Kristin Janz

I  have to disagree with some of author Dean Wesley Smith’s conclusions about short fiction publishing, in his article “When to Mail Short Fiction To Traditional Publishers”.

First, he argues that there are only 4 or 5 science fiction magazines worth submitting to and only 2 or 3 for fantasy.  If you’ve submitted a story to those top few places and none of them want to publish it, he thinks you’re better off self-publishing it as an e-book and starting to earn royalties from it immediately, rather than keeping it on submission to successively less high-paying and less prestigious magazines until someone finally accepts it.

He does offer the caveats that he’s only offering his opinion, that every writer has to decide for himself or herself which magazines are worth submitting to, that there are no right or wrong answers.  He’s outlining his own strategy for deciding whether to try traditional or self-publishing for a short story in the hope that seeing his thought process will be helpful for other writers.  He also suggests that if a writer doesn’t already have a track record and fan base, keeping a story on submission for longer might make more sense than self-publishing.

However, I’m not sure how he came to the conclusion that there are only 4 or 5 places worth sending science fiction to and only 2 or 3 for fantasy.  And I’m surprised that the only science fiction magazines he mentions by name in the article (Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog) are both print magazines.  Especially since some of the highest-paying and most prestigious magazines these days are online.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of magazines that publish fantasy and science fiction and pay at least 5 cents per word.  I’m not distinguishing between print and online magazines in the list, because I submit my stories to both kinds.  If anything, I have a slight preference for online magazines, especially online magazines that offer the stories as free content, because people are more likely to read your story if they can click on a link and immediately read it without paying anything (especially compared to the likelihood that they’ll order a print magazine off the Internet or go to a bookstore to look for it):

Analog Science Fiction and Fact (SF)
Arc (SF)
Asimov’s Science Fiction (SF)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies (F)
Buzzy Mag (F, SF)
Clarkesworld Magazine (F, SF)
Daily Science Fiction (F, SF)
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F, SF)
Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (F, SF)
LORE (F, SF)
Shimmer (F)
Tor.com (F, SF)
Waylines Magazine (F, SF)

This is a deliberately conservative list.  I left off magazines that are often closed to unsolicited submissions or that only accept a limited number of submissions each day, as these practices could be seen as hindrances to authors who want to submit stories there.  I also omitted publications that have themes for each issue or give preferential treatment to certain nationalities.  Otherwise I could have added AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Apex Magazine, ChiZine, COSMOS, Crossed Genres Magazine, Crowded Magazine, Lightspeed, Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, and others.

I still ended up with 11 excellent places to send science fiction and 10 for fantasy.  If I restrict the list even more to those considered “professional” by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, I get 7 for science fiction and 6 for fantasy.

Smith’s main argument is that an author loses money from potential sales the longer a story remains unpublished, and if you keep a story “in the mail” until it sells to a magazine or anthology, it might take years.  (Of course, “in the mail” is an outdated term; of the magazines on my list, only Fantasy & Science Fiction still requires paper submissions sent through the mail.  Everyone else prefers submissions sent electronically.)

The part about taking years is absolutely true.  I’ve had all my short stories traditionally published in magazines before self-publishing them, and it’s taken between 1.5 and 7 years from first submission to publication.  Losing money from potential sales?  Sometimes true.  Smith estimates that you can make $12.50 a month self-publishing a short story.  Many authors can and do.  Many others do not.

I’ve averaged $21 a month from sales of “The Shoemaker’s Daughter”, but that seems to have gotten a boost from the coincidental similarity of its title to that of Adriana Trigiani’s best-selling novel The Shoemaker’s Wife.  My average monthly profits for each of the other 6 stories I’ve self-published range from 13 to 24 cents.  At that rate, even if I sold a 5000-word story for 1 cent per word, I would be losing money on potential sales only if it took longer than 17 years.

The break-even point for a $10 sale, the lowest payment I’ve ever received from a magazine (for “The Shoemaker’s Daughter”, interestingly enough), would be somewhere between 3.5 and 6.5 years (“The Shoemaker’s Daughter” took 3 years).  So should I give up on traditional publication after 3 or 4 years if a story has been rejected by every magazine that pays $15 or more?  Maybe.  But at my current level of unknown-ness, I think that getting published in even the most obscure magazines gives me a better chance of being discovered by a new reader who decides to look for more of my stories than self-publishing does.

Because traditionally publishing a story in a magazine doesn’t rule out self-publishing later.  When you sell a story, the magazine doesn’t demand exclusive rights to it forever.  Once the contracted period of exclusivity has ended (anywhere from 0 to 18 months after publication, in my experience), you can go ahead and self-publish.  You just can’t do it the other way around, usually, because most magazines don’t pay much, if anything, for previously published stories.  And that includes self-published.

I agree with Dean Wesley Smith that if an author is likely to make $12.50 per month from each short story they publish, it’s smart not to keep it on submission to magazines for too many years.  But I also think it’s unwise, if you’re a new author, to assume that you’ll be making that much.  And if you write short fiction, new magazines are starting up all the time.  Don’t rule them out just because they didn’t exist 15 years ago.  Self-publishing as we know it today didn’t exist 15 years ago, either.

Last Wednesday, Donald and I went to hear my friend Max Gladstone read from his new book Three Parts Dead, at the Harvard Book Store.  I bought a copy of the book so Max could sign it (and so I could read it, obviously).  I purchased the hardcover from the Harvard Book Store even though I would have preferred to buy the Kindle e-book.  I have too many books, and I don’t have shelf space for all of them in my apartment.  However, I was there, and I figured that the Harvard Book Store would be more likely to give Max the opportunity to do readings upon the release of future novels if they sold a lot of copies.

I paid $24.99 plus 6.25% sales tax for the hardcover, for a total of $26.55.  Just out of curiosity, I checked the price on Amazon.  $11.99 for the Kindle.  $13.58 for the hardcover.  Even if I didn’t fall for Amazon’s “buy more stuff you don’t need to get free shipping” ploy, it would have been only another $3.99 for shipping, for a total of $17.57.

The Harvard Book Store has the following on the bottom of the register receipt I received:

How much money stays in your community when you spend $100?
At a locally owned business: $68
At a chain store: $43
At Amazon: $0

I do care about supporting local businesses (I buy most of my produce, at least late spring through fall, at a local farm.  I buy most of my meat from a Massachusetts farmer.).  I think independent bookstores are an asset to a community, in part because they can connect authors with readers, face-to-face, at events like Wednesday’s reading.  I have serious concerns about Amazon, from their blatant attempts to monopolize bookselling and publishing, to reports of unfair labor practices in their warehouses.  I don’t begrudge the Harvard Bookstore my $26.55.

But I question whether guilting people into buying things they didn’t want (hardcover vs. e-book), at a 50% premium, is, in the long term, a sustainable business model.

My science fiction story “Looking-Glass Milk” is now available to read on your Kindle or Kindle app.  This originally came out in 2009 from Scribblers & Ink Spillers as part of the Crystal Codices collection, but it’s out of print now, and I thought I’d re-issue it.

The goal right now is to make sure that people are able to read all my published stories.  I probably won’t re-issue stories that are still available to read for free on the internet, since I want to encourage you to visit e-zines that have supported me by buying my fiction.  But for stories that came out in print, in magazines that are difficult and/or expensive to obtain, re-publishing old stories with Amazon seemed like a good way to make them more readily available.

A couple of weekends ago, I attended Arisia, one of Boston’s local science fiction conventions.  I usually think of Arisia as more of a party convention than a writers’ convention.  I’ve attended Arisia in past years without sitting in on a single panel.  (Though I may have done this at Readercon, too; panels aren’t my favorite thing about cons.)  And I tend to run into more non-writer than writer friends.

This year was different, though.  For better or worse, I was fighting off a cold the entire weekend, so I was a lot more careful about trying to get enough sleep, and ended up not going to nearly as many parties (I didn’t feel I could justify the cost of staying in the hotel for the weekend, since home was a T- or cab ride away).  And, oddly, there were actually panels and other items on the program for which I was willing to show up early in the morning!  Often there isn’t much on the program of particular interest to writers, except maybe for absolute beginners (e.g., “How to Get Your First Story Published”).  This year’s program was definitely an exception.  And I ran into plenty of writers and editors, too.

I didn’t take any pictures to liven up my post, so I’ll try to make the paragraphs short instead of one long, mind-numbing block of text.

Here’s a summary of all the stuff on the official program that I actually attended:

The Super Robots (Beast King Golion)
I was going to go to a panel that someone from my writers group was on. Then I realized that there was a screening of Voltron in the original Japanese (with English subtitles) going on at the same time! Sorry, Jen. I was obsessed with Voltron as a child. I even sent away for membership in the official Voltron fan club (sadly, I threw out all the posters and stickers once I thought I’d outgrown them–but they live on, in my heart). My sister and I wrote Voltron fan fic (again, sadly, I don’t think any of this has survived through the ages). Voltron was “re-edited and re-recorded for American audiences” from a Japanese show called Beast King Golion. Golion as in Goliath, the Biblical giant. Only with lions. (“I wonder why they changed the name” my sister quipped.) Beast King Golion hasn’t been damaged by the Suck Fairy as badly as the American version has, though there are numerous plot points that don’t pass adult scrutiny (like the whole escaping from the tower by using vultures as hang gliders sequence).  There’s a lot more swearing, though, which apparently was edited out for the American audience.  And I’m pretty sure the Voltron we watched as children wasn’t so violent and bloody (my parents were allowing my 5-year old sister to watch this, after all).  But the animation was the same.  They showed several episodes, but I had to leave before we got to the one where all the 5 lions join together to form Voltron.  I mean, Golion.

That was a long paragraph, wasn’t it?  That just shows you what a special place Voltron has in my heart, even after all these years.

A Roman Legion: Legio III Cyrenaica
Those who know me well and have read various drafts of my novel-in-progress know that I love Romans as much as I love elves. Maybe more! So, even though I had to be at the convention at 11:00 am for this (don’t laugh, it’s a long commute and it takes me a long time to get ready in the mornings), I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see these representatives from a Roman reenactment group, in their lorica segmentata and caligae. It was very exciting! They were only on the program for 30 minutes, but they should have had a longer time slot, because they went over time and people in the audience still had questions. It was a small audience, but an enthusiastic one. I learned that the legionaries started carrying the gladius (i.e., sword) on a baldric over their shoulder instead of on a waist belt around the same time they switched to the segmented plate armor from chain mail. The reenactors theorize, based on trying out different bits of equipment, that they started doing this because the waist belt slides more over the plate armor than over chain mail, and it no longer held the weight of the gladius without slipping down.

That was a long paragraph, too. I probably love Romans even more than I love Voltron!

Don’t Quit Your Day Job
Since I have quit my day job (actually, my day job quit me), I found this of interest. Also, Jennifer Pelland from my writers group was on the panel. The authors on the panel were all pretty much against the idea of quitting one’s day job, which I suppose fits with the title and description. I’m happy not to have a day job for right now, but I think I have a pretty realistic set of expectations about the fame and fortune I’m likely to achieve as a result. Also, I went into it pretty carefully. I’d been saving money for several years before I was laid off, and don’t intend to use my retirement savings or go without health insurance. I’ll try to find another job long before it comes to that, or at least move back in with my parents. (Just kidding, Mom!)

Winter is Coming
A panel discussing George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire, of which I’m a huge fan (though I still like Romans better). It was a fun and interesting discussion, with plenty of audience participation. Though there a lot of Johnny-come-latelies jumping on the bandwagon with the immense popularity of the HBO series, I have to say. Two of the panelists (the purported experts) admitted that they’d only read the books for the first time within the last year! As someone who has been a member of the Brotherhood Without Banners fan club since 2006 (and even that’s not very long, relatively speaking), I’m a little shocked that such newbies are getting to be on panels as experts on the series! (Okay, I’m not the most active member in the world. I do have a cool secret identity name though! (it’s said that there’s a fine line between cool and dorky)).

Plot and Structure
The panel description reads “It is often remarked that there are only six original plots. How then do you make the plot of your story stand out?” Which sounded interesting enough, but the actual panel was even more interesting than I’d expected, a lot of talk about writing craft, outlining stories vs. making them up as you go along. A counterpoint to the “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” panel, in some ways, with one of the panelists coming right out and saying (more or less) that you needed to write stories people wanted to read if you were going to pay the mortgage. Whereas on that other panel, one of the main reasons given for not quitting your day job was the freedom to write whatever you wanted.

2,326 Worlds And Counting
A science talk on planets outside our solar system. Science is getting better at detecting smaller planets around other stars. The latest research suggests there are probably a few billion Earth-sized rocky planets in our galaxy that are capable of supporting intelligent life (i.e., at a distance from their sun such that liquid water could exist on the surface). Scientists used to think planet formation was rare, but now that we have techniques that can detect planets, it turns out that most stars have them.

Why You Should/Should Not Self-Publish
This probably ought to have been called “Why You Should Not Self-Publish”. Or “Why Would You Even Think of Self-Publishing, You Idiot”? Everyone on the panel (including one panelist who had self-published) basically said you shouldn’t do it except as a last resort. I have mixed feelings about that message. I do think that a lot of writers who are just starting out need to hear the things that were said. That trying to go with a traditional publisher can keep you from embarrassing yourself by putting out a crappy book that you’ll be horribly ashamed of in 10 years. That most customers aren’t going to give you a second chance: if they read a book of yours and it sucks, they’ll probably never buy anything else you ever write (unless they’re your mom). That most self-published books are awful, and most people will assume your book is awful if you self-publish it. That if you want to self-publish and you want your book to have a chance, it’s not just formatting your book on CreateSpace and clicking on a button; it’s expensive and time-consuming, because you have to pay for cover art and design, copyediting, and formatting. And you have to do all your own marketing. No random stranger is going to choose your book out of all the millions of others out there. That self-publishing will probably ruin any chance you had of getting a different book published by a major publisher later on, because (my analogy) publishing is like a medieval marriage in that the publisher expects the author to be pure and unsullied, and views self-publishing more or less as a medieval husband-to-be would view premarital prostitution. These things are all true, and yet…. Not everyone wants a book deal from a major New York house (not if they have to sell their soul and change their name to get it). Some writers can do all the tasks of publishing on their own. Some people aren’t willing to have their manuscript sit on an editor’s desk for 5 years with no answer. And just because you play the traditional publishing game doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed success. Authors are dropped by publishers all the time because their first or second book didn’t sell well enough, and if that happens, you probably will have to self-publish subsequent books (see medieval marriage analogy). As far as I’m concerned, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with self-publishing your work as long as you have realistic expectations for how much work it will be, how little money you’re likely to make, and how unfamous you will be. Hey, just like writing!

That was a long paragraph, too. I don’t love self-publishing, but I have strong opinions.

Stitch ‘n’ Bitch
I recently started crocheting after reading some of my sister’s crocheting and knitting books. I was also envious of the beautiful sock she was knitting, and wanted to be able to make stuff like that. I decided to start with crocheting though, because I’ve heard it’s easier. The book I used to teach myself is from the Stitch ‘n’ Bitch series. My sister has a copy, and I ended up getting my own. Anyway, there are Stitch ‘n’ Bitch gatherings where you meet up with a bunch of other knitters and/or crocheters and work on your stuff, and chat. (Stitch, and bitch. Get it?) And they had one at Arisia. So I went, and worked on my scarf. I’m making a striped scarf as my first project ever. It’s all single crochet.

I should mention that I was taking my crocheting to Arisia pretty much every day and working on the scarf while I was sitting in panels. Oddly, I find it easier to pay attention overall if I have something to occupy my hands during the boring bits. Hmm, I wonder if it would look bad if I took my crocheting to church….

The Future of Religion
Honestly, I don’t know why I go to these panels, because I just get annoyed. (Though sometimes I feel the same way about church.) According to a show of hands, I was the only audience member who considered themself a monotheist (one of the panelists was also a monotheist). That wasn’t the annoying part; it felt awkward to have identified myself as a minority, but it’s good for all of us to be in the minority sometimes. The things that did annoy me were: (1) the extreme anti-religious attitude of one of the panelists, who was often pretty condescending about how religious people are weak-willed, etc., etc. (an audience member did respectfully call him out on it); and (2) predictions of religion’s future were very western-focused (societies will become less religious as they become more technologically advanced, etc.) with no reference to how religion actually has been changing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Except for an anti-Muslim comment from one of the non-monotheist panelists.

I thought the monotheist on the panel (a Unitarian / United Church of Christ minister) did have some very insightful comments, about the nature of the Trinity and other things, and was constantly responding to negative caricatures of religion from the anti-religious guy by saying things like “That’s not what religion is for me”. And it was interesting to hear about the pagan panelist’s journey of faith. Even my irritation is probably a useful thing. It occurred to me when I was so irritated by the anti-religious guy’s comments about how only weak people need religion, and religion is harmful to society (etc.) that it’s probably also very irritating for people who aren’t Christians, the way Christians will often go around telling them they can’t possibly be happy or understand what it’s like to love someone without knowing Jesus. Not that avoiding offending people should be priority number one. But people are usually less likely to want to listen to anything you have to say if they feel you’re being condescending towards them.

Consistent Magic Systems in Fantasy
This was sort of the same panel as the one I was on at World Fantasy, at least from the panel description, only this one didn’t get derailed into a debate between a pagan and an atheist as to whether magic really exists. Margaret Ronald from my writers group was on this panel. Interestingly, these panelists were much less insistent on magic in novels having to fit into consistent “systems”. One of the panelists said, “When someone says to me, ‘I’m going to write a fantasy novel, I just have to work out the magic system first’, I start to hear the dice rolling.” Which is exactly (exactly!) my issue with what I see as excessive emphasis on magic systems. (I think it was Joshua Palmatier who said this. One of the disadvantages of writing a con report 2 weeks after the con is that I have trouble remembering who said what on which panel.) One of the panelists (David Sklar, I think) even came out pretty strongly against having magic systems, and felt that that makes the magic feel less authentic (others were more for magic systems, though not as strongly as the other authors I was on a panel with at World Fantasy). (I should say that none of the authors were advocating having the magic conveniently do whatever the plot seems to need at any given time, because that feels pretty fake, too.)

Among the Ruins
About how in fantasy novels there are all these ruins from civilizations with better technology, and why does no one in these novels ever seem to wonder overmuch about who these vanished civilizations actually were, except when they’re picking up a jeweled dagger lying in the middle of the street or something. More fantasy stories about archaeologists! Like the religion panel, I thought this one also suffered a bit from assuming that all possible human societies are just like ours in every significant way. I mean, most people in most cultures (real and imagined) are probably too busy working to spend a lot of time trying to understand Those Who Came Before. Look at Rome. The old forums with their temples were buried under centuries of rubble and garbage, and mostly the only attention that got paid to the ruins by the people who lived over them was to scavenge good marble from old buildings. Though I suppose most people in most cultures are also too busy and/or impoverished to become rogue adventurers or set out on a mission to save the world. (Damn you, realism!)

So, lots of good panels; or at least, panels that sounded interesting enough in the program book to lure me there even at the expense of partying/staying-up-late time.

There was some drama about the Barfleet party getting shut down on Saturday night (Barfleet is an organization that exists solely for the purpose of throwing parties at science fiction conventions).  I heard various things from different sources, but as far as I can tell, even though Arisia’s contract with the hotel specifies that the hotel will not put non-convention guests on floors designated as party floors, they had a last-minute cancellation and stuck a non-convention attendee in the room right next to Barfleet, and this person complained to hotel security about all the noise Barfleet partygoers were making at 8:30 p.m., so hotel security went and shut the party down.  Rumor has it that they weren’t very gracious or polite about it, either, and confiscated all the alcohol, citing violation of Massachusetts state law, even though I think Barfleet is pretty careful about that sort of thing:  it was a closed-door party and wasn’t advertised at the con, so I think it qualifies as a private party, which means serving alcohol should have been fine, at least as far as I understand things.  Also, in my experience, Barfleet won’t let anyone into their parties without proof of ID.  Anyway, everything I’m saying about what happened at Arisia w.r.t. the Barfleet party is hearsay and speculation.  But a lot of people were really upset about the incident.  (I’m sure the poor hotel guest stuck in the room next to them was also justifiably upset, but the hotel knew that there were going to be parties on that floor and really shouldn’t have booked them there.  This hotel is generally kind of lame about that sort of thing.  I know of people who’ve been put in rooms on the party floor at Boskone after requesting a quiet room.  Also, some of the staff are really rude and snippy.  Most of them are actually very gracious and helpful, but it’s always easier to remember the mean ones.)

The next convention on my schedule is Boskone, the 3rd weekend in February (Presidents’ Day weekend).  Also here in Boston.  So, if you’re there, I hope to run into you!

I’ve occasionally had friends ask why I don’t just publish my own stories once I’ve written them, instead of looking for magazines to publish them for me.  Self-publishing is easier than ever, whether you want to publish in electronic format only, or produce an attractive, professional-looking paper book.

I have self-published a couple of things.  For a while, I had one of my short stories posted on this website.  And I just self-published my story “Woman Moving to the Country” in Kindle format.  But these were both stories that I first had traditionally published in magazines, where I submitted the story to the editor, and the editor decided to pay me for the right to include that story.  So far, I haven’t self-published any new, never-before-seen stories.  Why not?

It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with doing so, or that I might not do so at some point in the future.  Publishing is changing all the time, and maybe in a few more years it won’t make sense to do anything except self-publish.  But here are some of the reasons why, right now, I’ve chosen to pursue traditional publishing first (i.e., I try to get someone else to publish my stories for me), and only self-publish stories that have already come out.

1.  I’d rather be writing.  It’s a lot of work to publish stories and convince other people to read them.  Writing is a lot of work, too.  But it’s work I enjoy more than designing covers, formatting manuscripts for publication, learning how to use new software to design covers and format manuscripts for publication, marketing, etc.  Why spend my time doing all that instead of writing, or spend my own money hiring people to do it, when some publisher is willing to do it for me free of charge, and maybe even send me a check?

2.  Better distribution.  If I were famous, I might be able to publish my own stories independently and have hundreds or even thousands of people rush to pay me for them, thus earning more money than I would through a traditional publisher.  But I’m not famous.  If I self-publish a story, it’s pretty unlikely that anyone who doesn’t already know me is going to buy it.  If I self-publish a story for free (i.e., post it on my website for anyone to read), it is possible that friends might forward the link to other friends, who might then read it.  However, I suspect that I’m going to get more people to read my stories by having them published in magazines, and some of those people might not even know me.  I’ll probably earn more money, too.

3.  Less chance of embarassing myself.  Some of my stories have been floating around for years now, garnering rejection after rejection.  If no one else wants to publish my stories, shouldn’t I go ahead and publish them myself?  Maybe.  On the other hand, if a particular story’s getting no love from editors, maybe there’s a good reason for that.  Maybe it just isn’t very good, and five years from now I’d regret plastering it all over the internet for everyone to read.  Getting a story published in a magazine signals to potential readers that at least one other person besides the author’s mom* thought the story wasn’t crap.

4.  Joining the conversation.  There are a lot of magazines out there, print or electronic, publishing short fiction.  Some don’t pay much, or at all.  Some aren’t widely read.  But when I’m looking for magazines to submit stories to, I’m also discovering magazines that print other stories I might enjoy.  When my stories are published, I make a point of reading all the other stories in that issue, and I have to think that I’m not the only writer who does this.  I like to read as much as I like to write (perhaps more), and pursuing traditional publication, trying to stay abreast of what’s being published where, gives me the opportunity to discover new favorite authors, and see what they’re up to.

So, those are some of my reasons.  I can’t promise not to change my mind about self-publishing at some point in the future.  For instance, longer stories are harder to place with magazines, and I seem to be writing a lot of long stories lately (if not quite novel-length).  I may decide to publish some of these myself, rather than allow them to languish forever in the files of my desktop.  But for right now, I absolutely prefer traditional publishing.

*  Not even my mom likes all my stories.