Monday, 14. December 2009, 14:04:27
My Loyal Reader knows that I wrote an SF short story a couple of years ago. After taking his advice on some edits, I sent it off to the Australian SF zine
Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine, because I heard that they provide good feedback, even for stories they reject. To no-one's surprise, they rejected my story (for having no memorable characters, IIRC). I say that to explain why I lurk on the very edges of the SF publishing blogosphere, and to introduce a debate that's happened there.
Writer John Scalzi (
Old Man's War, currently advising SciFi.com on
Stargate Universe)
went off on a new publisher for paying only token wages to authors (0.20 cents per word). Other writers chimed in their agreement, but one aspiring author posted on SFsignal.com (one of my favorite SF sites, btw) that she thought pro-writers' (like Scalzi) indignation was baseless-by demanding higher wages, they would reduce the number of venues publishing stories, making it harder for new authors to break into the industry.
She was roundly criticized by all and sundry. The more intelligent critiques said something like "no one reads those cheap venues anyway, so publishing in places like that won't actually help you break in." The other theme insisted that these low wages would "...not pass if people were properly infuriated and placed a high value on what we do"--so if we just demand high wages we'll get them.
It seems to me that her critics persist in an outdated notion of authorship, one where SF is written by "authors," who live on their writing, at least partly (
here is Scalzi's breakdown of his own writing income). In that world, Scalzi and other are right. Marginal venues--only read by a few people, unlikely to lead to anything more--offer false hope to aspiring writers, who think they're making progress by publishing there, and keep on flipping burgers while pursuing a dream. This limited pool of authors can justify decent wages.
My question is, where does that leave people like me, who know they'll never be a pro "author," but think it'd be really cool if someone wanted to read what they write? My eventual goal for that story was a magazine
Afterburn, which pays contributors the princely sum of a $30 Amazon gift certificate. IIRC, the editors were happy because they were rated 20th or so on a list of top electronic SF 'zines (which means they don't even print it on paper). Think about the way blogging has exploded--people (like yours truly)
want to be read. I'd put the world of shareware and open source software in the same category--the quality and sophistication there shows that this desire is not a marginal phenomena. What little I learned about the publishing industry all confirmed that the issue for publishers is an over-supply of manuscripts, a flood of stories arriving at venues of all levels, not just the top pro ones (which says all we need to know about the argument that authors should just insist on higher wages).
In that kind of a world, doesn't it make sense to have a variety of outlets? Quality venues that pay pro wages to attract top authors, middle-of-the-road places where good but unknown authors might get noticed, all the way down to little-known places that only pay a token, for people like me? So what if a story in
Afterburn never gets the attention of a top editor and my SF career never takes off? That's not why I write. Even though Scalzi isn't a favorite author of mine, I admire his talent--I just don't understand why he feels compelled to go off on a publisher that exists for those of us who don't share his talent.
WIDGETIZE