Hello:
Do you pay for accepted works or have you become a paying market? It would be nice to tell readers this in your guides area for submissions. There is really no excuse for being evasive about your guidelines regarding pay. These are basic things that need to be in your guidelines. Why do half you editors out there have to be admonished to put basic stuff in your guides like pay and rights issues? Where are these things at your website? They should be in conspicuous places. You are more concerned with putting fluff instead of terms for writers to access up front.
And if I've asked before, well...i don't memorize guidelines, so it would help to just be communicative to writers and save extra emailing back and forth. Though since so many editors choose not to let the writers know if they pay or not, I'm creating a NO PAY journals in my email account so I don't have to keep asking.
If you don't pay, please don't give me that tired cliche-ridden lecture that small presses don't pay like I've gotten from a number of small press eds...I could give you list that's very long of presses that are small and pay something.
Some pubs. that do pay something don't state it in their guidelines, too.
Also, some eds. who don't state their full guides make me feel like I'm the only writer to ask these questions. Yet any writer who submits work to you or another publication without knowing the pay, rights, and reprint & simultaneous sub. issues, is very naive, indeed, and is not looking out for their interests.
Why is it so hard for some of you editors to be upfront with writers about pay issues?
Thanks, Roy
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
The Joys of Publishing
This is an email that the editors of SpringGun just received- it was clearly mass emailed. I guess donating a significant amount of your time to publish work you believe in is not enough for some people. I wish he could have been at the Boulder Small Press Festival. Finally, who is this guy? :)
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Well, his name was Ray. What if the was the infamous Garbage Pail Kid, "Ronald Ray Gun"?
ReplyDeleteIf this is the case, any fictitious character from a 1980s off beat trading card SHOULD be paid for their work.
It's only fair to consider the rights of the two dimensional who were, for the most part, discarded as stickers.
It takes someone with a foresight driven mind to save a Garbage Pail Kid card, raise said punny two-dimensional child to not only appreciate and participate in the written arts, but to also have that sharp market driven mind (a mind that seems to have disappeared since the 80s), who also shares the confidence of his 80s brethren to axe the tough questions!
"Where's my money for my science fiction propaganda?"
Well where would Elron Hubard be if he never axed that question?
What obviously market driven religion would Issac Hayes and Tom Cruise give their savings to if Elron Hubard never axed that question?
What would have happened if Michael Crichton bowed down to the small press ideology of progressive art?
Where would DNA technology be now?
How would have Warner Bros survived without the franchise rights?
Where would Jeff Goldbloom's career be if he wasn't allowed that small eccentric-yet-handsome-scientist typecast bloom he experienced in the mid nineties?
I applaud Ronald Ray Gun!
Clap Clap Clap.