Pens and Swords » Market Report

Don’t be tossed to and fro by every editor

Kameron — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:16:07 +0000

I received another personalized rejection from the editor of Beneath Ceaseless Skies for “Relvan’s Rescue” (return time: ~5 weeks). That’s 3-in-a-row, if you’re keeping count, though, from what I hear on the Internets, Andrew makes an effort to give feedback on submissions.

It’s encouraging–on one hand–not to be receiving form rejections. On the other hand, personalized rejections can serve as bait that lures unsuspecting writers into the nasty trap of perpetual revisions. Here are some rules I follow to help determine whether comments from an editor warrant a revision.

Follow the trends
Every editor has their own tastes and preferences. Revising your story based on one person’s input won’t necessarily make it more palatable to the next, and unless the original editor invited back a revision, the market you heard back from should now be considered closed for that story.

If more than one person is seeing the same thing, however, it’s probably something that should be addressed by a revision. The two comments I received about the pace at the beginning of “Relvan’s Rescue” raised a red flag with me, and resulted in some tweaking.

Reassess the market
Though I usually do my homework beforehand, sometimes I submit to a market I consider a longshot. If I happen to get a personalized rejection back, I view the editor’s comments in light of what they tend to publish. Sometimes, you don’t learn about obstacles to a particular market until you get rejected, like I did when Heroic Fantasy Quarterly told me that pirate-related stories were a hard sell.

Stay true to the story
“Relvan’s Rescue” is an adventure fantasy in the sword-and-sorcery tradition, about a mercenary captain who escorts a client across pirate-invested waters, is betrayed, and must rescue them from the clutches of an evil villain. Sure, there are undertones of lost love rekindled and the threat of a larger war looming in the background, but those themes are not the focus of the story. They may be more interesting to an editor than the main plot, however.

I’m not interested in radically altering the story to accommodate that interest. I want to sell the story I wrote. If someone wants to commission me to write the latter, I’m all for that, too.

It’s important as a writer to be open to criticism, but it is just as important to apply a filter to that criticism if you don’t want to spend more time revising than submitting. The above rules are my filters. Share yours in the comments.
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Too much talking makes Relvan a hard sell

Kameron — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:00:43 +0000

I heard back from the editors at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly over the weekend. Return time was ~2 months. They felt the beginning was “too talky” for their tastes. That’s the second comment about the start of the story, so I took a hard look and did end up cutting a couple lines of dialogue that really added nothing to the plot. I’m not sure it makes that much of an impact overall, like going from “too talky” to “kinda talky,” but it’s all I’m willing to prune at this point.

The editors also admitted that “pirate-related” stories are a hard sell for them. I can’t do much about that, but it is good to know for future submissions, which they invited me to send, and a nice nugget of information to pass on to folks considering this market.

Relvan’s next stop is Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I recently discovered this e-zine via an article I read somewhere online. They publish new issues roughly every two weeks, with two short fiction pieces per issue. You can download issues as PDFs or PRC ebooks if you don’t like reading from their website.

Unlike many similar markets, BCS pays professional rates. It appears their main source of income is donations (their parent company is a non-profit), though they do purchase an option to buy anthology rights, leading one to believe they have plans to sell collections at some point. Until then, the donation model appears to be working for them. They’ve been producing issues since October 2008 without a break in publication.

Their submission guidelines are pretty standard. I really appreciate the acceptance of manuscripts as attachments and simultaneous submissions. You’d think the former would be standard practice in today’s markets (it’s not), and the latter is a rarity. While return time is 5-8 weeks, BCS offers another unique feature in the form of posts to their forums that announce when they have replied to all submissions emailed by a certain date. If you’re submission falls into that slush pile, but you did not receive a reply, they welcome you to query them.Similar Posts:

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly publishes first issue

Kameron — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:00:25 +0000

I think I’ve found the next market I will submit “Relvan’s Rescue” to, barring acceptance from Black Gate. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, an ezine that began accepting submissions back in February of this year, published their first issue at the end of June. (I just heard about it last week via Grasping for the Wind.) HFQ publishes three pieces of short fiction and two poems per issue. I read all three stories and found them to be fun, entertaining examples of heroic, sword-and-sorcery fantasy (even if I could see the twist in “The Black Flowers of Sevan” coming from a mile away).

Their submission guidelines contain a couple items I thought worthy of mention. The first is their rate of pay. It’s not professional rates, but $100 is pretty significant for an ezine. If you view short fiction as a marketing tool, it’s icing on the cake. With no ads on the site or announced plans to publish anthologies, I’m intrigued by how they are funded.

The second item is their method of submission. They require a query/excerpt (first 10 pages) on short story submissions. This is unusual, from my experience, for pieces of 10,000 words or less. A synopsis, sure, but not an excerpt that could possibly be the entire story.

I know that the publishing industry is a late adopter of technology in general. Some markets won’t accept attachments, if they even take emails at all. HFQ appears to run on blogging software (hey, guys, if you’re reading this, you need to up the visibility on your RSS feed link; I can’t find it anywhere). I know WordPress allows the creation of “Author” accounts, which allow users to submit posts–stories, in this case–that need to be reviewed before publication. It’s a model I’ve considered when investigating opportunities for starting my own ezine. There are other online markets that use forums or online forms that allow the input of the story directly into a database from where it can be easily published once approved. These tools are one of the benefits of being an ezine; I’m not sure why any online publisher wouldn’t take advantage of them.

That small critique aside, I found HFQ to be a solid entry into the pulp fantasy market. Their choices of content reveal a solid editorial staff, and the site and rates are of semi-professional quality. I look forward to reading their fantasy fiction offerings, and submitting to them, in the future.Similar Posts:

My review policy

Kameron — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:00:37 +0000

I’m a voracious reader. If you watch my “Currently Reading” widget, or friend me on Goodreads, you’ll note that I cycle through a book about once a week or so. I’d probably finish quicker, but I limit myself to reading during my weekday commutes (I take a 15-20 minute ride on the light rail). Given my penchant for devouring fantasy fiction, you would think that reviews would be a regular staple of this blog.

They are not, however. The reviews I have written are restricted to genre classics. I’ve chosen to refrain from reviewing the work of my contemporaries. That wasn’t always the case, and I stirred up some trouble for myself in the process. I’m not to keen on repeating that experience.

It would also be likely that any criticism I might level as part of a review would be seen as sour grapes. I had a single novel published as a result of a fairly high profile contest, and have since fallen back into obscurity. Meanwhile, a handful of my fellow entrants are getting published for the second or third time. I would be terribly embarrassed if someone interpreted a review I wrote as the tantrum of a spurned writer.

That doesn’t mean I won’t say anything when a colleague gets published. I’m more than happy to announce new releases. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s been a while since I did so, and a recent comment asking about 4E Forgotten Realms novels reminded me that the self-styled “Young Dragons” have had quite a few books published that fall under that heading. So, if you’re looking for some post-Spellplague action in Faerun, try some of these titles:

I also want to take a moment to mention a site by WotC author Ed Bolme called christianbookvideos.com, where they host promotional book trailers. Book trailers have been around for a few years, but they seem to be coming into more use as a marketing tool.

Well, that’s enough plugging for today. Time to get back to my reading (and writing).Similar Posts:

Get your ham-sized fist here

Kameron — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:00:25 +0000

Awards serve two primary purposes: to stroke the ego of the award-winner and attempt to raise awareness. There are three major awards for fantasy fiction: the World Fantasy award, the Hugo, and the Nebula.

Both the Hugo and the Nebula do not differentiate between science fiction and fantasy in their categories. Nominations and voting are restricted to the members of the WorldCon and the SFWA, respectively. The World Fantasy award is strictly for fantasy works, and candidates are nominated and voted on by a panel of judges (nominees for the two “fan” categories are selected by members of the World Fantasy Convention).

All this is to say that while I think these awards have the ego-stroke covered, I question their ability to raise awareness. The methodology of the nominating and voting makes them insular by nature. I remember as a young reader seeing “Winner of the Nebula” or “Winner of the Hugo” on the cover of some of the books I checked out of the library, but I had no idea what that meant.

I’m not even sure if I’ve seen the tagline on anything I’ve read recently. More often, I see “New York Times bestseller.” That speaks volumes about the relevance of the awards, in my opinion.

Fantasy fiction is in dire need of some new awards dedicated solely to the genre. I would love to see awards broken into subgenre categories as well as formats. This strategy would go a long way to raising awareness that all fantasy is not the same.

The recently announced Ham-Sized Fist award is a step in that direction. The award focuses on heroic fantasy and sword-and-sorcery short stories or novellas (the qualifier is the publishing venue as opposed to a word count, though the stories must be at least 500 words long).

Awards like the Ham-Sized Fist that are dedicated to specific genres are better suited to raising awareness because they are not swayed by fickle editorial trends. You won’t see the categories dominated by the new hotness of the moment. You will see the best of the genre displayed prominently for all to see, and more visibility generally equates to a higher standard in the market.

Open nominations will also prevent “flavor of the month” syndrome. That’s right, the general public can nominate a story for the award. I’m not aware of any other fantasy literature award that does that.

The Ham-Sized Fist award has another weapon in its arsenal of genre promotion. It offers a monetary award to both the author and the publisher. Money is a wonderful motivator for businesses worried about their bottom line, and small press publishers, who comprise a significant share of the market, are driven hard by that line. You won’t find a much better way to promote the spread of a genre than paying someone to publish it. The HSF offers a sum to both parties equal to what most professional markets pay for a 6,000 word manuscript, and they are seeking additional sponsorship in order to bump that number up.

I applaud the sponsors of the Ham-Sized Fist award and look forward to seeing what gets nominated, and of course the ultimate winners. What is your opinion of literary awards? Do they influence what you read? What would you like to see from an award in terms of nominations, judging, and promotion?Similar Posts:

Writing fantasy fiction in a recession

Kameron — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:00:21 +0000

Is an economic recession a bad time to enter the world of writing? Alex Moore asked this great question in her comment to my reaction to a shrinking market. Intrigued, I decided to do a little research.

Are books recession-proof?
Conventional wisdom suggests that the entertainment-value-to-cost ratio of a book makes it an attractive buy during tough economic times. Families tend to stay home instead of going out, so their purchases shift to DVDs, books and games. Fiction books also provide an escape from the emotional turbulence of a recession.

Bookstore sales figures for the early part of 2008 revealed a 4-5% increase in sales, and the Spring Book Show in Atlanta noted an increase in orders from booksellers. Diamond Books, a distributor of comic books and graphic novels, moved their entire stock. An interesting detail from the sales figures was the drop in hardcover sales corresponded to an almost equal rise in the sales of paperbacks.

I noted several articles on the rise of e-books while searching for 2008 sales figures. Random House reported a 400% growth in their e-book sales, while audiobooks and e-books gained 17% and 21%, respectively, marketwide.

If these numbers aren’t encouraging enough for those wondering if this is a bad time to enter the world of writing, it’s also important to consider the publishing timeline. It can take 6 months to a year for the final draft of a manuscript to go from the editor’s desk to the bookshelf. Many experts are predicting 2-4 years of our current economic conditions. If you’re just getting started on the first draft of a 100k-word epic fantasy fiction novel, give yourself at least a year to get to the final draft. That puts the arrival of your debut within the range of when things are expected to turn around.

Are shrinking markets a sign that fantasy fiction isn’t popular?
Just because book sales in general don’t seem too affected by the recession, doesn’t mean that people are buying more fantasy fiction. What little I did find on sales figures didn’t give any sort of breakdown by genre, unfortunately. There are other indicators I could look to, however.

Closing markets, like Realms of Fantasy, might imply that fantasy fiction isn’t a viable genre. There are other possible explanations, though: a poor business model or a lack of interest in the short story format. The former, in particular, is key to me. The rise of online markets suggests that print magazines will need to adapt to this new medium if they wish to survive.

Another indicator that struck a chord with me is disappearing shelf space at bookstores. I walked in to my local chain store the other day and noticed that the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section had ceded an entire row to the neighboring genre. My first reaction was panic, followed by outrage. When I finally cooled down a few seconds later and gave it some thought, the reduction didn’t necessarily correlate to a decrease in the popularity of fantasy fiction.

First, I learned from my experience with arranging the signing for Maiden of Pain that even chain stores localize their inventories based on regional consumer tastes. It’s entirely possible for that while the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section downtown is shrinking, the same genre section is flourishing in south Portland.

The second factor that mitigates this indicator is online retailers. I’m going to make a broad, sweeping generalization: geeks comprise a large portion of science fiction and fantasy fandom, and geeks like technology. I wouldn’t be surprised if geeks buy more books online than at a brick-and-mortar. I know my spending habits are fairly evenly distributed between the two.

I’m also aware of small press publishers who sell direct via the Internet. Publishing giants who wish to break the industry-killing stranglehold booksellers have would be wise to look into this business model, as well, but that’s a whole other rant. Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla of online booksellers, with B&N and Powell’s having significant Internet sales to boost their physical retail locations. You must take these into consideration before ruling out fantasy fiction just because of shrinking floor space.

Who cares, just write
Whether the economy is good or bad, or whether the genre is popular or not shouldn’t matter. They aren’t factors in why I write fantasy fiction. If you love to write, they shouldn’t be factors in your decision, either.

I’m interested in your responses to Alex’s question. Is this a bad time to enter the world of fantasy fiction writing? Or could it be an opportunity waiting to be noticed?Similar Posts:

Reaction to a shrinking market

Kameron — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:00:18 +0000

The news that Realms of Fantasy will cease publication with their April 2009 issue has caused me to rethink the submission strategy I employed for my fantasy fiction short stories. The professional market is rapidly shrinking. “Professional” is defined as any market that pays a minimum of $.05/word (per the current membership requirements of the SFWA).

There aren’t many print publications that qualify. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is the only one that comes to mind, and they aren’t exclusively fantasy fiction. Black Gate has been closed to submissions for a while, and most professional anthologies are by invite only.

There are some e-zines that pay professional rates, like Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Strange Horizons and Fantasy Magazine. The latter isn’t what I consider fantasy fiction, but rather literary fiction with fantasy aspirations.

While print markets like Realms of Fantasy are slowly disappearing, the Web has birthed an explosion of online markets. A Google search for “fantasy webzine” returns over 200,000 results. Most of these offer little or no compensation, so I have avoided submitting to them.

Not any more.

The reason for this is a fundamental shift in my writing goals. I no longer view short stories as a means of income, but as a marketing tool. (Yes, I am one of those writers who believes we have a responsibility to promote ourselves.) I’m not interested in a SFWA membership, and my current publishing credits would qualify me if I was.

I am interested in increasing my footprint and name recognition. Any financial compensation on top of that is just bonus.

What markets do you submit to? Are pay rates a criteria? Do you read/subscribe to any of the publications I mentioned? How often do you read fantasy fiction short stories?Similar Posts:

Warbreed for Idol 2008

Kameron — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:23:41 +0000

Warbreed is a fantasy comic book project created by Ben Jones and my friend and fellow Young Dragon, J. L. Collins. They’ve entered Warbreed in Dime Store Productions’ Small Press Idol 2008. The entry made it past Round 1 and is now battling it out in Round 2. You can help Warbreed reach round 3 by casting your vote now. Reply with a “Yes” to the Round 2: Warbreed thread every day between now and May 4th.Similar Posts:

Relvan’s retirement

Kameron — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:00:20 +0000

Got a form letter rejection from Realms of Fantasy yesterday for “Relvan’s Rescue.” Return time: 41 days. I’m going to retire this one for now. I like the story, but I don’t have the time or desire to dig around and discover what it needs.

J.L. Collins is collaborating on a fantasy comic book that has passed the first round of an Idol-like contest. Round two will allow public voting, so check out his entry and give him your support.

It appears that my anti-spam plugin, which I recently updated, may be preventing legitimate commenters from posting, even if they have JavaScript and Cookies enabled on their browsers. I’ll revert to the previous version when I get home, but double check your browser settings and confirm you have enabled JavaScript and Cookies.

Update
Both the Wavatars and the WP-SpamFree plugins had updates. I’ve installed those. Wavatars is working again. Shoot me an email if you have JavaScript and Cookies enabled on your browser, but still can’t post a comment.

Further Update
Had to roll back WP-SpamFree all the way to 1.3.1 (was 1.5.x) to stop error message. Comments now appear to be working correctly again.Similar Posts:

Give your writing a lift

Kameron — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:34:16 +0000

Bob Younce of The DMs Blog recently referred me to Helium, an online writing community with some interesting features. At first glance, it looks like a new-fangled, community-created knowledge base. Members write articles that are grouped under fairly general categories. The twist is that there’s a chance you’ll get paid for what you write.

Helium promises to pay writers a percentage of their ad revenues based on the page views an article generates. Members rate submitted articles, even flagging poorly written or off-topic entries for removal. The highest rated articles move to the top, thus having greater potential for earnings. Revenue is also determined by subject. Writing a bunch of articles for topics that don’t have wide appeal means less page views. Of course, you can generate interest by linking to your own stories from the outside.

Of greater interest to me was Helium’s marketplace. The marketplace is where publishers post “want ads” for topics they need articles for. Writers submit their articles and the publisher picks which one they want. Word counts vary from 350 to over 1000 with payments from less than $10 to over $100. Most of the requests are for popular topics like autos or personal finance.

I like the idea of a central clearing house for freelance gigs. I submitted three articles about independent game development within the first 24 hours after I signed up. I don’t see myself making a career out of online writing, but I’ll write something up every now and again when I see a topic that interests me.