It’s the last week of August already?
There’s a lot going on here; a lot on my mind. Nonetheless my inbox is overflowing with questions and queries, so let’s cut to the Never-Ending FAQ first.
Q: What’s going on with Stupefying Stories?
A: We’re in the process of rebooting it. Again. Right now I’m reaching out to authors and trying to determine who is still onboard for SS#27 and who has given up and moved on. I’m still shooting to get SS#27 buttoned up and uploaded to Amazon before I run out of August, but will be happy to see it go live on Amazon before Labor Day weekend. Given how Draft2Digital works, it will trickle out to other platforms (Nook, Apple, Kobo, etc.) in the days and weeks after.
Q: What can I do to help?
A: If you get an email message, a copy-edited story file, or a fresh contract from me, please do whatever is appropriate and respond. One thing I’m finding as I go through the files is that the different stories are under slightly different contracts, depending on when they were accepted. I want to make certain that every story in the next book is under the same contract terms, which would be our Rev. 18 contract.
Q: Are you open for submissions now?
A: No. Yes. Maybe. We are not officially open for unsolicited submissions—see our Submission Guidelines, which haven’t changed in two years—but that doesn’t seem to stop people from sending us manuscripts. Really, we are not open for submissions—unless we already know you, and you have a story you truly believe we won’t be able to resist, in which case, for the love of Gernsback, query first!
Got that? Query first!
Q: Will you be at WorldCon this upcoming weekend?
A: No. As much as I would like to meet Wole Talabi in person—I’ve been watching his career with interest ever since we published his story, “The Million Eyes of a Lonely and Fragile God,” about ten years ago—WorldCon is out of the question this year. I may be up for traveling next year.
Q: Are you buying podcast rights now?
A: No. I had a brief flirtation with podcasting but then sobered up. Right now I think that as far as Stupefying Stories is concerned, my time is better spent promoting the magazine by being a guest on other people’s podcasts than by hosting a podcast myself.
E.g., in case you missed it, here’s my recent appearance on Hosts in the Shell.
(Which among other things tells me that if I’m going to be doing more things like this, I need a better microphone. Any recommendations?)
On a technical level, doing Stupefying Stories: The Podcast appeals to my inner A/V Club nerd. But on a practical level, I have far more productive things to do with my time and money.
Q: Does this mean Dawn of Time is dead? I saw that on YouTube and liked it!
A: Dawn of Time isn’t dead, it’s just on the back burner for the moment. You’ll find the four episodes that have been finished so far at youtube.com/@stupefyingstories. Please feel free to watch and comment on them. I’m particularly pleased with how Episode Four turned out.
Kindly ignore the ads. We did not insert them and have no control over them. YouTube did that to us. We did not “monetize” these videos, which leads into why we’ve temporarily stopped producing them. We can’t monetize them, as there are problems with the licensed canned music and stock artwork we used to produce them. Ergo, until we get that sorted out, this project is on the back burner.
Producing these videos was a lot of fun, but again, not the most immediately productive use of my time.
Q: Does this mean The Odin Chronicles is also dead?
A: No. We have the audio for all ten episodes of Dawn of Time in the can, as well as the audio for the first thirty episodes of The Odin Chronicles.
The problem is that the audio files are in .mp3 format, while YouTube requires .mp4. Converting the .mp3 files to .mp4 and putting them on YouTube was an experiment. We’re looking into other ways to put them out as audio-only files, such as on Spotify, but again, that’s not an immediately productive use of my time.
Q: Why not put them out as an audiobook?
A: The episodic nature of these files is not conducive to doing that. I can explain why in greater detail, if you like, but I’m trying to get this column finished today.
Q: Have you considered putting out other Rampant Loon Press titles as audiobooks?
A: Yes, but not right now. This is an interesting question.
We have three audiobooks out right now: The Fugitive Heir, The Fugitive Pair, and The Counterfeit Captain. These are all professionally narrated and produced audiobooks, and frankly, they were ridiculously expensive to do. Take a listen to The Counterfeit Captain, will ya? We’re still deep in the red on that one. The ebook edition sold in the thousands, but the audiobook, not so much.
As some of you may be aware, we were invited to participate in the beta of Amazon’s AI “Virtual Voice” audiobook generator. We put out a few novels that way, but have since withdrawn them from the market. We were never happy with the results, and concluded that the sales we got were not worth the opprobrium we received for using AI.
I still think AI-generated narration has a place, in generating audiobooks of old and obscure titles that wouldn’t sell in large enough numbers to justify doing a human-read version, but aside from audiobooks for the visually impaired and functionally illiterate, AI narration has a long way to go before people are willing to tolerate that deadpan reading style.
One more thing: when we did the audiobooks for The Fugitive Heir, The Fugitive Pair, and The Counterfeit Captain, that was a long time ago. The business has changed since then. Now, if the audiobook is not narrated by either the author or the publisher personally, ACX/Audible requires that the narrator either be a SAG/AFTRA union member or that the publisher kick in a not-insignificant contribution to the SAG/AFTRA retirement fund.
Why? I don’t know, but suspect it has something to do with Amazon’s acquisition of MGM. The MGM and Orion Pictures film libraries have to be worth a lot more to Amazon Prime than the audiobook rights to a bunch of self-published and small-press novels.
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…out of time, will post more tomorrow…
~brb