLASHSHOT, September 28, 2007
Visit my website, Trampler of Beautiful Phrases, at nihawkins.wordpress.com |
| Posted By : Saanen - 4/1/2008 11:13 PM | I just blogged about this same topic a few days ago. My personal peeve is the markets that want manuscripts formatted with block paragraphs instead of indented. With my version of OpenOffice this has to be done by hand. I just don't sub to those markets--which is no big loss, since they're invariably low-paying ezines.
I don't have a problem with markets that don't pay much, since I know no one's getting rich off of my work. What drives me crazy, though, is that some low-paying markets seem to think they deserve the same (or more) deference as high-paying markets when they just haven't earned it. I don't mean writers shouldn't treat all markets with respect and do their best to follow the guidelines, of course, but editors need to be mindful that for half a cent a word or whatever, they shouldn't require writers to do time-consuming reformatting or suffer insta-rejects.
Oh, and insta-rejecting on formatting errors is unprofessional. If I see nasty notes to that effect on guidelines, I don't sub there and I don't read the magazine either.
Kate Shaw
"Newton the Baker's Boy" Strange Worlds of Lunacy, Residential Aliens/CrystalWizard Productions (forthcoming, April 1, 2008)
"Silent Skies" Byzarium (March 2008)
"The King's Messenger" Renard's Menagerie #5
"Honeymoon" Desolate Places, Hadley Rille Books
"Sawmill Road," "Bad Luck," "How My Sister Lost the Game," "Sick Day" (forthcoming) Every Day Fiction
"Trompe L'Oeil" Staffs & Starships #1
"Sea and Sky" Black Dragon, White Dragon, Ricasso Press
"Final Episode" and "Night Court" available on AnthologyBuilder.com |
| Posted By : erazmus - 4/2/2008 4:57 AM | Heck, I don't have time to read all the magazines I sub too. I barely have time to read the one I help edit. I usually try to sample a few stories a year from each e-zine and pick up copies of the print markets that actually make it to the rack at the local bookstores.
I read the ones that publish me. Not always every story but very often nearly so. I read the ones that I really, really want to break in to. A few I read just because I love them. I can't afford subscriptions even to those.
If I had the money, I still wouldn't publish my own magazine. I admire the hell out of people who do, but I think I'd just subscribe to a few dozen that are all ready out there and struggling despite the good work they do. And from what I can tell, every single short fiction venue except tekno books is struggling. Hard. That includes innovative ones like EDF, niche market fillers like Flashing Swords, major players like Asimov's SF and Realms of Fantasy (described to me by a multiple Hugo winner recently as "hemmoraging money").
Bear in mind I've talking in person to more than three multiple Hugo winners in the last few weeks.
I don't want to make things harder on any editor or publisher anywhere. Ever. But . . .
there is always a but, isn't there?
There has got to be a way I can show you what I've written so you can decide to buy it that is easy and reliable from both ends. There simply has to be. Too many places manage it for it to be that hard.
My e-mail scans every attachment for viruses. The program that does that came on my (custom made) system and updates every day. I've never been infected with a virus through my e-mail and I get an alert every few weeks. I've been infected with viruses, usually from something I've downloaded while web-surfing. My firewall stops some, my virus checker alerts me to most. I've had two fatal infections that caused me to lose data, including everything I wrote from 1997 -1998. (The new system won't read the files I backed up on- word star 4?5?, I retyped the damn things from the hard copy I always start with. If I was truely worried, I have much more paranoid setting I could adopt, but they interfere with my day-to-day web-surfing and normal e-mail communication. My current setting, since my last check-up (and bear in mind my computer is now in shop wwith a hardware failure, and was just scanned) no infections in the last two years.
I am a computer moron, but I have managed to protecty myself adequetly. Anyone savvy enough to feel they can run an electronic magazine should be able to do the same. I understand and approve Kelly's approach, and I've pasted my share of stories into a submission page, two or three a month. Its a pain but part of the buisness. But the general flacockney (sp) variance of the guidelines of the pubs I consider is enough to drive me over the edge.
Sure there are way more people submitting to any pub than editing it. Right now there are probably more people submitting to any publication than there are reading it. For the first time in history anyone capable of reading and writing can submit to anyplace, anytime, no matter where they live. This board has active members from (and in) Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Porto Rico, South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, Canada, England, Australia and all over the United States and I swear, every single one of them writes fiction and most have beaten me out of a market. They have access to submit to print markets they can not possibly have seen, but thanks to Ralan's and Duotroupe they know about them. I know I have submitted sight unseen, otherwise I would never have sent a story to Continuum SF (they never paid me, and the mag looked like Kaka).
Does every single market have to have there very own personal standard? When Kelly sends e a story to look over, the first thing I do is change all of the formatting-- space and a half, lucida san uncole, 14 pt pitch (my eyes are going). It takes two-three seconds. It took me forever to sell a flash piece I had with multiple double indented"letters" and I had to hand fit it to almost every market I submitted too. (Thank God Tyree Cambell bought the thing, now I can stop sending it out (its my favorite story I've ever written and I hope he remembers to tell me when, and where, it comes out).
I'm tired and rambling, so I'll stop now.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
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www.everydayfiction.com/morning-coffee-by-michael-d-turner/
"The Jewel Below" in Flashing Swords
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"Teller of Tales" in Every day Fiction
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| Posted By : H.P. Lovesauce - 4/2/2008 6:38 AM |
MichaelEhart said...You know, my experience with better paying markets (the specific genre is called non-fiction) has been far less hoop jumping needed. Fascinating--it seems, on cursory examination, that that kind of writing also is made up of words. This warrants further investigation... |
| Posted By : Jaqhama - 4/2/2008 10:02 AM | This 'must be in a specific format' thing seems to happen a lot with webzines and magazines that do sci-fi and fantasy.
Most of the motorcycle sites I send stuff to are happy to get it anyway they can, so long as it's readable. Same for the non-fiction and military sites.
And the sites above I send stuff too pay larger amounts than anything I've seen on a sci-fi or fantasy webzines. (Mind you they can afford to because they have corporate advertisers like Harley and Yamaha etc.)
So I guess I'm in agreement with some here who have pointed out that if a webzine/magazine is not paying very much, or indeed anything...maybe they should be a lot less fussy about how a story is formatted.
I frequently send stuff to bike sites that I haven't even bothered to indent...and they don't care. They'll format the article as they see fit before they publish it.
I send them pics to go with the article...I don't have to tell them where in the article to put those pics, they know this stuff, they're professional magazine/webzine editors/publishers.
Ho hum...
You can read some of my stories here:
Swamp Story. Down South. Florida Haze.Wild Justice...
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| Posted By : Nicholas - 4/3/2008 2:39 AM | LOL, Lovesauce and Lyn.
Jaqhama, sounds like you have a sweet thing going: you can write non-fiction (like Michael) for a specific niche market that you're actually paid decent money for, then write genre fiction in your spare time for the sheer love of it (and here 4theluv means not "for free" but for the negligible amounts most genre 'zines can afford to pay). I've always wanted to do that, but all the areas I could be considered an "expert" in are fantasy/horror related.  I do write movie and book reviews, and even occasional essays, but the sf 'zines that publish them pay as little for non-fiction as they do for fiction. [Oh, and at the professional level, I write occasional academic pieces--but one is paid nothing for that. You're simply expected to do it so you can list it on your curriculum vitae (or, as it's called in the world outside academia, your resume).]
D*mn. Why can't Harley Davidson sponsor Every Day Fiction?
http://ozment.livejournal.com
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 4/3/2008 1:31 PM | Mike,
We're trying to set up a system that's easy to use.... and you're seeing how much effort it is to get going ;)
Our goal was to make submitting easy for people, but still have things formatted automatically to the way we liked. So far, we're the only magazine on the web that allows you to do this... because the technology is so hard to master. It's taken Steven months and months to put that thing together.... and it STILL has a few bugs. When we get them worked out, we hope it'll be that end-to-end solution you're asking for....
Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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| Posted By : RHFay - 4/3/2008 6:23 PM |
erazmus said...
Heck, I don't have time to read all the magazines I sub too...
Same here. I couldn't possibly read every magazine I sub to cover-to-cover. I've still got ones that I contributed to sitting here waiting to be read. (There's never enough time anymore).
In terms of poetry, I prefer to submit poems in the body of the e-mail versus submitting them as attachments. However, I certainly prefer to submit stories as attachments because of the formatting issues.
It would be nice if the standard was truly standard, and certain publications didn't make you jump through so many hoops to submit. I hate when it takes more time to submit a poem than it took to write it! (A bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get my drift.)
And Jaqhama has got me wondering if I should write more non-fiction...
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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| Posted By : Camille Alexa - 4/3/2008 10:54 PM | Nathan,
I'm pretty much with you on this one. Wow.
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| Posted By : Jaqhama - 4/3/2008 11:25 PM |
RHFay said...
erazmus said...
Heck, I don't have time to read all the magazines I sub too...
Same here. I couldn't possibly read every magazine I sub to cover-to-cover. I've still got ones that I contributed to sitting here waiting to be read. (There's never enough time anymore).
In terms of poetry, I prefer to submit poems in the body of the e-mail versus submitting them as attachments. However, I certainly prefer to submit stories as attachments because of the formatting issues.
It would be nice if the standard was truly standard, and certain publications didn't make you jump through so many hoops to submit. I hate when it takes more time to submit a poem than it took to write it! (A bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get my drift.)
And Jaqhama has got me wondering if I should write more non-fiction...
Make sure you contact what ever magazine/webzine you're going to submit to first and ask them how much they pay for a story/article/photos.
The more advertisers they have on their sites, the more likely they are to pay for articles.
You can read some of my stories here: Swamp Story. Down South. Florida Haze.Wild Justice...
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| Posted By : Jaqhama - 4/5/2008 11:26 AM | I just got picked up by a new American motorcycle webzine actually.
http://jpblvd.com/blog/
Mentioned it in the brag section.
You can read some of my stories here:
Swamp Story. Down South. Florida Haze.Wild Justice...
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| Posted By : Gustavo - 4/5/2008 12:35 PM | Hey I've actually got some nonfiction... See the ask the expert column for my difficulties trying to sell it. But it seems that the effort, once I understand the market, will be worth it...
Visit my livejournal! http://bondo-ba.livejournal.com/
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| Posted By : RHFay - 4/5/2008 4:44 PM | I sold one article to Doorways that appeared in their "Killer Holiday Issue", and one that's due to come later this month in Hungur. I've looked into possibly writing some historical articles for historical-type magazines, but I never got farther than thinking about it. I did do one article for an arms and armour web site, but it was purely "4 the luv" (and a bit of a pain in the behind with the amount of work they wanted, including suggestions for period illustrations and where to possibly find them).
I've got more article ideas similar to what I did for Doorways and Hungur, but I have to find the time to do the research and writing.
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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