Monday, May 3: The Scribbler
E-BRIEFS
by James Lincoln Warren
I was out of town this weekend, and since my hotel charged ten bucks a day for internet access—which is half of what I pay every month for my home DSL connection—I decided to let my email ride until I got home Sunday afternoon. Sitting in my mailbox was the following:
Hello James,
My name is Darlene Poier and I’m the publisher of a brand new online magazine called Pages Of Stories. This magazine has been live for just over 2 weeks now and it’s been pretty exciting so far. The magazine comes out on a quarterly basis and will be filled with fiction stories of all genres; we do consider creative non-fiction stories as well. We offer another venue for authors to submit their work and get paid for it. In the time that we’ve been live, we’ve gained people from 6 different countries have signed up for the free issue. I pick up the Ellery Queen magazine and read it when I can. I very much enjoyed your last story “Jungle Music”. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find the Alfred Hitchcock magazine, but I’ll keep looking. I wanted to invite you to take a look at our website and magazine at www.pagesofstories.com. The website will be evolving over time as will the magazine. The intention was to give the reader the same look and feel of reading a paper magazine as reading it online. That technology exists and will be implemented in the coming weeks. Thank you for your time and I look forward to reading more of your stories in Ellery Queen.
Sincerely,
Darlene Poier
Publisher Pages Of Stories
www.pagesofstories.com
Well, hell, there’s nothing I love better than being flattered. I think I’ve mentioned before that I have no pride whatsoever, and Q.E.D.
Anyway, I wrote back to Darlene to ask her the particulars—what rates she pays, what length stories she considers for publication, and since Pages Of Stories is a Canadian website, whether she provides income tax documentation for American authors. (That last was a joke. All right, a really lame joke, but it’s only been two weeks since April 15.)
I’m still awaiting her reply, so I can’t report on what she has to say, but it got me thinking about the whole electronic/internet publishing angle. In the interest of candid disclosure, I have to say that I have always looked upon web-based short story markets with the same jaundiced eye as that with which I look at publishing-on-demand houses. In short, not professional.
The controlling criterion for being professional in terms of markets for fiction is the size of the check. Since I don’t know what Darlene pays, I’m withholding judgment with regard to her site, but there can be no doubt that at least some electronic publishing markets have made the transition from fan-based or vanity projects to genuinely consumer-based professional publications. First, there was Amazon Shorts. (Hint: go to Amazon and look up John M. Floyd.) Then there were electronic editions of print periodicals, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for Kindle and other e-formats.
In spite of my prejudice against web-based short story sites, I am starting to change my opinion, especially given the various formats available to dedicated and handheld devices. It strikes me that this might actually be a development in which the short story can thrive. Typically, such devices are used on the run, away from home, and short fiction is better suited to fill the time that such devices are designed to occupy—like reading the paper on the commuter train. Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the headlight on the locomotive after all.
Darlene certainly has a lock on the artwork. I look forward to it.
Darlene has gotten back to me with answers to the questions I asked her.
At present, Pages Of Stories pays a flat rate of $150 CAD (about US$148) per story, irrespective of length. I do not regard that as a professional rate except for flash fiction. Customarily in print markets, rates for short fiction are calculated according to word count, and are not usually lower than 5¢ per word—which is already very low when you consider that non-fiction markets generally pay up to 50¢ a word. That means that $150 would be the appropriate payment for a 500-word flash, but not for anything longer like a typical 5000-word story. Having said that, I am certain that Darlene’s rates were not selected arbitrarily and I am not criticizing POS for not catering exclusively to professionals, especially as a startup.
The story contract reserves too many rights for my taste, particularly going beyond first electronic and print rights by exclusively reserving same for an entire year, and also by reserving anthology rights without further payment, which is outrageous. I would not sign such a contract myself as it stands. But contracts are negotiable—I recently had a few clauses in my latest contract with Dell removed without penalty.
I should observe that Mystery Writers of America does not concur with my opinion as to what constitutes professional remuneration. Their guidelines require a minimum payment of US$25 per work and cumulative total of US$200 to be eligible for Active Membership. (I should mention that being published in Pages Of Stories will not qualify you for Active Membership in MWA, but not because of the rate. MWA requires that your work be published in the U.S. by an approved publisher. Pages Of Stories is a Canadian website.)
I should also note that $150 CAD is a much better payment than most semi-pro publishers offer, which sometimes run as low as $10, so POS might be an attractive alternative to such markets.
Right now, Darlene is offering free access to the inaugural issue. I haven’t read any of the stories yet, so I can’t comment on editorial quality, but visually it is very attractive. The one thing I didn’t like was not seeing the author’s byline in the table of contents alongside the titles of the stories, which would be a deal-breaker for me, even if the rates were comparable to what I’m used to—after the title, the byline contains the most important words in the work. But the publication is brand new and not in its final state, so things may change.
Thanks, JLW, for the plug — and for the info about Pages of Stories.
By the way, I received an e-mail this morning announcing that Amazon Shorts will soon be available on Kindle.
You raise an interesting question. If I remember right, Harlequin is back in good graces with the MWA. Isn’t Harlequin a Canadian company?
Isn’t Harlequin a Canadian company?
Yes, but they publish in the U.S. as well as in Canada. The first criterion listed for Active Membership in the MWA by-laws is, “You are a citizen or legal resident of the United States, and your work is published or produced in the United States.”
I do not believe that “published in the U.S.” means “printed in the U.S.”, though. Many books which are sold in the U.S. explicitly for the U.S. market are printed out of country. My Oxford Latin Dictionary, for example, was printed in China by a British company, but acquired through the Oxford University Press USA.
As far as e-pubs are concerned, the applicable language is “If your book or short story is available only in an electronic format (e-book, Acrobat Reader, web page, etc.), but can meet certain criteria, you may qualify.” It does not, however, specify what those conditions are.
You can read the entire list of qualifications here.
Hi James,
Thank you for your honest and well written assessment of Pages Of Stories. You are quite right when you indicate that payment isn’t at professional standards. As a startup company with no revenue expected until the second quarter of our magazine cycle, we can’t yet pay the same rates as some of the other magazines. We plan to as time goes on, but what we’d hoped in the meantime is to provide a venue for short story authors to be published and heard.
It is very difficult for an author to be published and there is so much talent out there. For the next issue, so far over half the story submissions are from the UK and we’ve had interest from people in other European countries as well.
As you mentioned as well, the magazine and website are evolving. I’m hoping that by the time the second issue comes out that it will be much closer to what I’d originally planned. I’m currently working with Amazon on a beta project to make the magazine available on the Kindle. I will also be engaging an Apple application developer to create an Apple app so that it is available on iPods, iPads…and whatever else they develop. By the next issue the magazine will employ the page-flipping technology to improve the magazine experience.
In time we do hope to get more professional writers submitting stories, so I hope that you continue to consider this magazine in the future.
Thank you again for your honest assessment and we are working to make it better.
Sincerely,
Darlene Poier
Publisher
Pages Of Stories
http://www.pagesofstories.com
(403) 831-8264
Darlene, you are dead on the money when you point out that there are far too few markets in the 21st century for writers of short fiction, and I applaud your championing the cause. I wish you all the success in the world.
Hi James,
I wanted to let you know that based on feedback by some authors and your honest assessment of the magazine we’ve made a change to the Terms of Submission.
We removed the Anthology Rights section. At this point we don’t even know if we’ll be doing an anthology and if we do, it would be years down the road. We want to concentrate on building the magazine as that’s what the business is. An anthology was just an idea that I’d had, but if and when we do, terms would be discussed with those authors at that time.
As I mentioned in the last comment on your blog, this magazine is brand new and will evolve. We will depend on feedback from authors and our customers and with that assistance, this magazine can be successful. There will be some small technical changes to the magazine by the time the second issue comes out.
I’ve always believed that if a decision doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, then it probably wasn’t a good decision. Based on the feedback that we’ve received, the anthology rights wasn’t a good decision so hopefully we’ve corrected it properly.
Thank you again for the mention of this magazine on your blog. As a result of that we received story submissions from authors we might not have reached.
Sincerely,
Darlene Poier
Publisher
Pages Of Stories
http://www.pageofstories.com
(403) 831-8264