Rudy Rucker is one of my favorite writers. I have read his books Software and Wetware several times each. I actually read Wetware first, and I still think it is the better novel in spite of being a sequel.
Rudy is an award winning big-name SF writer. Recently, when putting together a collection of short stories, he wanted to include a story that he had not yet published. Economically, it’s best to sell a story before you anthologise it. The zines don’t usually buy reprints. Rather than sell it to the print magazines, which have a lead time of many months if not years, he tried selling it to a few online zines.
I am assuming that he tried the ones that pay SFWA rates. The results were that he was rejected. I don’t feel so bad now. I have over 100 rejections from the same zines. My suspicions about the poor taste of their editors has been confirmed.
Rudy came to the same conclusion that I did. If you want to be read, it may not be a requirement that you publish in a formal webzine. All you need is a URL, some inbound links and a decent position in the search engines. There is no difference, qualitatively, in publishing in an established paying web market or publishing at your own website.
So Rudy started Flurb.com. He is already publishing better stories than you’ll find at the big name, pay markets. It is full of Ruckeresque cyberpunk gnarly weird stuff that Rudy is creating.
So far his google page-rank is zero. Spec-fic bloggers such as William Gibson, John Shirley and Bruce Sterling will soon get him boosted up there. It takes a month sometimes for Google to recalculate their indexes.
I didn’t see a “guidelines” or “Submit” link. Too bad.
Maybe Rudy will give me a reciprocal link to ScienceFictional.com
5 Comments
Hi Keith :-)
I disagree with you about publishing and being read. I think the difference between an author and a writer is an author is one that receives payment for his work. I don’t care if it’s $5 bucks for a story or a million. It’s payment. It’s something I can put on a resume to an agent or an editor. I’m a writer, not yet an author. When I get paid for my work, I’ll be an author.
Jim, you seem to be working on the Great Intergalactic Novel, which will indeed be a tough sell. Even great first novels spend years in the slush. Short stories are another matter.
I think that a clean well written story can get get accepted at any of a dozen $5 venues. Hard science seems a tough sell and military SF may never find a ready market, but cute short Twilight Zone (think O Henry endings) types of stories go pretty quick.
The stories that I can’t sell are dry hard science stories and heavy philosophical stuff. My robot stories get sneered at (I have a 4 robot detective stories and haven’t sold one). Colorful soft science fiction with a female main character usually gets taken first time out (it helps if the heroine is a little overweight and long in the tooth, he said cynically).
My point is that the multitude of $5 venues on the ralan.com “paying markets” page are not really well read. The readers are mostly wanabe writers. I know, I published Astounding Tales for two years. The guidelines page usually got three times the hits as any of the story pages.
The $5 becomes moot when you consider that no one reads them. Concentrate on an older established $5 markets like the Samsdot zines or TOT where actual readers find your story. The only real alternative is to make your own web page of stories. (Get at least 6 rejects from the big pay markets first, starting with F&SF and Analog – no sense throwing a good story away.)
The moment when you become an author is the when your story is read, not when you receive the check.
Here’s the deal. You send me a story about 3-4000 words about BIO-MACHINES (eg. a dna engineered car grown from an egg, an ant redesigned as a weapon (with lasers, yeah, that’s it! Laser eyes!), a plant that grows fruit that are functional cell phones, coral that is engineered to build bridges instead of reefs.)
It must have two or more characters, some dialog and no profanity or sex. Hero must not die at the end of the story. No Nazis! (see /laws.html ) I’ll publish it at sciencefictional and send you $5 via paypal.
I’ve read your blog and some of the stuff you scattered around. I am not afraid of what I’ll get. Sciencefictionl is getting 30-40 readers a day and very few hits on the guidelines page.
Put your word processor where your mouth is, boy!
Damn I wish you hadn’t mentioned about Nazi’s. I’m writing a historical sf novel that has Nazi’s a woman lead named Ringo and a Detective named Rick. There’s a long lost twin sister as the baddie in a setting that is literally out of this world. About 100k.
I spend a lot of time on my writing. I’ve written a story called “Crosshairs”, a few months back but I haven’t sent it out yet. I sent a story called “Lift- off” to Strange-H but they rejected it. About 2000 words. That was more then 6 months ago. I completed the rough draft of this novel but I didn’t like the way it went. I’m rewriting it now.
I seem to recall how you said you had around 100 rejection slips. That’s impressive. Since I began submitting stories off and on since 1994, I must have maybe a dozen rejection slips. So there you go, and still nothing published. I need to work harder.
You make a good point though about the $5 zines. I should have said $5-20, most zines pay in that area. Again it isn’t so much the amount of money and I've never submitted anything yet to the slicks. Analog is as good as place to try as any.
I’ve got a story called “Lift-off” No need to send me any money for it. I don’t have a pay-pall account set up anyway. I went to your science fictional.com last night. I’ve got a Geeklog site as well but haven’t used it yet for anything yet.
Let me dig up the story and I’ll give it the once over. I’ll find your guidelines and submit the story on Sunday. But don’t publish the story because we’re friends, publish the story because you like it. I’m not to proud to say I can write crap and another rejection doesn't bother me either :-)
I have a couple hundred rejection slips…or at least I would if I kept them. When I get a story back, I read the rejection and then usually toss it. If they offer advice, I’ll consider it.
The real secret is, once you’ve read that rejection, put that story in another envelope and send it back out. Start with the big boys and move your way down.
I used to not care where it was published…as long as it was published, but I’ve become a lot more selective over the years. Now, like Keith said, I want to make sure my story is getting read. No matter what, print zines are always going to have more readers that e-zines. A story in an e-zine might get a lot of hits, but a lot of times those are writers who are just trying to get a feel for what the zine publishes. If someone buys the zine, they’re much more inclined to read the stories.
I haven’t managed to crack the major markets yet, but I have had some hand written notes from some major editors…so there is hope.
Now, I should get back to writing instead of wasting my time reading blogs…
Keith:
Most of my stories are around 4000 words. I took a look at “Lift-off “ and its around 4k. I got another didy called “Outpost 27” but there is some sex involved and I think its a bit on the juvenile side. If you want any of my longer 4-5k stories, I’d be happy to send you “Crosshairs” my most recent. No need to pay me. If you like you can always split it up, part 1 for now, part 2 next month. Just a thought. Oh and I think I meant that a professional author is someone that gets paid for their work :-) Not that I've had any success in the small press either.
J Erwine:
I received a rejection slip and Orson Scot Card liked the story and scribbled something like “Too much Dux Machina.” For years I tried to figure out what that meant until a year ago, “Hand of God.” I believe, hehehe. Great tip about the ezines vs. print, I like that. Btw, where can a Canadian (me) without a credit card get one of your books? Can I send you a US money order? Is there an address? I’m at:
[email protected]