Any better-paying SF markets???

[lin robinson]

I'd forgotten about that part.
I was very much into scifi for most of my youth, up until my mid-twenties, when I just lost interest. Though I was supporting myself by writing by that time I never submitted to scifi mags because they paid so lousy. Every now and then one would come along paying a dime a word (which was less than I could really afford to work for, but would have done if they had stayed in business long)

I recently decided to to a scifi series and sort of return to my roots. It's been interesting so far. I gave myself until the end of June to finish my latest novel, then start the scifi magilla. Since I finished early, I knocked off four stories last week and started looking around to sell them. One is a Andromeda Spaceways thing, so I'm stuck with them. If they take it, I'll get like a hundred bucks. But that's okay because I think they are incredibly cool.

And two are decicated to a contest with cash prize and publication in an anthology or something. So how about the other two and the one I'll finish tomorrow?
I zipped through the biggies I remembered from my school days substciptions and there it was...the reason I never wrote for them back in those days. 6-8 cents a word. So a nice little 2300 word cutie brings me like $168. Not bad for an afternoon's work, but not really enough to get my mojo working, either.

And on top of that, they insist on snailmail, which would cost me about $40 bucks per submission. (But the less said about that the better, apparently

So anyway, after that excrutiating windup, the pitch is: are their any science fiction magazines of that Analog, Asimov type that pay any better than that?
If not, I'll just write it off as warm-up and creds for the larger project, but does anybody know of anything with living wage?
(I have to iron my fingers anytime I write something for less than $1500. And my iron's out of wack.)

Thanks for any tips. No thanks for any wounded industry bellowing. The preceeding is not intended as a slight, calumny, misrepresentation, anathema, malediction or deconstruction of any living, quasi-living, undead, reigning, or currenly employed editor, publisher, factotum. fact totem, familiar, or endenture-holder to any magazine that might in this or any less perfect world might be described as "low paying". Hope that covers it. My lawyer's out of wack, too. Always was, truth told.

 

[dustinzgirl]

I don't know of any for short stories. I can't even find any at Writer's Market.

Good luck though.

 

[lin robinson]

Writer's market is far from the last word in such matters. Which is why I like to ask forums. Thanks anyway.

Actually, I just realized payment from andromeda would be like TEN bucks australian. There goes the condo I was going to buy with the proceeds.

 

[scalem X]

I doubt you'll find anyone who will pay more than $200 american for a short story of less than 3000 words...

But good luck and if you should find one, let us know.

 

[lin robinson]

if you should find one, let us know

Yeah, right

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, it all comes down to circulation and ad revenue, doesn't it? I don't believe there are any SFF genre magazines that have enough of the former to generate enough of the latter to make it feasible to pay their authors much more than 6-8 cents a word.

If you want more than that, I think you will need to stick to more mainstream publications.

 

[lin robinson]

Yes I have sort of gotten the impression after decades of magazine work that revenue affects pay rates. So I was asking about mags that pay better.


I was just thinking: if somebody posts a dollar a word SF market on here... can you imagine the stampede?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Yes I have sort of gotten the impression after decades of magazine work that revenue affects pay rates. So I was asking about mags that pay better.

And I thought I was answering: SFF magazines can't afford to pay out that kind of money. Compared to the kinds of magazines that can, their circulation numbers are small potatos.

 

[dustinzgirl]

And I thought I was answering: SFF magazines can't afford to pay out that kind of money. Compared to the kinds of magazines that can, their circulation numbers are small potatos.

Yes, I make a decent living writing webzine articles for women's life mags and how to instruction stuff. Not as much as I want too, but once we move this summer, I will have less bills and then will be able to focus on writing harder articles where the money is at -- better homes and gardens, redbook, ect.....

It's rather intersting how my career has unfolded, after quitting the evil Hell Dell and dropping out of college (too expensive when I wasn't making the kinda cash I made at Dell), I basically started out working for project sites like guru.com and such, then editing dissertations and writing up business proposals....that lead me to the webzines, which of course pay better, and this will give me the experience to move up to heavier mags, which will pay even better.

All in all, I have to say, not that bad for a teenage mom high school drop out.

Of course, as many of you know it hasn't been an easy road for me, but its been a heck of a ride so far.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

All in all, I have to say, not that bad for a teenage mom high school drop out.

Not bad at all!

 

[lin robinson]

SFF magazines can't afford to pay out that kind of money. Compared to the kinds of magazines that can, their circulation numbers are small potatos.

Yes, but see... there might be some out there with more circulation and revenue or just some psychotic sugar-daddy owner who pay more than that. So I thought I'd ask around. No luck so far.

If you come up with anything new, I'd appreciate hearing it.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Most SF and F mags pay between 1c and 10c per word. (US) A lot are run on a shoe-string. The glory days of the SF mag are long gone, if they ever existed.

Jim Baen's Universe pays 25c per word plus royality, but they are closed for submissions at present. The same can be said for most of the so called "big" mags, most of which want snail mail submissions.

A good google search should throw up a number of sites that list paying SF and F mag markets, but a large number fall under the 10c per word bracket and are often capped at about $100, sometimes $50 per work. They are always swamped with submissions. It is a small market, with a lot of would be writers trying to get published. A lot of SF and F writers don't make a living from their writing even if they have a novel published by a mainstream publisher, you are looking at a mid-list writer picking up an advance of $3,000 to $7,000 if they are lucky.

 

[iansales]

If no one's mentioned these already, check out:

Spicy Green Iguana - The Speculative Fiction Magazine Resource Site

and

Ralan's Webstravaganza - Ralan.com

 

[lin robinson]

Thanks ian, I ran into those and checked them out. (Prompting my current query and mild depression)

Sajb, thanks greatly for the tip on Baens. (Gee, they pay three/four times what the other markets do and they're crammed with submissions? Wonder how that happened

I don't see much point in submitting to Playboy or Boy's Life or anything, even though they might run a couple of SF's a year. My main purpose here is sort of to jump back into the SF pool, do a little warm up for the novel I'm starting on the first of the month, hopefully have a few recent credits by then, in SF journals.

Actually I don't think there ever were markets over a dime (or even a dime) at any past golden age. I was just hoping something new had come along.

Thanks for you help, everybody.

There's a part of me that says, why the hell should I waste the time I need to generate my income on somebody who thinks a story is worth ten bucks. And another part that says, "Come on, you weinie, let's have some FUN!"

 

[Leo Medici]

Orson Scott Card has his Intergalactive Medicine Show. Probably not the easiest thing, but another option.

 

[Susan Boulton]

It is not that the editors think stories are worth only “10 bucks” Most pay what they can afford, sometimes over. SF and F is still a very niche market. Many well known, with submissions pouring out of their ears, mags, are in the 5c to 10c range, yet the “street cred “ you get by being printed in one of them is huge.

 

[lin robinson]

somebody who thinks a story is worth ten bucks

You may be making too much of that phrase, especially out of the context of the sentence.

But for all that, I have to say... if somebody offers to buy something at a price, it's sort of an indication of what they assess it's market value.