Okay, we have a lot of ground to cover today, so let’s get rolling.
Post-Launch After-Action Report
The SS#24 launch on Kindle went more quickly than expected and the rollout on other e-book readers continues at a nice pace. SS#24 is now available on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Nook, Smashwords, Scribd, and a plethora of other platforms, including Rakuten Kobo. Sales to date have been not as good as I’d hoped for but much better than I’d feared they might be, and have been exclusively on Kindle so far. I’m told there are vast legions of Kobo owners out there who are eager to buy new fiction. Thus far I’m not seeing evidence to support this assertion.
Now that SS#24 is out on Kindle and has had a week to soak, I’m seeing some things with which I’m not happy, particularly in the formatting of “Mother’s Day” and the way the author’s names got dropped from the auto-generated Table of Contents on the Kindle. I’ve figured out how to fix these things and will be doing so this week, but am waiting to see if any more typos are reported before I do. I want to make certain all known fixes are included when we finalize the files for the print edition on Friday.
If you see something in the book that stands out as an obvious typo, let me know.
Question: In looking at SS#24, I find myself fighting the urge to explain things. For example, Mike Adamson’s novelette, “Last Stop Paradise,” had a very different ending as first submitted. With a little help, Mike found the much better ending published here.
I had the good fortune to learn the editing trade from some really great editors—Ben Bova, Betsy Mitchell, George Scithers, and Charles C. Ryan—as well as to learn what not to do from the bad examples of some really terrible editors. Would anyone here be interested in a discussion of why I picked these particular stories to publish, and what sorts of changes were needed to take some of them from being very promising to being the really strong stories published here?
Again: if so, let me know.
Pre-Launch Teaser. Coming September 1st.
Yes, we’re already at work on SS#25. Actually, that’s somewhat disingenuous. In-house we call this book TIFKA 24—The Issue Formerly Known As 24—and it’s the book Karen and I were working on when she died. I found it necessary to swap the release order of issues #24 and #25 in order to break through the impasse and get Stupefying Stories moving forward again.
We have momentum now, though, so it is with great pleasure that I tell you SS#25 will be released on September 1st, and unless there is some unforeseen problem, it will be released simultaneously in print and e-book editions. SS#25 features:
- “If We Shadows,” by Fred Coppersmith
- “The Demolition Job,” by Neva Bryan
- “Tin Lizzi,” by J. L. Royce
- “A Limited View,” by Gary Kloster
- “Two-Tone,” by Elise Stephens
- “Cloudbreaker Above,” by Brandon Nolta
- “Caliban’s Cameras,” by Allan Dyen-Shapiro
- “There Is Another Sky,” by Bo Balder
- “Something Came Through,” by Michael Burnside
- “The Wawa Stick,” by Karl El-Koura
Coming September 1st! Watch for it!
The Return of The Son of The Annual Horror Issue
We don’t have a mock-up cover for this one yet, so here’s one from the archives. In our early years our October horror issues were always well-received, but we made the mistake of trying to spin the horror stories off into a separate product line, lost the connection to the Stupefying Stories brand, and our horror titles all died terrible, miserable, agonizing deaths, screaming in inchoate horror at the inescapable eldritch fate that overtook them, one by one.
Which seems like a fitting way for a horror title to die, but speaking as the publisher, it sucked.
Therefore, coming October 1st, the Stupefying Stories annual horror issue returns. The TOC for this book is already about half full, and I’ll have more to say about that in a minute. But before we get to that…
STUPEFYING STORIES 27
The 40th Anniversary of “Cyberpunk”
I don’t know how I managed to overlook it until recently, but this coming November is the 40th Anniversary of the original magazine publication of “Cyberpunk.”
I bet you can imagine what we’re cooking up for that.
Again, I’ll have more to say about that in a minute. But before we get to that, we need to finish out the year, with…
“CLANKALOG”
You can blame Guy Stewart for this one. He was the one who suggested that since so many writers who began with Stupefying Stories have graduated to ANALOG, we should just go ahead and do an entire “not quite ready for ANALOG” issue. He had a lot of other very clever ideas for this issue as well, most of which I’m going to ignore as while they’d probably be quite amusing to the people who read LOCUS, all they’d do for us is confuse the branding issue again. So, sorry Guy, but this one will be SS#28. It’s going to be chock-full of hard SF—“science fiction so hard, it clanks,” was, I believe, your expression—and my goal is to produce an issue that would have made my old friend Ben Bova proud.
After which we’ll either be wildly successful or completely flat-broke. Which brings us to…
DONATIONS & SUBSCRIPTIONS
I have made a serious mistake. I have been too casual with my use of the word, “subscription.” I can ask readers to DONATE to support Stupefying Stories, and in exchange for your generous donation I can offer you a complimentary e-book (or coffee mug, or tote bag, or at the $100 level, the Blu-Ray concert disc, Slovenian Pink Floyd: Live at Budapest), but if I ask you to buy a “subscription” to the magazine, I immediately run afoul of a plethora of tax laws that have been handed down from the Mountains of Madness.
I apologize. I was so focused on figuring out the technical details of how to deliver e-books directly to people’s e-book readers and on-phone e-reader apps, it didn’t occur to me that for the past ten years legislative bodies all over the world have been busily working on how to get a piece of the e-book action—and boy, have they come up with tax codes that make “Byzantine” look simple in comparison.
Ergo: effective immediately, we can accept donations, but cannot sell subscriptions. I’ve already reached out to everyone on our donor/subscriber list and have heard back from most of them, but if you missed the email, and it was your understanding that you were sending us money to buy a subscription, let me know, and I will issue a refund.
Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you.
And now, as your reward for reading this far…
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Beginning Monday, August 14th, we are reopening for submissions—but please note, this is NOT a general call for submissions. We are looking for four very specific things.
1. For SHOWCASE
The SHOWCASE daily free fiction project is going well. With some hiccups, daily readership is trending up. Therefore we’re going to continue doing SHOWCASE, and to do so, we need more very short stories, 1,000-words in length or shorter. For SHOWCASE only we will consider reprints. Payment is a flat $15 USD for original stories or $5 USD for reprints. Preference will be given to previously unpublished stories. This submissions window closes when we have accepted enough stories to keep SHOWCASE running through the end of October.
If you’re wondering what sort of fiction we’re looking for, the answer is simple: Read SHOWCASE. It’s free and there are loads of stories already out there, just waiting for you to discover them and share them with your friends. (Be advised, though, that commenting on older stories is restricted and all such comments are held pending moderation. We had to do that in order to discourage the spambots.)
IMPORTANT TIP: Microfiction (<150 words) is hard to do well. We see a lot of failed flash fiction pieces that are vignettes, not stories. A story has motion. Like a vignette, a good microfiction piece captures a moment, mood, or emotion, but also includes enough information to enable the reader’s imagination to fill in what’s happening outside of the image frame. Writing a good microfiction story is like showing your reader a still-frame from a movie and leading them to see where the movie began and where it’s likely to end.
2. For STUPEFYING STORIES 26
The October horror special is almost full, but we do have openings for a few first-rate horror stories. Payment is our usual 1.5-cents/word. Previously unpublished stories only. No reprints, although we will consider translations of stories not previously published in English. This submissions window closes when we have filled the October issue. Be advised that I have a special fondness for ghost stories and a special antipathy to serial killer stories.
This being our first-ever cyberpunk issue, I already have a few stories lined up, but am still open to being impressed. Be advised, though, that not only are you trying to sell your story to The Guy Who Wrote “Cyberpunk,” you’re trying to sell your story to someone who just retired after a long career in supercomputer R&D. So if your idea of cyberpunk is Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 fanfic, I’ll save us both time and reject it now. I am looking specifically for stories that make me say, “Damn, I wish I’d written this!”
It can be done. But it can’t be done by writing Neuromancer fanfic, LitRPG, or staying stuck in 1985. If you want to be pointed in the right direction, read “Eddie’s Upgrade” by Kevin Stadt in SS#23.
Payment is our usual 1.5-cents/word. Previously unpublished stories only. No reprints. This window closes when we have filled the November issue.
4. For STUPEFYING STORIES 28
Payment is our usual 1.5-cents/word. Previously unpublished stories only. No reprints. This window closes when we have filled the December issue.
HOW AND WHERE TO SUBMIT
Send your submission as a Word or .rtf file attached to an email message, to:
submissions@rampantloonmedia.com
Please give your email message a meaningful subject line, such as the title of your story. If you include your author’s bio and optional photo along with your submission that will save us both time, but please give your photo file a meaningful name, such as your name. I receive far too many author’s photos in files named “headshot.jpg,” or “IMG_4022234.png,” or something equally unhelpful.
Any questions?
Kind regards,
Bruce Bethke
Stupefying Stories | Rampant Loon Media LLC
3 comments:
"Would anyone here be interested in a discussion of why I picked these particular stories to publish, and what sorts of changes were needed to take some of them from being very promising to being the really strong stories published here?"
I'd definitely be interested in hearing more about the editorial side of things.
Me too; I've had some hands-on time with the editorial side of things, but I'm always up to hear from someone with more experience.
So would I.
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