{"id":377,"date":"2013-05-03T17:01:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T21:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kristinjanz.com\/?p=377"},"modified":"2013-05-03T17:01:44","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T21:01:44","slug":"when-to-self-publish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/?p=377","title":{"rendered":"When to Self-Publish"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00c2\u00a0 have to disagree with some of author Dean Wesley Smith’s<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0conclusions about short fiction publishing, in his article “When to Mail Short Fiction To Traditional Publishers”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, he argues that there are only 4 or 5 science fiction magazines worth submitting to and only\u00c2\u00a02 or 3 for fantasy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0If you’ve submitted a story to those\u00c2\u00a0top 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.<\/p>\n

He does offer the caveats that he’s only offering his opinion,\u00c2\u00a0that every writer has to decide for himself or herself which magazines are worth submitting to,\u00c2\u00a0that there are no right or wrong answers.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m surprised that the only science fiction magazines he mentions by name in the article (Asimov’s Science Fiction <\/em>and\u00c2\u00a0Analog<\/em>) are both print magazines.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially since some of the\u00c2\u00a0highest-paying and most prestigious\u00c2\u00a0magazines these days are online.<\/p>\n

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of magazines that publish fantasy and science fiction and pay at least 5 cents per word.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not distinguishing between print and online magazines in the list, because I submit my stories to both kinds.\u00c2\u00a0 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):<\/p>\n

Analog Science Fiction and Fact<\/em> (SF)
\nArc<\/em> (SF)
\nAsimov’s Science Fiction<\/em> (SF)
\nBeneath Ceaseless Skies<\/em> (F)
\nBuzzy Mag<\/em> (F, SF)
\nClarkesworld Magazine<\/em> (F, SF)
\nDaily Science Fiction<\/em> (F, SF)
\nThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction<\/em> (F, SF)
\nOrson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show<\/em> (F, SF)
\nLORE<\/em> (F, SF)
\nShimmer<\/em> (F)
\nTor.com<\/em> (F, SF)
\nWaylines Magazine<\/em> (F, SF)<\/p>\n

This is a deliberately conservative list.\u00c2\u00a0 I left off magazines that\u00c2\u00a0are often\u00c2\u00a0closed to unsolicited submissions\u00c2\u00a0or that only accept a limited number of submissions each day, as these practices could be seen as\u00c2\u00a0hindrances to authors who want to submit stories there.\u00c2\u00a0 I also omitted publications that have themes for each issue or give preferential treatment to certain nationalities.\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise I could have added AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review<\/em>, Apex Magazine<\/em>, ChiZine<\/em>, COSMOS<\/em>, Crossed Genres Magazine<\/em>, Crowded Magazine<\/em>, Lightspeed<\/em>, Nightmare Magazine<\/em>, Strange Horizons<\/em>, and others.<\/p>\n

I still ended up with 11 excellent places to send science fiction and 10 for fantasy.\u00c2\u00a0 If I restrict the list even more to those considered “professional” by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, I get 7 for\u00c2\u00a0science fiction\u00c2\u00a0and 6 for fantasy.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 (Of course, “in the mail” is an outdated term; of the magazines on my list, only Fantasy & Science Fiction<\/em> still requires paper submissions sent through the mail.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone else prefers submissions sent electronically.)<\/p>\n

The part about taking years is absolutely true.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve had all my short stories traditionally published in magazines before self-publishing them, and it’s taken between\u00c2\u00a01.5\u00c2\u00a0and 7 years from first submission to publication.\u00c2\u00a0 Losing money from potential sales?\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes true.\u00c2\u00a0 Smith estimates that you can make $12.50 a month self-publishing a short story.\u00c2\u00a0 Many authors can and do.\u00c2\u00a0 Many others do not.<\/p>\n

I’ve averaged $21 a month from sales of “The Shoemaker’s Daughter”<\/a>, 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<\/em><\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 My average monthly profits for each of the other 6 stories I’ve self-published range from 13 to 24 cents.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The break-even point for a $10 sale, the lowest\u00c2\u00a0payment I’ve ever received from a magazine (for “The Shoemaker’s Daughter”, interestingly enough), would be somewhere between\u00c2\u00a03.5 and\u00c2\u00a06.5 years (“The Shoemaker’s Daughter”\u00c2\u00a0took 3 years).\u00c2\u00a0 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?\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe.\u00c2\u00a0 But at my current level of unknown-ness, I think that getting published in even the most obscure magazines gives me\u00c2\u00a0a better chance of being discovered by a new reader who decides to look for more of my stories\u00c2\u00a0than self-publishing does.<\/p>\n

Because traditionally publishing a story in a magazine doesn’t rule out self-publishing later.\u00c2\u00a0 When you sell a story, the magazine doesn’t demand exclusive rights to it forever.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 You just can’t do it the other way around, usually, because most magazines don’t pay much, if anything, for previously published stories.\u00c2\u00a0 And that includes self-published.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 But I also think it’s unwise, if you’re a new author, to assume that you’ll be making that much.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you write short fiction, new magazines are starting up all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t rule them out just because they didn’t exist\u00c2\u00a015 years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Self-publishing as we know it today didn’t exist 15 years ago, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00c2\u00a0 have to disagree with some of author Dean Wesley Smith’s\u00c2\u00a0conclusions 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,51,7],"tags":[252,307],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","category-short-fiction-2","category-writing","tag-dean-wesley-smith","tag-self-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}