Recently in Publishing Category

I've never been one for the shotgun submission approach. It used to be a waste of time (mine and the editor's) and money; these days it's mostly just a waste of time. Stamps, after all, cost money, and to do the equivalent of an e-mail attachment blitz meant the outlay of cash and supplies. With the ever-increasing number of online venues for fiction of all sorts and print publications that accept online submissions, it's a trivial matter to send out two dozen tales in the course of an evening. I tend to doubt that the folks who do that on a regular basis actually read through the publications they're flinging their words at.

I once sent an epic free verse poem full of cybernetics and pornography to Science Fiction Eye. I got some great comments back, along with what I took to be some implied advice: "While I'm pleased that you think of the Eye as a place for something as energetically weird¹ as your poem, we don't actually publish fiction or poetry." Whoops. The Eye was a non-fiction publication, which I would have known if I'd read a copy or two instead of just picking it out of the 1996 Writer's Market because it had "SF" next to its listing. Still, I considered that a nice and valuable note. The editor liked it enough to actually read it, respond, and not call me an idiot for sending it in. Small victories!

One of the virtues of the shotgun approach is that, if you blast off enough submissions and are at least somewhat coherent, you'll eventually get something into print or pixels, somewhere. Intermittent stimuli make for stronger addictions, so I suppose the occasional jolt of recognition could be enough to keep that process going. As for myself, I take a greater measure of satisfaction in targeting a specific publication that I like and seeing if I can match something I've written with its editorial sensibility. Some publications are just out of bounds: I enjoy The Georgia Review immensely, but I don't write things for a particular sensibility. So unless something strange and disturbing happens to its editorial staff, it's unlikely that my work will find a home there.

There are also certain publications that I like which are also Big Deals. When every author's bio in a given issue mentions five or six credits in other publications that I've actually heard of, that's enough to make my provincial heart go all pitterpattery. It's an especially fine sensation if I think I've got a piece or two that might actually fit in with the editor's grand plan for literary domination. I've got a couple of those venues in my sights right now: one's a new-to-me magazine that I'd love to be in, and the other's a magazine edited by someone who's got a piece in the first magazine that resonated with me.

But before I submit, I'm waiting for two copies of the second publication to arrive, because I haven't actually read it yet, and what someone produces as an author isn't necessarily the same as what he chooses to publish as an editor. One copy is the first issue with that author serving as editor, and the second copy is the latest issue, which ought to provide a neatly bookended overview. I'd love to be able to do more extensive delving, but I need sleep and my life is full of burgeoning chaos, so I do what I can and hope it's enough to keep me from any obvious foolishness, like sending a story about buggery and death in the brothels of Morocco to a magazine that specializes in publishing romances involving 19th-century botanists.

---

¹"Awesome," thought I. "I am Energetically Weird!"

I've mentioned this here before, but I'm mentioning it again. Partly because it just bears repeating, but also because I seem to have gained a slew of new readers over the past few weeks, and if you don't already know about it, you should: Duotrope's Digest.

Duotrope is a searchable database of about 2,400 fiction and poetry markets. Not quite as many as the 4,000 contained in the Writer's Market annual¹, but it's certainly more convenient to use, and it's updated more frequently. They send out a weekly email that tells you when new markets have been added and old markets have been updated. It also includes upcoming themed publication deadlines and other tidbits.

The site's submissions tracker is the best part. I used to do the same thing by hand in Excel (if that can be considered "by hand"), but the tracker is much better. Now I can easily see my submissions output and berate myself for not doing more. Even handier is the ability to compare the number of days your submission has been with a market versus that market's average response time, which lets you know when it's time to start pestering. You can also keep track of a given piece's submission history, which lets you know when it's time to put a bullet in its head.

So if you're one of those peculiar people who's convinced that other people really ought to be reading what you write, have a look. Duotrope lives on donations, so if you like what you see, consider tossing a few bucks into the PayPal bucket. The whole show is "run by a very small admin team comprised of a few published writers and former editors and is not affiliated with any outside businesses or organization." I have no idea who they are, but they do a smashing job and provide a valuable resource.

---

¹Reader Doug points me to the online version of Writer's Market. The main difference between the two is that Duotrope focuses entirely on fiction, while Writer's Market contains a large number of non-fiction markets. Also, it costs $39.99 a year. It's really about what fits your needs best. I like free, and I'm writing fiction, so Duotrope works for me. If you're looking for a way to research places for your how-to book or your travel writing, then Writer's Market is probably the better way to go. I'm happy to see that they're finally online. The book was useful, and the articles were very helpful, especially the ones covering the basics of manuscript mechanics and submission etiquette. But I always found it a bit cumbersome to use for market research.

I've got a small stack of zines here. Do you remember zines? Back before the IntraTubes, would-be publishers used photocopiers to make multiple paper copies of whatever they wanted to print, and sent them to people via the U.S. Postal Service (which is still around, by the way, and some people still use it to mail letters to each other). They came in all shapes and sizes: saddle-stapled 8 1/2" x 5 1/2", or 8 1/2" x 11" if you had a budget or access to the office photocopier; sheets of paper stapled in one corner; 11" x 17" single sheets folded into a square; or sometimes just loose assortments of odd-sized, hand-cut paper stuffed into an envelope.

I've got Impetus here, a couple of issues of Bouillabaisse, and Cokefish. The first issue of Rant. Three issues of Struggle: A Magazine of Proletarian Revolutionary Literature (I'm in one of those, actually, which is not surprising, because I'd spewed off an anti-First Iraq War screed and Revolutionaries like that sort of thing), and th'advenchurzza scab boy. There's Mandrake Makes Madonna in Marmelade, and r.l. nichols & faggot friends & poesy pals preferrin' cock (or love 666). Shattered Wig #11. And, of course, Holy Titclamps, which is still around. Lyn Lifshin is in about half of these things. She's still around too, and remains insanely prolific. You can also buy stuff from the Christies, who run Alpha Beat Press and published Bouillabaisse and Cokefish.¹

It's a weird little pile of stained and yellowing papers and booklets that always stands out among the more ordered spines of the other books on my shelves. I shuffled through it this evening looking for Feh!, which published my four line epic, "Ode to Rubber." I didn't find it, but I found some ephemera that's probably been moving with me from place to place for well over a decade, hidden among the chaps and zines. A couple of poems that I'd forgotten I wrote, which is just as well. A copy of the 1995-1996 course catalogue for Union Theological Seminary. A reference manual for the tsubos of the twelve traditional meridians (excluding CV and GV). Some reviews of my first and only chapbook.

This little stack of random stuff illustrates the danger of our digital age. We've got papyri and clay tablets that are over 5,000 years old. But if the sun has a bad day and wings a monstrous coronal mass ejection our way, many of our modern online zines are going to vanish in a blaze of scrambled magnetic particles on sparking drive platters.

So, today's public service announcement: back up your data. Not that it will help if the sun unleashes an electromagnetic storm big enough to fry your laptop. But it might make you feel better.

---

¹The last time I saw Dave and Ana Christy, I was at their place in New Hope hanging out with eliott, joe r., Bobby Starr, and my pal Lauren, none of whom you know or have ever heard of. Bobby Starr's photocopied zines and broadsides were dotted with anuses that he'd cut from porn mags. When I left that evening, he was on the floor with his head in an overturned kitchen trashcan, as a ward against incipient vomit. True story.

The nominations for the 2009 Hugo awards closed on February 28. This year's eventual winners will be announced at WorldCon in August.

If you're looking for something to read, check out last year's Best Short Story winner: "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear.

If you're looking for even more things to read, here are the other Best Short Story nominees from 2008:

• "Last Contact" by Stephen Baxter

• "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" by Ken MacLeod

• "Distant Replay" by Mike Resnick

• "A Small Room in Koboldtown" by Michael Swanwick

Back in Junior High I discovered that the school library had volumes of Hugo Award-winning short stories going back to the 50s, and I tore through them all in a matter of weeks, spending my free periods tucked away on the upper level next to the shelf that held them.

It's always good to read the nominees and winners, both for the tales themselves, and because I often learn how much Suck I still have left to excise, or (more rarely) get encouraged with a bit of "almost there!"

I first caught a whiff of this over at Mr. Ellis's establishment, and now there's more on it at Slashdot. To wit: Realms of Fantasy is ceasing publication, and rumor has it that all three major American fantasy and science fiction print magazines will be going to a bi-monthly schedule.¹

Times are tough for magazines in general, what with this Intratubes thing the youngsters these days are using to steal food from the mouths of Metallica's children while refusing to pay to read Paul Krugman, and the ceaseless videogamery that eats up their free time while turning them into soulless, efficient killing machines. But these magazines, Asimov's and Analog in particular, are giants, institutions of the genre. I've still got my rejection slips from all three of them somewhere, well-deserved responses to the terrible stories I sent off to them during my teens.

Subscribing to all three of them for a year would total exactly one hundred dollars and ninety-one cents (although that might change if their publishing schedules get halved). I can't really swing all of that at once, but I do believe I'll start having at least one of them sent to my home soon.

This is for entirely selfish reasons. I don't think that the future of periodical SF publishing lies in printed matter.² But I want them all to hang around in meatspace long enough for me to get at least one thing published, so that I can run my grubby little paws over the pages of an issue that I've somehow managed to get into. After that they can ascend into virtuality if they need to.

With that in mind, I've stepped up work on a short story with an eye towards making the rounds of the big three. It's got cyborg monkeys and poets in it. A shoe-in for sure! Everybody likes cyborg monkeys.

---

¹F&SF has in fact already done so.

²See Jim Baen's Universe.

Just received a brief note from Dash, editor of Expanded Horizons, acknowledging receipt of The Test. So much of this business is reduced to form letters of rejection, with a lot time spent waiting and wondering about the status of this submission or that, so it's nice to get an update. It's courtesy. That's how to run things, I think...if, god forbid, I should ever end up in some editorial capacity, I'd want to do the same.

Speaking of nice things, Anne over at Ample Sanity has been directing a fair chunk of traffic my way, so do give her a gander. And if she doesn't like geese, have a look at her site.

Now: I shall retire to the water closet and pummel my torso and thighs with a silver-trimmed tortoiseshell hairbrush, to teach myself to avoid such atrocious not-puns.

I've decided on some potential new homes for One Sunday in Kentucky: Atomjack, Daikaijuzine, Hub Magazine, Silverthought, and possibly Doorways, but I'm not sure it'd be a good fit there, so I'm still considering that one. Of those five, I'd most like to see it get into Daikaijuzine, but they're all fine venues full of good things to read, so do check them out.

But! What I'm most excited about is a possible home for The Test. It's a brand new market. If you read Expanded Horizons'  mission statement, you'll find that two of the editorial staff's objectives are:

• Increasing the number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and asexual people in speculative fiction
• Increasing the number of transgender, transsexual, intersex and genderqueer⁄fluid people in speculative fiction

Now, given the subject matter of The Test, I think that it would be a fine fit. Their first issue is going to include a tale by Joe Haldeman, and I'd be more than pleased to have any of my piffling words end up near his. The submission deadline for this inaugural issue is September 15, so I'd better get cracking.

The only minor hiccup is that The Test is one of those stories that's been through six revisions and still isn't quite right, but I haven't looked at it in awhile so I'm hoping that it's percolated long enough for me to have a series of "Of course! Here's how to fix this, that, and that other thing!" moments.

I'm not talking about the one barstool that's empty at 2AM on the second-to-last night of the conference where you get symmetrical earfuls about how it's all going to hell and I was the guy who turned down Da Vinci Code.

It's that gap that your story falls into when the editor of the market you've sent it to leaves.

Agh!

I sent One Sunday in Kentucky off to Clarkesworld at the end of May, waited the requisite 50 days for a response (72, to be precise) and discovered upon my query that Senior Editor Nick Mamatas had split the scene effective July 1. I don't know whether Sean Wallace is his replacement, because the submission guidelines back in May directed all submissions to Nick, so I didn't check the masthead. Maybe Sean was always there. Clarkesworld is is now temporarily closed to unsolicited submissions.

Which means that my piece is most likely In The Queue. It might have been read. It might not have been read. Maybe Nick read it. Maybe Sean is about to. I don't know.

All of which teaches me to be a bit more active with my submissions, instead of just sending them out and waiting. Not that I necessarily would have been able to do anything had I known that the editor I submitted to was leaving, but I wouldn't have been caught unawares, which would have made me feel clever and on top of things instead of cold and afraid in the dark waiting for them to break through the gates and eat my eyeballs.

Huh. No idea where that came from.

Anyway. I learn, too, that I really ought be to be reading the markets I submit to on a much more regular basis, because if I don't, I miss things, and that's not good for anyone, is it? Clarkesworld is one of those pro-payscale non-simultaneous submission style venues, so if I want Sunday to have a shot I'll just have to sit here quietly. I did query Sean as to status, which will either result in reminding him about that awesome story by that guy in California or a rejection of Ragnarokian ferocity.

Or, perhaps, something somewhere in between those two possibilities, but it's best to be Manichean about these things.


AND THEN:

The middle thing happened!

Neil Clarke (as in, the Publisher of Clarkesworld) writes:

Caught your post thanks to a Google Alert.

My apologies. Your story is still in the queue. We hope to be completely caught up with the slush Nick left us with by the end of the month.

Sean has been with Clarkesworld from the beginning. He handles the "by invitation" submissions and Nick handled the slush. You can expect an announcement about that vacant editor position sometime in the next week, two at tops.

In the meantime, anyone who wishes to pull their story from consideration can drop me an email at books(at)clarkesworld.com. Given how long some people have been waiting, I'd consider that perfectly understandable.

See, now that's how you do things, being all plugged in to what's going on and so forth. Neil commented here about half an hour after I posted this.

I want to take some space here to plug something that's new to me, and possibly to you: Small Press Distribution.

Small Press Distribution is a non-profit literary arts organization located in Berkeley, California. Our mission is to connect readers with writers by providing access to independently published literature.

SPD allows essential but underrepresented literary communities to participate fully in the marketplace and in the culture at large through book distribution, information services, and public advocacy programs. SPD nurtures an environment in which the literary arts are valued and sustained.

Founded in 1969, SPD is currently the only distributor in the country dedicated exclusively to independently published literature.

I found them because I felt the need to expand my reading net, and so I cast about the web looking for "small press fiction bestsellers."

I like them because they work with over 450 small and independent presses, because their sole purpose is to increase the availability of the titles produced by these presses, and because they're a window into the publishing world that exists beyond Amazon and two million square foot bookstores.

Today I received Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter, Songs of Insurgency, and Mopus. All three happen to be available on Amazon, and I would have gotten free shipping. But I never would have found these titles there. One of the major criticisms leveled at Amazon and the large bookselling chains is that they've crushed the independent bookstore, and I think that's probably true. Bookselling is a business with razor-thin margins, and it doesn't take much of a push for an independent to go under.

While I'm not so sure about the place of the big chains--except as colluders with the publishing houses in the bestsellers list racket--I do know that I like Amazon a lot. Generally, I go there with a specific goal in mind. SPD fills in some of the browsing void left by the decline of the small booksellers. It's like a weird little local bookstore, but online.

So: please go check them out, and poke around for awhile.