Publishing Science Fiction
Daily Science Fiction shut down recently…by which I mean in the last 2 years or so. I understand why - the business model for publishing short form fiction is pretty unforgiving, and the market for science-fiction in particular has cratered over the last decade or so. Still, it’s a shame because they were the first place that paid me cold hard American dollars for something I had written. There’s a shocking bit of alchemy there, taking a thing that’s the product of nothing more than a burning need to get the thing out of my head and into the real, and transforming it into that month’s cell phone bill. This nostalgia only came up because after a decade or so of not producing much of anything, I’ve finally been productive and popped out some short stories. I was looking to hit the submit button and see what might happen, but now I have to start the cycle of looking for a place to beat my ego into shape with rejection letters.
The Market
There’s really 3 markets for short fiction as I understand it - there’s the professional leagues, the big hitters These are your Clarkesworld’s, your Asimovs. They’re funded through actual honest to god subscriptions, are entirely self-sufficent and aren’t going anywhere. And…good luck getting published there. These honestly feel win-more to me; even their “new” authors have a pretty strong history of work. They pay though! Often times above rate. (professional rate is 8 cents a word). This is also where you can get longer (novella sized) pieces published without pushback, or a reduced rate per word They also are more willing accept poetry than other places. This is also your ticket to being a snob at any meetups or conferences you go to (the vast majority of people aren’t, but there’s always one…).
The next category are what I call the independents. These tend to be funded via kickstarters, or grants, or some pool of money the publishers have come into. Redstone Science fiction (RIP) was like that, and so are places like Three Lobed Burning Eye. These tend to pay the professional rate, or something adjacent to it. These also are where you’re most likely to get some human interaction with an editor in your rejection letters - Redstone gave me some excellent advice in a really nice reject slip. They also have the freedom to be extremely niche! Unfortunately, this is the market with the most churn. The revenue stream doesn’t appear, the ad money gets cut in half because of Google changing things, the grant runs out, and the organization goes on hiatus. Still, I love these publishers, and one of the joys of the hunt someone to think my words are worth reading is finding them.
The final group are the fuck you’s. They don’t pay, or pay a flat fee of {insert insultingly low number}. They’re content farms and are relying on people wanting to get their stuff out there in order to exist. In my experience these are also the places that are going to let AI generated stuff slip through the cracks. Not worth the time of day.
The Format
TBD