Status Update • 11 May 2022

 

Work on STUPEFYING STORIES #24 is rolling right along, and barring divine or demonic intervention the book is on-track for a June 1st release. Having learned from our painful experience with The Hostage in Hiding, we’re going to upload this one to Amazon KDP first, and then go wide with distribution to other e-book platforms via Draft2Digital. 

We have been doing a lot of learning in these past few weeks, not all of it painful. By reexamining what we did in the past, and by getting a lot of good advice from people who probably would prefer not to be named for fear of having to give up what they’re doing now to become professional publishing industry consultants, we have identified a major pivot that we need to make as we go forward—and go forward we shall. For the first time in I can’t remember when, we actually have a solid and workable business plan for what we’ll be being for the rest of this year, and going on into next year. I’m actually feeling quite optimistic about it.

The essential points of it are:

• Our initial ad hoc crowd-funding campaign worked far better than I ever expected. Thank you!
  
  
• Stupefying Stories #24 is now fully funded and on track for a June 1st release.
  
  
• Stupefying Stories #25 is now fully funded and on track for a September 1st release.
  
  
• By reallocating resources and shifting to a laser-like focus on the magazine, we have almost enough in hand now to fund Stupefying Stories #26 and release it on December 1st. Therefore we will be continuing the ad hoc crowd-funding campaign through this summer, to ensure that by the time we get to September we have enough in hand to fully fund SS#26.
  
  
• After SS#25 is out the door, we’ll roll out the serious crowd-funding campaign. Through this we hope to raise the $4K we’ll need to put out issues 27 through 30 on a quarterly basis in 2023. However, this is just the first goal. We have a series of stretch goals planned, all of which work towards our ultimate objective of paying authors more.
  

That was always my idea: to grow Stupefying Stories to the point where we could afford to pay our authors professional word rates. At last, I think I know how to make this happen. 

Thanks for your support!

—Bruce Bethke