Anyone with magazine publishing experience?

[Wyrm Publishing]

The reputation of the publication and the people involved with it is fairly important. As has been pointed out, if you are looking to get into the SFWA, they have some pretty rigid guidelines for the magazines they'll consider acceptable for membership. The magazine has to qualify before you can.

That said, I know several respected zines that don't qualify. Electric Velocipede and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet are two that jump to mind. They are run by respected professionals and have proven themselves with years of experience and many printed issues. Very good stuff and they are respected by professional writers.

I publish Clarkesworld Magazine. It's an online magazine that publishes two stories each month. My background is in bookselling and technology. I have two editors. One is writer and the other a publisher. They bring a lot of experience to the publication and it is their strengths that have made it work. A good editor makes a world of difference. We also pay 10 cents a word, which is above average and helps put us higher on some peoples lists of places to submit to first. That said, one of the slots each month is solicited and the other is open submissions.

Our model is expensive. 8000 words of fiction per month for $800, plus other expenses. Our initial financial model was to draw traffic to my bookstore, donations, signed limited edition chapbooks of each issue, and an annual anthology. The bookstore closed, so now it's sending traffic to my publishing company. The first anthology comes out this October at the World Fantasy Convention.

Other higher paying online publications like Baen's Universe and Orson Scott Card's Intergalatic Medicine Show employ other financial models to pay their authors and artists. There is no set right way to do it. You do what you can for your staff and contributors and hope it works. Just be smart. Don't count on a single revenue stream or the generosity of others. Remember what happened with SciFiction. Great editor, award-winning stories, and the backing of the SciFi channel. When SciFi stopped paying, we lost one of best online magazines out there.

Good luck!

-Neil

 

[lin robinson]

Note the use of parentheses on "registered", please Birol. I don't know much about English law but understand it's similar to US law in that copyright does not need to be formally engaged. You own rights to your work upon creating them. However, you might end up need to prove it. In which case the inclusion somewhere online, with the attendant date available is pretty good proof.

I don't see any disagreement in your other comment. Naturally some clips carry more weight than others. I continue to maintain that having links to work is better than not having any and that if they are well presented, it helps.
It's funny that I've been characterized as an editor-hater here, because I tend to feel that most editors would look at such a clip and judge it for it's own worth and if they are insecure enough to require "legitimatization" from colleagues, they would tend to see an attractive, professional presentation of a piece as an indication that appealled to somebody who had some notion of what they were doing.

Interesting post, Wyrm. As I've said my experience was in print mags, and for all that the costs of online are attractive low, their ability to charge seems also a very tough game to win. I admire anybody who can make a publication pay out.

 

[Wyrm Publishing]

Interesting post, Wyrm. As I've said my experience was in print mags, and for all that the costs of online are attractive low, their ability to charge seems also a very tough game to win. I admire anybody who can make a publication pay out.

Subscriptions are a tough nut to crack. We decided not to go that route and came up with a few alternatives instead. I feel that the future of magazines is online and it requires a different way of thinking than the traditional magazines we all think of initially. In my mind, subscriptions are part of the old way of thinking.

 

[lin robinson]

Absolutely. Just like selling copies of papers got blown out the window by free weeklies in the seventies (in the States, as all of my comments).

Actually, though when I said "charge" I was thinking "advertising" rather than subscription. Most new mags in the US fail from inability to collect for advertising. (Note I said "collect" not "sell") And it's my impression from the outside (and my experience in community websites) that ads are a fickle fish to fry online as well. Even with "pay per click" and such things offering advertisers the most qualified ads in history. (Or maybe because of that?

One thing I think might transfer from print to web is my observation that the best, or at least easiest, way to make it with a mag is to have sponsorship or be an organ of some larger money-making entity. The largest category of mags in the states is car touring magazines, because they are all provided "free" as part of membership to regional American Automobile Associations. I worked for a big chain a friend started up on a dime: mags about university sports programs provided to season ticket holders, alumni assoc members, etc. He STARTED each publication with at least 20,000 paid subscribers to the first issue.

You mention a TV channel's sponsorship of an online site, and what happened when it evaporated. Bummer.

But I think it points a direction to startups: find a sugar-daddy. It can be done.

And at the top end of the creative spectrum, bend one's brains to what Wyrm is talking about: creating new models to fit new scenarios. These things can be done, and the people who do them become the next tier of heroes that everyone so admires and resents.

 

[Birol]

Note the use of parentheses on "registered", please Birol. I don't know much about English law but understand it's similar to US law in that copyright does not need to be formally engaged. You own rights to your work upon creating them. However, you might end up need to prove it. In which case the inclusion somewhere online, with the attendant date available is pretty good proof.

Lin, you said that by being published, it was registered for copyright protection. Whether you used quotes or not to indicate some sly alternative meaning, that is what you said. Submitting something and being paid for it is not proof that you wrote it and it is not the same as registering something for copyright. Registering copyright is a specific legal process with specific benefits and ramifications.

 

[lin robinson]

Please don't use words like "sly" because you fail to take my meaning, okay? I think most people know what I mean, and certainly do after I spelled it out for you. If you don't understand, I'm sorry. But can't really help you any further.

 

[Wyrm Publishing]

Registering copyright is a specific legal process with specific benefits and ramifications.

Yes, that's true, but US copyright law doesn't require registration to be granted the copyright. You gain some extra benefits by formal registration, but the majority of your rights are covered without it.

Registering the copyright doesn't necessarily mean you were the original author. It just means you had a copy on such and such a date. If someone has a copy that predates that, say published in a magazine or sold as a part of a product, that registered copyright is invalid. (I've seen this happen.) Unlike Patents, there is not an investigative process in registering.

Could be different outside the US. Always best to check locally to see if there are any extra concerns to be had.

-Neil

 

[Birol]

Yes, that's true, but US copyright law doesn't require registration to be granted the copyright. You gain some extra benefits by formal registration, but the majority of your rights are covered without it.

Right. Most of the benefits are in the form of what restitution you can claim for violated copyright. Personally, I would never register my own copyright. No reason for it, but I felt Lin was misleading any newer writers reading about how to register a copyright and wanted to clarify that there is a formal process and that being published does not substitute for it. Also, if a publication register its copyright for an issue, that only covers the publication as a whole, not individual pieces published in it.

 

[lin robinson]

One more note on this: as has been said, copyright is owned upon creation automatically, proving it is another matter, and there are formal ways to register. A very common one, especially with screenplays, is the Writer's Guild of America electronic registration. Costs about $20 USD Writers Guild of America, West

The Big Enchilada is the US copyright office itself at http://www.copyright.gov/register/
A peculiarity of this which most writers are not unfortunate enough to find out is that registration there, which costs more, is time-consuming, and a burro-cratic pain in the butt, is the pretty much required to bring a lawsuit.

Does this mean that that you should register everything just in case. Not really. If your are infringed you can register when you bring suit. (Often just filing...or even a letter from a lawyer... will bring a settlement without the eventuality of court)
When you go to court you really need to prove two things: that you created the piece before these scumbags got their hands on it, and that they have not contract granting them use. The latter ball is in their court, of course, but if you didn't go through the registration you need to show prior claim. THe old "send yourself a registered letter" gambit is often cited. But having the thing listed on WGA, or published elsewhere is pretty hard to get around.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Lin, you said that by being published, it was registered for copyright protection. Whether you used quotes or not to indicate some sly alternative meaning, that is what you said. Submitting something and being paid for it is not proof that you wrote it and it is not the same as registering something for copyright. Registering copyright is a specific legal process with specific benefits and ramifications.

Indeed, publication isn't proof that you wrote it - but in the UK at least copyright protection is automatically confered and I believe the US now follows suits after you used to have to file at the Library of Congress (I think it was).

So I think Lin's point is that if you submit to a free publication, you've effectively used up your electronic publishing rights - which could make it very hard indeed to have the piece accepted for a paying publication.

I think the confusion is one of copyight vs distributing rights.

2c.

 

[lin robinson]

Indeed, publication isn't proof that you wrote it

Hmmmm, I hadn't considered that. Like you could steal something, then publish it under your name. Yeah, you could. But you could register the copyright for it just as easily.

What it establishes it not "did he really write this" as a prior publication under your name. If unchallenged, that holds a lot of weight. In the event that somebody infringes your copyright, you would have that to present. What would they have?

I can't think, offhand, of any way you could protect your rights to something somebody stole from you and published under their name, say...snuck into your house and grabbed it before anybody else saw it.

Interestingly, I think, an online publication probably stands up better as proof of prior use than print pubs. There are generally some electronic trails involved in the former, perhaps leading to you ISP or mail account. With the latter all you have is an envelope that somebody mailed somewhere.

I upload things to a storage folder on a website. This establishes a date when they were uploaded and connects them to my account, which is linked to my bank account, credit card, all that good stuff. Also kind of nice if my hard drive goes blooey.

 

[FionaW]

The 'publication isn't proof that you wrote it' is a bit spurious as an argument. so much is published in so many magazines, big and small, that unless a piece has been lifted from one of the 5-10 major magazines, it's probably pretty unlikely that it will ever be spotted.

Smaller magazines run on a degree of trust because they have to. If you set out to prove the origins of everything before you printed it, then you'd run out of time, money and sanity in short order. We have to believe that people are, on the whole, honest. And from a pragmatic standpoint plagiarists have more to gain from fooling a paying publication than one run on string and brown paper.

I'm launching a print magazine next month; I've funded it myself, paying £40/$20 for 1200-1600 words, and a sliding scale for less. It's mostly reviews and interviews, but I felt from the start that paying people for their contributions was the way to go.

I've had a lot of negativity thrown my way, a lot of people who felt that they had a much better idea than me of what sort of magazine I should publish, plenty who wanted to tell me the statistics on survival of new literary/fiction magazines (<5% at one year). I just countered with 'Yes, that's fine, I understand that, but it's not going to stop me giving it a go' and gave them plenty of information about how I had studied the market, and found a gap which I believe I can fill.

The unexpected bit, and the hardest, is marketing. How do you get your magazine under the noses of people who you think will like it. People are bombarded with stuff every day, and unless you have a strategy for clambering to the top of the pile, or are satisfied with a readership that stays in double figures, you will get into trouble.

My magazine has cost around £2000/$4000 so far. I have 1000 copies of the first issue in my living room, and most of those will go as complimentary copies, in the hope of achieving publicity. My attitude is that most people have a hobby they spend money on, or a holiday each year. My hobby and holiday is the magazine. If we break even at a year, that will be an incredible success.

What have I gained? I am now an editor. I have a team of reviewers working for me, I have done all the design and layout of the magazine and put together the website. I have proved that I can work to deadline and pick a team who can do the same. We launch in three weeks and pretty much everything is in hand. Maybe we'll succeed, maybe we'll fail, but I've learned a huge amount and it's been a lot of fun.

And the magazine looks pretty impressive, they tell me.

 

[Wyrm Publishing]

Best of luck to you! If everyone listened to the nay-sayers, there wouldn't be any new magazines published. Distribution is a bear. If you were in the US, I'd have a few suggestions, but I'm not all that familiar with the market within the UK.

How are you doing with advertising? Most of the print magazines I know need to get a significant percentage of their revenue through ads.

-Neil

 

[lin robinson]

Ay, Fiona, don't be coy. What is your magazine?

 

[Circus Cranium]

As long as you're doing it for fun at this point, and you're passionate about it, go for it. If in the future you are able to pay, it will bring in more quality subs. If this is something you're serious about, you'll have to gradually keep increasing payment for writers for it to go anywhere---as said above, no one's going to pay to advertise if it's a zine without a widespread readership. That's not to say you won't eventually get one, but it's going to take a lot of time and effort and exposure and money. So in the end you have to ask yourself if it's worth your time. If you just want to have the experience and have fun, then sure it is. Otherwise, it may be a big giant pain in the....brain.