Submitting Stories

[rowyn]

I've decided to submit "Chat" to Scifi.com. This is, as near as I can tell, a part of the Science Fiction Channel's website which publishes sf/fantasy stories.

Their pay rate is eye-poppingly high for the genre: $.20 a word, while the other publications I've looked at have been less than a third of that. It turns out that Playboy potentially pays even better (a dollar a word? o.O ) but I wouldn't be surprised if that was, say, their non-fiction rate, and that they pay less for fiction. They do publish sf, though. However, for reasons that won't be obvious, I'm not going to submit to them any time soon.

After SciFi.com rejects it, I'll probably try Strange Horizons. After that, I dunno, maybe Interzone or The 3rd Alternative. I'm starting with those SFWA pro markets that publish sf, and I'd like to hit American publications first, just to so's I don't have to go through the bother of overseas postage. I'm sort of considering Absolute Magnitude, but apart from publishing sf, they look like a bad fit for this story. Their guidelines stress words like "action" and "adventure", and "Chat" is definitely not an action-adventure story.

So I may look at places that aren't on the SFWA pro list after SciFi.com and Strange Horizons send "Chat" packing. Or maybe I'll send it to Asimov's. Assuming Asimov's can get "Baby" back to me in less time than it takes two other markets to reject "Chat", I might consider it. You know, their website says their "response time runs about five weeks". I wonder when they last updated it? :D They do say to allow three months before assuming it's been lost. But I'll give 'em five, since haikujaguar said that was the longest they've taken to get back to her.

Comments

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

Playboy publishes spec fic? Wow, who knew? (Everyone else but me, apparently. ;-)

Good luck in making the rounds!

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I had no idea, either! But, you know, as they say, everyone reads Playboy for the ARTICLES! =P

[rowyn]

The whole "I read Playboy for the articles" schtick arose because Playboy really did have good articles. They worked very hard at maintaining a "literati" quality in their issues; I'm sure the high pay rate is there to attract good submissions.

It's an interesting business model in that respect. It paid off when they launched, because there was very little competition in the "nudie" market at that time, and by having good authors and quality interviews alongside their pictorials gave them a certain cachet. I don't know that anyone ever believes "I read it for the articles", but it was plausible that people would. Most porn oozes with sleaziness; the stuff looks and feels appalling. Playboy is practically wholesome by contrast.

Of course, being unusual does not make it successful. Playboy attempts to unite good writing with naked women, and the result is a product that largely doesn't appeal either to people who want good writing, or to people who want naked women. I don't think they've been doing very well financially in the Internet age.

[rowyn]

Yah. Playboy, in fact, has published a fair bit of good sf, as I recall, from big-name (or people who became big-name) authors.

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

According to Ralan Conley's market list (http://www.ralan.com/) (which is pretty much the definitive online market list for genre fiction, though Ralan's definition of "pro" doesn't match SFWA's), there've been reports of Playboy sending out rejections saying that they no longer publish genre fiction. Don't know if that's been confirmed or not, though. (But Alice Turner, the editor who used to buy science fiction there, is no longer working there.)