james_nicoll: No fair peaking at the answers

james_nicoll (

james_nicoll) wrote,
@ 2009-07-03 00:01:00

No fair peaking at the answers
Poll #1424469
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 173

How many of the "big three" American SF magazines accept electronic submissions?

View Answers

3
4 (2.3%)

2
4 (2.3%)

1
27 (15.6%)

0
138 (79.8%)

(26 comments) - (Post a new comment)

	brooksmoses 2009-07-03 04:10 am UTC (link)
	It probably says something that, if I start out with the obvious search, pick the most searchable name of the three, and Google for "Asimov's electronic submission", and then click on the first link that it returns, I get this post on Whatever. But, you know, the Future has rocketships in it, not weblogs. Edited at 2009-07-03 04:11 am UTC (Reply to this) (Thread)

	elsue 2009-07-03 04:55 am UTC (link)
	Not to mention the latest Whatever post.... http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/02/fsfs-writing-workshop/ (Reply to this) (Parent)

cranky curmudgeon

daev
2009-07-03 05:27 am UTC (link)

I am always amazed by the number of people who think it's some sort of ridiculous Amish requirement that they print out a story when they want to submit it for major magazine publication.

The magazine editors prefer to have stories in hardcopy when they read them, and if it's too hard for you to send a text file to your printer, why should you expect editors to print out the thousands of submissions they'd receive electronically?

It has nothing to do with Luddism and everything to do with making the editors' work smoother. After slaving over a story which you hope to sell to one of the top SF magazines, is it so much of a burden to hit the "print" button that you'd rather just forego submission entirely?

Furthermore, you punk kids, pull up your pants, turn your cap around, turn down that music, get off my lawn, and get a job.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

nihilistic_kid
2009-07-03 05:53 am UTC (link)

After slaving over a story which you hope to sell to one of the top SF magazines, is it so much of a burden to hit the "print" button that you'd rather just forego submission entirely?

To some, especially those overseas, sure. There are plenty of magazines that do take electronic submissions, or that at least take electronic submissions either some of the time or for some writers, so why bother?

Large numbers of writers have managed to do fairly well, with short stories even, without appearing in the so-called Big Three. When was the last Dora Goss story to appear in the Big Three? The last Cat Valente story? Writers such as Elizabeth Bear had multiple novels published before publishing with one of the Big Three.

Also, I chuckled at "major magazine publication." All the real major magazines went for electronic subs/queries ages ago. SF doesn't have any magazines that count as major by any metric that makes sense for the magazine market.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

barberio
2009-07-03 07:47 am UTC (link)

Actually, for authors outside the US, it kind of is a bit more of a burden than just hitting 'print'. It means having to work out how much your manuscript weighs, get postage for that, get the airmail packet envelope, get the reply postage as an international reply coupon. Which means going to the post office, and filling out a form. It does stack up when you do a lot of submissions.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: cranky curmudgeon viktor_haag 2009-07-03 11:56 am UTC (link)
	I sense a re-mailer business opportunity... (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

doc_lemming
2009-07-03 12:58 pm UTC (link)

And--I can't speak for any countries other than the Canada-US pairing--the costs are ridiculously out of whack. Even accounting for currency differences, the cost of an international reply coupon can be three or four times what it actually costs to mail something.

Not all countries accept or sell IRCs, as well; as I recall, the Netherlands has found them to be just too much trouble and stopped. (I might be wrong on that one; I found the tidbit but did not check it.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: cranky curmudgeon mjlayman 2009-07-03 04:07 pm UTC (link)
	I know authors outside the US who email their story to friends in the US and the friend prints it out and mails it. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

zeborahnz
2009-07-04 03:04 am UTC (link)

It's slightly simpler in New Zealand: if it can fit into an A4 envelope it's a flat $3, and then I say the ms is disposable and include a letter-size SASE. I don't bother with IRCs - I don't know if anyone here sells them - as I've got a supply of US postage stamps, including a bunch of 5c stamps to add every time the blasted rate goes up.

Well, okay, it's not simpler exactly, but at least I don't have to weigh anything.

But it still does stack up when doing a lot of submissions. Also, there's something wrong with my printer driver at the moment so I can't print anything anyway.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

fridgepunk
2009-07-03 11:56 am UTC (link)

There's more to magazines than just editors though - at some point that hardcopy has to be converted to an electronic format so that it can be formatted and then sent to the printers.

A magazine that doesn't accept electronic format versions of whatever they plan to publish genuinely is engaging in luddism - it's an unusual practice among publishers and magazines (regardless of genre or theme) these days because it's awkward for them in the long run and has associated costs which eat into the overhead on the magazine.

This is if you ignore the other problems submitters face with postage costs and not living in the US presents.

For instance, it ultimately costs me (uk citizen) less money to get rejected by Strangehorizons or Clarke's world (which are e-submissions only iirc) than it does if asimov gives me a < $100 check to publish a story I sent them (which entails me first spending $100+ on postage to actually get the hard copy manuscript to their new york offices).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: cranky curmudgeon secritcrush 2009-07-03 04:43 pm UTC (link)
	(which entails me first spending $100+ on postage to actually get the hard copy manuscript to their new york offices). Where do you live? The moon? (I live in London and the costs are less than a tenth of that when I send somethingto them.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

seawasp
2009-07-03 01:22 pm UTC (link)

Well, um, yeah, it is a bit. I use my printer so infrequently that often if I go to print something, the ink's dried up or some other quirk of the printer requires I clean it, run out and get replacements, etc.

My experiences with printers also makes me very leery of trying to get anything longer than ten or twelve pages printed; SOMETHING will go wrong, unless it's a nice big commercial printer maintained by Real People, and not a little home printer sitting on a desk that my hyperactive children can reach and possibly interfere with.

The U.S. Government stopped requiring us to submit proposals in hardcopy several years ago; only a couple of holdout agencies tried to keep going in paper, and even they were forced to go electronic recently.

I understand, of course, the "winnow out the lazy" approach to minimizing slush. But electronic is the direction things are going, and it does feel rather odd to find that the "Literature of the Future" industry is still following the Printing of the Past habits.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

keithmm
2009-07-03 03:50 pm UTC (link)

Hell, in my business (geology/mining/resource management) we've gone electronic, and the exploration business, despite the high-tech toys used in the field and in mapping, is really hidebound when it comes to things like reporting. If I could get away with it, I'd have all my annual reports digital instead of the hardcopy+digital I have now (which is a step up from the traditional requirement of 2 hardcopies).

We deal with contracts worth potentially billions, and the the only real reason we have paper versions is to provide the photo-op when they are signed.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: cranky curmudgeon lostwanderfound 2009-07-04 04:20 pm UTC (link)
	which is a step up from the traditional requirement of 2 hardcopies Lucky sod. My last grant application required eight hardcopies... (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

politas
2009-07-03 01:32 pm UTC (link)

And there's also the question of why you would want the extra fossil fuel costs of transporting all that heavy paper around the country/world.

Requiring paper submissions is bad for authors, bad for the environment and bad for the printing side of the business. Editors presumably have an office laserjet, they can print things out faster and cheaper than someone using a home bubblejet printer.

That's if they insist on printing it out. Why can't editors work with an electronic copy? Other than "because they're used to paper", that is.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

ross_teneyck
2009-07-03 05:02 pm UTC (link)

I'm sure that "we've always done it this way" conservatism is a significant factor.

But it is also true that -- for many, but not all, people -- reading text from a screen all day long is harder and more fatiguing than reading the same amount of text from paper.

Editors presumably have an office laserjet, they can print things out faster and cheaper than someone using a home bubblejet printer.

No, because someone using a home printer costs the editor $0, whereas the editor using their office printer costs them >$0.

What I don't understand is why, assuming they want to read their slush pile on paper, they don't ask for an electronic copy of everything they actually buy. If they're going to print it, presumably they have to have it in electronic form to feed into their press, and it's got to be easier to convert J. Random Word Processor format to whatever they need than it is to... what do they do? Scan and OCR?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: cranky curmudgeon

keithmm
2009-07-03 07:26 pm UTC (link)

Unless a person is in a position to have peons do all the computer-type stuff for them, most people these days who deal with documents spend a good chunk of their day reading text off a screen. If they're actually editing, are they still taking a red pen and marking things up or are they using the basic features of every major document software on the planet and making notes and editing in a digital version?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	seawasp 2009-07-03 01:24 pm UTC (link)
	Also -- who are the Big Three these days? I know that JBU does electronic submission (obviously; they're Baen), but I don't know where they rank. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	I see what you did there aboutlikepleats 2009-07-03 02:28 pm UTC (link)
	You used the word peaking deliberately, to encourage reasonable discourse. Where's the entertainment value in that? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sanskritabelt 2009-07-03 03:45 pm UTC (link)
	I have to wonder if maybe being stuck in the 1940s on this particular topic is just another manifestation of an underlying problem at the magazines, another problem being that they only sell like a couple hundred copies a month. (Reply to this)

dd_b
2009-07-03 03:57 pm UTC (link)

I know, from people who write technical books, that in that part of publishing, electronic submission is the norm, pretty much required.

I don't know about other fiction magazines. But yes, to me, requiring paper submissions seems strangely archaic. And I know the mess it makes in the offices, having seen some of them. And I know that I don't much like reading manuscripts (large loose pages); when possible I read them in electronic form.

Interesting question about "the big three"; do you mean Analog, Asimov's, and F&SF? And if so, why NOT Jim Baen's Universe?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	martin_wisse 2009-07-03 04:06 pm UTC (link)
	History. That used to be the magazines that were the core of the genre. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	nihilistic_kid 2009-07-04 04:38 am UTC (link)
	What's JBU's readership? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dd_b 2009-07-04 05:08 am UTC (link)
	I don't find any kind of circulation statement. From the looks of the website, I don't think they're ad-supported, so they may not publish a circulation statement. From what people tell me they're paying, they're big-time, though. Of course they may still be operating at a loss trying to get started (though they're into "volume 4" on the masthead). (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	nihilistic_kid 2009-07-04 05:10 am UTC (link)
	I presume the last shred of bigness the Big Three have is circulation numbers. If we go by pay only, we can call the big three Tor.com, JBU, and Clarkesworld. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	barberio 2009-07-03 04:13 pm UTC (link)
	See comment on past entry, re: "The Science Fiction publishing establishment is stuck in the future of the 1950s". It's pretty incomprehensible why the "Major Professional Publishers" of science fiction still insist on inserting a step that costs more for them, the agents and the writers. And one that increases the chance of introducing errors just before printing. (Reply to this)

(26 comments) - (Post a new comment)

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