About the potential 'Zine

I thought I should spell out a little bit more about what's coming with the webzine if our investigations prove that it's do-able.

The basic premise is that paper-based publishing is currently involved in a fairly advanced form of bureaucratic bean-counter driven seppeku. Because of the change in customer attitudes regarding access to content and competition from other kinds of entertainment, we need to leverage the power of the internet to offset the lack of innovation and opportunity coming out of traditional publishing.

Do I want to be a publisher? Has it always been my deepest dream to edit? Hell, no. Unfortunately, sitting on the sidelines is being effectively complicit in the death of the only art I can create and that's just not my style.

So, here's where I'm going, if all the ducks line up and march to cadence:

Darwin's Evolutions
A Journal of Speculative Fiction

Multi-format web-based periodical home for science fiction and fantasy stories, 1k to around 10k. Book and movie reviews. News of note. Commentary on genre and things like Manga and Anime, etc. Will offer a variety of reader formats (as many as we can get converters for, anyway), including audio pod-cast.

Published monthly with a minimum of three stories. We will be a home for new fiction as well as quality reprinted stories that have reverted to Author rights. We will also publish a speculative fiction based web comic serial in each issue.

No assinine pretentions of reaching for "Literary" acclaim. Just a home for ripping good yarns. Give us characters to care about, vivid worlds, exciting plots, and actual resolutions where something is learned or someone changes. Wordy, narcissistic navel gazers and indoctrination-oriented activists bearing soapboxes need not apply.

The goal from the get-go will be to provide a professional and quality publication regardless of format the customer chooses to use to enjoy the content.

One of the primary features of the 'zine, however, will be how it conducts its business. We're not going to put up a wall between ourselves, our contributors, and our customers. There'll be a tip bucket on the front page for the magazine and every story will have an associated tip bucket for the author/artist. Each author and artist will have an account that will baldly state the financials for the 'zine as a whole and their stories in particular. My goal for the author/artist tip buckets is to have them dump directly to whatever account their associated person has available to receive electronic transfers. If the mag has to "escrow" the buckets and cut a check, that accounting will be completely transparent to the affected parties.

On the front page of the 'zine, there will be a graphic counter that will illustrate how our funding is doing relative to money out versus money in as an indicator of fiduciary health so that customers will be able to see the effect their donations have.

The basic premise is this: if we can pick stories people enjoy reading and feel happy to drop a buck or two on as a thank you, then we deserve to survive. If not, then the operational model has no place in the world.

The author tip buckets will also serve as a means of choosing stories for a "Best of" anthology.
I'm basing the pay rate off of Andromeda Spaceways In-flight Magazine at this point. $0.0125 per word, $20 minimum for any story. Worthy reprints submitted will receive a $20 flat fee. Art will be $20 for interior-line and whatever I can scrape together above that for cover - probably $50 to $100 but I'm not promising anything.

The goal is to eventually build enough reader support to pay SFWA pro rates as a base for all content.

For our investment, we expect the rights to publish stories electronically on the internet, in audio pod-cast, and via print-on-demand media and to keep such rights for a period of one-year from initial date of publication, after which all rights revert to the author who can choose to leave the story up in our archives or withdraw it at that time.

An offer to be included in a "Best of" anthology will involve a duplicate payment equivalent to the original advance and will option a story for an additional year beyond the date of publication of the antho, with the same revert-to-author and removal options as with the normal magazine after that time.

Stories in the archives, by the way, will still have tip buckets associated with them. Any time a story is read on-line, the author's tip bucket and the magazine's tip bucket will be available for clicking.

Anyway, that's the great and grand overview. We'll be framing things up over Christmas holidays and beta-volunteer readers and folks who submitted test stories will be able to test-drive the result sometime in January.

D