Comments on: In the Spirit of the Pulps, and Paying Even Less http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/ I FORGET WHAT EIGHT WAS FOR Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:11:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: John Scalzi http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-194736 Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:00:06 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-194736 Anon:

“there is no harm in giving a few stories to start-up market.”

Sure there is, if that market is actively exploiting the writers, as Black Matrix is. Why the practices of other markets should be used to forgive or rationalize the bad practices of Black Matrix is not apparent to me, nor should new writers (or any other) be made to feel wasting time on ill-paying, shoddy markets is going to be a net benefit. And of course being a “start-up” is no excuse for screwing your writers, and I think any suggestion that it is, is odious. Giving work to people who don’t value it, and being trained to think this is a useful thing to do, is in fact pretty harmful in a career.

“As i stated, the literary journal scene is pretty much a charity operation.”

Bah. First off, Black Matrix isn’t a charity, it’s a for-profit organization, whose business model for profitability assumes paying writers next to nothing. Second, Here and here: 50 markets for science fiction and fantasy that pay three cents a word and up. Three cents a word is a lousy rate but it’s 15 times better than what Black Matrix is paying. Any writer would be better off sending their work to these markets, and if a story gets rejected from 50 different places, perhaps the answer is not publishing it with some jerk offering you a fifth of a cent a word, but tossing it into trunk and trying something else.

]]> By: Anon http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-194733 Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:13:34 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-194733 I’ve enjoyed the discussion and would like to note that I’ve been paid at about that rate for poems and stories in so-called “literary” journals. The difference is that the latter type of publication, usually, offers flat rates. As far as markets for speculative fiction go, there are many more offering less money (ie none at all) than Black Matrix. While I am for fair pay for work, I think there is room for a start-up “pulp” magazine. Let’s see where it’s at in another year or so.
Of course, this publisher will not attract professional writers. But couldn’t it possibly help to form a new community of neophytes? I imagine that most contributors to Black Matrix are signing on a) in hopes of meeting a community; b) just to see their stories in print; c) because someone wants their stories; d) to get in on the ground floor of a potential new market.
While I understand your misgivings and admire the way you are sticking up for young writers, there is no harm in giving a few stories to start-up market. As i stated, the literary journal scene is pretty much a charity operation.
Keep up the good stuff.

]]> By: Joe Iriarte http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181912 Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:03:04 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181912 Heh. Instead of posting here and *asking* you your opinion on semi-pro markets, I could have posted an angry blog calling three different people names and disregarding explicit statements in the entries I was quoting, and been praised for sparking a helpful and productive discussion. :rolleyes:

]]> By: Johne Cook http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181872 Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:24:41 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181872 Not to beat a dead horse, here, but I agree with you. Furthermore, it is not wrong to get paid a pittance for it if you know that going in, and are ok with it because of the love for the genre, or the experience writing in that genre. This is especially true if it is one you are just starting out in – some of my favorite authors write outside the genre in which they are best known, and the 4theluvofit genre zines are a great place to learn the ropes specific to that genre.

]]> By: Maria http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181845 Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:18:57 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181845 Johne,

Nor is it wrong to get paid for it.

:>)

Maria

]]> By: Johne Cook http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181844 Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:12:39 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181844 Y’all are forgetting the niche ‘zines which don’t pay well, but which do provide a quality product for the fans of that niche. It’s not evil, wrong, or counterproductive to love a genre enough to write in that genre for the love of it.

]]> By: stevie http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181798 Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:10:41 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181798 TimWB @ 152

I think the problem is that the writers are unlikely to get away with their token payment firmly in their wallets; the magazines need people to buy them, but BM has no apparent means of distributing them so that people can buy them.

Of course, they do have a lot of writers who are really thrilled to see their work in print, and those really thrilled authors may well feel that they and their proud parents, relatives and friends need more than just the one free contributor’s copy to do justice to their achievement…

]]> By: TimWB http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181761 Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:24:48 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181761 I think the question more to the point is either:
“If a $0.005 market will publish it, maybe a larger market will too, so why shortchange yourself? (which you addressed)”
or
“If you suck, why not get paid a little for sucking, instead of nothing at all?”

]]> By: Wolfgang G Wettach http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181253 Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:53:50 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181253 Thanks for the posting. When back in the days I had a little more-or-less-vanity press I was proud of charging only 1/7 of what competitors took – and paying out royalties if the anthologies sold well. And of course financing the single title authors with the vanity anthologies.

This Black Matrix scheme seems to be an offer which only works for those who desperately want to be a published author. In my country having sold texts is a prerequisite to entering a writers guild in the trade unions or to get under the umbrella of the government-sponsored social security for artists, so for some Germans this might even be worth considering.
For everyone else, though, I agree: Paying nothing and not pretending authors were paid would be fair and square in comparison.

EBOOKS:

As for the ebook-pricing discussed by others here: As a consumer, collector of books and as a reader I’m willing to pay for ebooks which fill ~all~ of the following three criteria:

* Less than the current cheapest price for the dead-tree versions on amazon. If printed prices drop because of the availability of a paperback edition or because the book is going out of print and the rest of the printed stock is sold cheap to wholesalers, please drop ebook prices accordingly.

* Less than 10$ or over here 10€ – more isn’t necessary to pay the author’s (and editor’s and/or translator’s) share and the overhead, if you don’t print. If that leaves you with some money, please pay a decent proofreader, thanks.

* Free of any DRM nonsense. No limit to the number of my own devices I can transfer it to, no limit to resale rights if I delete my own copy.

Give me that and I’ll buy it in any given ebook-reader format, epub, .lit, mobypocket or -preferably- PDF At home I’ll read it on my PC, on the road on my Blackberry smartphone or -probably- my Palm Tungsten.

]]> By: D http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/01/in-the-spirit-of-the-pulps-and-paying-even-less/#comment-181242 Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:07:18 +0000 http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9209#comment-181242 And I genuinely think that something positive can come out of all this because it opens up a discourse. Just take a look at the links below for a similar example:

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=733
and then the follow up
http://www.briankeene.com/?p=746

Granted, from the onset Shock Totem paid better rates than 1/5 of a cent per word, but you get the idea.

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