Pimping Our Contributors

While winning Hugos ourselves is very pleasing, we editors also love seeing people we have published win awards. After all, it shows we are doing something right. Neil Clarke has helpfully checked through all of the Clarkesworld fiction from 2010 for length. You can see the results here, but the short version is that they are all Short Stories except for “A Jar of Goodwill” by Tobias S. Buckell, which is a Novelette.

A few other matters arising from that.

Neil and Sean Wallace are both eligible for Best Editor: Short Form (so am I, for that matter, but let’s not be silly). Sean is, of course, also eligible for Best Editor: Long Form for his work at Prime Books.

If you do nominate Clarkesworld, please mention Kate Baker as one of those responsible. IMHO, she has done far more than I have to make Clarkesworld a success.

And one thing that Neil missed is that we had a lot of great cover art in 2010 too, so if you are looking for new names for the Best Professional Artist category check out that out. All of our 2010 covers are helpfully pictured in our Reader’s Poll.

Clarkesworld #52

Happy New Year holiday reading, people, the January issue of Clarkesworld is online.

Our lead story this month is “Ghostweight” by Yoon Ha Lee which, as usual, can also be found in audio, read by Kate Baker.

The second story is “Tying Knots” by Ken Liu. That one will be available in audio in a couple of weeks time.

Jeremy’s interview victim subject this month is Walter John Williams. In it Walter talks about how SF gives him the freedom to write about anything he wants (so much for being constrained by genre).

In my department we welcome back movie expert Dan Kimmel who wants you to “Fly Me to the Moon” so that he can explain how much romance there is in SF movies.

Neil also contributes a short column asking for votes in our annual Reader Poll. Please do let us know (there, not here) which were your favorite stories, articles, interviews and covers from 2010.

Finally this month’s cover is a distinctly fishy affair: “Beckoning Ancient Depths” by Alejandro MGNZ.

The ebook editions of Clarkesworld #52 are already available in the Wizard’s Tower bookstore. We’ve also added issue #21 and issue #22 to the list of available back issues. And we also have Realms (Volume 1 and Volume 2), the annual Clarkesworld anthology.

Sales of Clarkesworld and Realms are vital to our ability to keep paying for top quality material.

And because we like being nice to our friends as well, we’ve also got the January issue of Lightspeed available.

Clarkesworld #51

Yes, it is December now. And that means a new issue of Clarkesworld.

The two stories in this issue are by writers I’m not familiar with. We have “The Taxidermist’s Other Wife” by Kelly Barnhill and “The Children of Main Street” by A.C. Wise. I see from their bios that they are both building solid careers in short fiction, and Neil always buys great stories, so I’m looking forward to discovering what these ladies produce. As usual, the lead story (Kelley’s) is available as a podcast and A.C.’s story will follow mid-month. Kate, as ever, provides the narration.

In contrast Jeremy’s column in this issue features a short fiction writer that I know well. Theodora Goss’s collection, In the Forest of Forgetting, is a favorite of mine. I’m glad to see that she has a bunch of new projects bubbling along.

The piece I bought is deliciously subtitled “A History of Evil Entertainment”. Ostensibly Nancy Fulda’s article is about video games, but in order to make her point she goes back over the history of other forms of entertainment that were once held up as evidence of rampant moral corruption. You know, things like the Waltz, and Ballet… Seriously.

This month’s cover is by Brazilian artist, Rafael Sarmento, and is called “Solitude”.

And if you are looking for something different to give as gifts this year, how about this:

Give Citizenship

What’s In Store – The Magazines

Aside from Dark Spires, the only things I have in store at the moment are copies of Clarkesworld and Salon Futura. I don’t expect this state of affairs to last. I’m actively talking to small presses and individual authors about stocking their books. In the meantime, however, let’s talk about the magazines, because I’m sure that there are some people out there who are thinking: “Charging money for something you can find free online? What an outrageous ripoff!”

Well, that’s certainly one way of looking at it. The other way is to say that it is giving you an opportunity to pay for something if you can afford to do so, because if nobody pays then it won’t keep going for long.

It helps to understand the situation better if you also read this post from The Hill, a blog about things to do with Congress, which people were linking to on Twitter today. In it Colleen Doran explains some of the bad things that are happening to comics creators right now, which she sees as a direct result of piracy: people scanning comics and posting them online for free.

There are all sorts of arguments that could be made about this, and I’d prefer it if the comment thread didn’t degenerate into a flame war about piracy. There’s not much new to be said on the issue these days. I would, however, like to make two points.

Firstly, laws are not going to stamp out piracy. Prohibition did not stop people from drinking alcohol; the “war on drugs” hasn’t stopped people smoking dope or snorting cocaine; “just say no” campaigns don’t stop teenagers from having sex. If something is possible, and it looks like fun, people will do it.

Secondly, the proposed new law that Doran is talking about is not targeting individual pirates, but rather piracy as a business. It is one thing to share your ebooks with your mates. It is quite another to make a business of pirating thousands of ebooks and making money off advertising on your web site.

So one way of looking at what is happening with online magazines is to say that we are pirating our own stuff. Given that it is inevitable that anything worth having is going to appear for free somewhere, we might as well get the traffic coming to our own sites, so that we get the ad revenue instead of the pirates.

That’s not the end of the story, however. Because what we really want to do is pay creators — writers and artists — good money for good work. Clearly not everyone can afford to pay. That may be because they are kids, because they are out of work, or because they come from poorer parts of the world where they can barely afford to get online. I’m OK with that. Salon Futura has readers in places like Vietnam, Bosnia and Egypt. I don’t know who those people are, but I’m pleased they are reading my magazine and fairly sure that they would not be doing so if they had to buy it from Amazon.

Some of you, however, can afford to pay. I’ve lived in California. People there think nothing of adding 15% to restaurant bills, or dropping a couple of bucks to a bellhop or maid in a hotel. Is it really too much to ask to pay a few dollars a month to keep the likes of Clarkesworld and Salon Futura going? Possibly it is, but now you have the choice. You don’t have to pay “too much”, but you don’t have to pay “too little” either.

Sorry if I’m banging the drum a bit here, but this is the way the world is going. If we want writers, artists, musicians and so on to continue to entertain us, we have to give them money for what they do.

Open For Business

One of the main strands of my business plan for Wizard’s Tower has been the need to have an online store where you can buy ebooks. Not just our ebooks, but a wide selection of good quality speculative fiction. The more good books there are, the more likely people are to check us out and spend their money with us.

Of course we can’t compete with the likes of the Kindle and iBooks stores, but we are a specialist retailer. We’ll only be stocking SF&F. What’s more, because the big publishers are unlikely to be interested in us, at least in the short term, we’ll be stocking only books from small presses. Hopefully that will make it a lot easier to find the books you want on our site than in any of the big online stores.

It has taken me quite a while to find an online store system that does what I want, and provides the sort of professional shopping experience people are going to expect. Hopefully what I have now mostly does the job. I’ll be doing some more serious PR later in the week, but before then I’m hoping that a few of you folks will take a look and let me know if you have any issues with the store. I can’t promise to do everything you ask for, but feedback is good. You can find the store here.

One thing the store doesn’t do is allow me to set firm prices in other currencies. Hopefully that will come at some point. Also I’m hoping to offer payment methods other than PayPal, but such things cost money and I need business in order to justify the fees.

As of now, we have all of the issues of Salon Futura and Clarkesworld that have been converted available, plus of course Dark Spires. I don’t have the MOBI files for Salon Futura yet, but they should be available soon.

You will notice, when you visit the store, that each product also comes with a donation option. That’s deliberate policy. It is an idea I got from Bandcamp.com (thank you, Amanda Palmer, for the tip). We hear a lot these days about how people are not prepared to pay “too much” for ebooks. But the meaning of “too much” can vary wildly from person to person, dependent on your financial circumstances and how much you like the author in question. So I wanted to give people an opportunity to not pay “too little” either. Think of it as a tip jar. And if you don’t know whether you want to tip or not, you can always come back later and make a donation when you have read the book.

100% of any money received in donations will go to the creators concerned. Of course they may have to pay tax on the income, but we won’t take any of that money.

Talking of taxes, the business is currently below the turnover threshold at which UK companies are obliged to charge VAT. That’s a good thing, because while paper books are zero-rated for VAT, ebooks are regarded as “software” and attract a 17.5% tax (shortly rising to 20%). Much as I’d like the business to grow, I’d like to stay VAT-free as long as possible.

If anyone out there runs a small press, or is an independent author who has made ebooks of their out-of-print back catalog, and is interested in having us stock their books, please get in touch (info [at] wizardstowerpress [dot] com). We will be selective about what we stock, and in particular we will insist on well-made ebooks (though we can help you clean yours up) but I very much want to see the stock grow. Also I want to talk to prospective partners about contract terms to make sure we come up with a deal that people are happy with.

Anyway, please take a look, and feel free to ask questions here. Tomorrow I’ll talk a bit more about what we have on sale.

Going Professional

Today’s Twitter feed brought up some interesting developments over at Escape Pod. What used to be just a podcast now has a monthly magazine containing the text of the stories that have been published in audio. There will also be book reviews. What’s more, they are clearly going for the semiprozine market as they talk about paying professional rates. Obviously they need donations, but they sound determined to pay their authors good money.

Yay!

Or almost. Because, as is depressingly the case, there is a catch. Being a suspicious type, I sent to look at the submission guidelines, and I found what I expected:

At the present time, EP does not offer payment for reviews.

So yes, they’ll be paying their authors, which is a wonderful thing to do, but only if they write fiction.

This is by no means an isolated occurrence. I don’t mean to dump on Escape Pod because they are only doing what many other venues do. One of the reasons I work for Clarkesworld and not for anyone else is because Neil is prepared to pay the same rate for non-fiction as for fiction. Other magazines don’t do that. Indeed, in the past couple of weeks I have caught a couple of people using the term “professional writer” to mean “professional fiction writer”. There’s a widespread view that even if non-fiction writers get the same money as fiction writers, they are still not worthy of being viewed as “professional”. SFWA’s membership rules don’t help here.

So it is all very well for people to complain about the quality of book reviews online (here and here most recently). But if there’s nowhere that recognizes that non-fiction is worth paying for, then there’s no real incentive for people to get any better.

Clarkesworld #50 Online

Yes, it is November, so there is a new Clarkesworld online. What is more it is issue #50. I understand that there are some celebrations going on in New York this week. If you can’t be there, you can always read and listen to the magazine.

The lead story in this issue is “On the Banks of the River Lex” by N.K. Jemisin, who I note also has a new novel out this week. I absolutely loved her first book. There’s another day before it hits the shops, but you can read the story today.

Or indeed listen to it, narrated as ever by the wonderful Kate Baker.

The second story this month is “Seeing” by Genevieve Valentine. As usual, that one will be available in audio in a couple of weeks time.

Jeremy has two interviews in this issue. The first one is with Lois McMaster Bujold and is, of course, all about the return of Miles Vorkosigan. The other is with steampunk queen Cherie Priest and covers a range of topics.

With the BBC’s Sherlock reboot just having started on American television, Ryan Britt provides us with a timely essay on the use of Holmes in science fiction. The great detective certainly fits in well to SF.

The cover for issue #50 is “Soulhunter” by Andrey Lazarev who is from Volgograd in Russia.

As ever, we hope that you will enjoy the magazine, and if you do enjoy it that you will see fit to donating something to cover our running costs. New citizens are always welcome.

On Online Magazines

First up, the boss man, Mr. Neil Clarke, has recently been interviewed by The Functional Nerds, a fine podcast. You can hear what he has to say here.

In addition Realms of Fantasy magazine has announced that it is once again closing for business. This is very sad, and as the official announcement says it is probably a result of the current economic downturn. However, I learned from Twitter that more privately (to his friends on Facebook) Warren Lapine has been blaming the fold on free online magazines such as Clarkesworld.

I’ve not seen what Warren actually wrote, and I suspect he’s mainly just a bit upset, but my own view is that if online magazines are doing better than print ones it is because they are more accessible rather than anything else. One of the main reasons that Clarkesworld has such good content is that we pay very well (and are picky about what we publish). And we are able to pay well because people give us money. It is a virtuous circle. The better the content you publish, the more money you get, and the better content you can afford.

That goes double for Salon Futura because we pay rather better for non-fiction than many print magazines. Often people who write book reviews get “paid” with the copy of the book they are reviewing. And I’ll never forget being told by the editor of one long-running print magazine that, as a fan, I should of course be happy to write for him for free. I hope that Salon Futura will establish that you can have good quality discussion of speculative literature online, not just the “my opinion” pieces we see from so many book review sites. Of course it will help if we get a few donations, because then we’ll be able to afford to pay better for the material.

Clarkesworld #49

It being the start of a new month, we have a new Clarkesworld online.

The lead story is “Laying the Ghost” by British science fiction writer (and Guardian reviewer) Eric Brown. As usual that is also available as a podcast read by the inimitable Kate Baker.

The second story is “Salvaging Gods” by Brazilian writer, Jacques Barcia. I’m delighted to see one of my Twitter pals getting into the magazine. Kate will have that one ready for you mid-month.

Jeremy L.C. Jones (who has just been given an official staff post – congratulations Jeremy!) has two interviews up this month, and also two top notch subjects: Jay Lake and Mary Robinette Kowal.

There is no non-fiction piece again this month. This is mainly my fault. We do actually have a bunch of interesting articles in production, but they have to be right for the magazine before I can buy them, and that takes work by me. I have updated the submission guidelines, which I hope will help. In the meantime all I can do is apologize to readers, and to the writers involved.

On the plus side this means that Neil had space for an editorial. He talks about the Hugo win, and says a fond farewell to Sean Wallace who is leaving us to spend more time with his family. (Really! His wife has just given birth to twin girls.) I’m very pleased he got to go out on such a high. I am also very much keeping my fingers crossed for the World Fantasy Awards. I felt something of a fraud collecting the Hugo in Melbourne because I’m the new kid on the team, and it is the fiction for which the magazine is famous. Neil and Sean deserve time in the spotlight.

Our cover for the month is “For the Colony” by Ertaç Altınöz from Turkey. I love the way we pick up cover art from all around the world.

Clarkesworld #48

I only did a cursory post for the release of this month’s Clarkesworld when I was in Australia. I’m rectifying that now as our second podcast story of the month has just been released.

Our lead story of the month is “The Cull” from the excellent, and very prolific, Robert Reed. You can listen to it as read by Kate Baker here.

Story two is “Paper Cradle” by a promising young British writer, Stephen Gaskell. Kate’s reading of the story is available here.

Jeremy L.C. Jones has two interviews in this issue: one with Karin Lowachee and one with Angela Slatter.

The non-fiction article has made me very happy. When I was a kid I was very fond of a comic strip called Magnus, Robot Fighter. Bill Spangler has written a great history of the character.

And finally, the cover art. Those of you who might be wondering why no women ever get nominated for the Best Professional Artist Hugo might want to check out the work of Julie Dillon. I’m delighted to see her “Honeycomb” gracing the cover of Clarkesworld.

The Cause of all the Trouble

I’ve been trying to downplay this year’s Hugo win because, despite what SMOFdom might say, it is very little to do with me. Clarkesworld is justifiably famous because of the quality of its fiction. I hope that the non-fiction I buy is good, but on its own it would never have won any awards. I’m very much hoping that we win the World Fantasy Award as well, not because I want a Howie (though that would be nice), but because I want Neil to have the honor of collecting a trophy for his magazine.

Having said that, I am rather pleased with the new shiny toy, and this year’s dress was a big hit, so I think a photo is in order. This one is by Tom Becker and is the best I have found thus far.

Me and my Hugo, 2010 style

Oops, I Did It Again

I am utterly delighted to announce that Clarkesworld Magazine has won the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Congratulations to Neil, Sean, Kate and the rest of the Clarkesworld team. It appears that I have acquired another Hugo trophy along the way.

Amazingly no one has a photo of my 2010 dress online yet. At least not that I can find.

Huge thanks to Kevin and Mur Lafferty for helping with the live coverage while I was busy being swank.

There is a party going on. I am going to it. More tomorrow when I sober up.

Clarkesworld #48

A quick drive-by post on the new Clarkesworld. We have short fiction from Robert Reed and Stephen Gaskell, interviews with Karen Lowachee and Angela Slatter, and some fabulous cover art by Julie Dillon. I’m very pleased with this month’s non-fiction because Magnus, Robot Fighter was a favorite strip of mine when I was a kid. (Yes, I really am that old.) I was delighted when Bill Spangler offered me the article.

Clarkesworld #47

Yes, it is a new month, and therefore a new Clarkesworld hits the aether. What have we got for you this month?

Our lead fiction is from the very wonderful Catherynne M. Valente. From the title, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time”, you might deduce that Cat is writing science fiction, and in a way she is, but the story is mainly about a science fiction writer, and therefore about writing science fiction.

Cat’s story is, of course, also available as a podcast narrated by the wonderful Kate Baker.

The second story for August is “Messenger” by recent Clarion West graduate, Julia M. Sidorova. Julia has a PhD in molecular genetics, but the story is about something very different. This one will be podcast in a couple of weeks time.

Our regular interviewer, Jeremy L.C. Jones, has something slightly different for you this month. It is a group interview with members of the Altered Fluid writing group, including N. K. Jemisin, Matthew Kressel, and Saladin Ahmed. This should be absolutely fascinating for any young writers out there.

The cover art is “Watcher of Merlin” by David Melvin who is mainly a special effects guy but clearly has a lot of talent as an artist as well.

There is no non-fiction article this month. The simple reason for this is that if we don’t have anything we think is worth publishing then we don’t publish anything. Clarkesworld is, after all, paying for these articles. I’m very happy to work with authors to help get the sort of article we are looking for, but at the same time Neil expects me to keep up a standard. As someone who wants to pay for good quality non-fiction, I find it quite distressing that there is so little interest in providing it. I really don’t want to have to go the route of commissioning all the articles several months in advance just to make sure we have something good.

The good news is that in place of the non-fiction Neil has done a fascinating editorial about electronic publication and what it means to be a “magazine”. Traditional definitions are very much going by the wayside because of the new technology, and people who rely on categorization of publications (for example the cataloging work that Locus does, or awards such as the Hugos) are going to have to be flexible to keep up.

On the subject of electronic publication, Clarkesworld is now available in both EPUB (iBooks) and MOBI (Kindle) formats. #47 will be purchasable from the Wyrm Publishing store very soon now. We know that the magazine is available for free online, but if you would like to take it away on your portable reader we hope that $2.99 is a reasonable price to pay. Also that money helps us pay the many fine writers that we publish. (And UK readers, if you buy from the Kindle store you’ll get charged VAT on that, because our stupid government classes ebooks as “software”. Wyrm does not have to charge VAT. Also buying direct means that more money goes to our writers rather than to Amazon.)

Finally, as this month’s issue features a Cat Valente story, I should also mention that Cat edited the latest issue of Apex magazine, which features fiction from Nick Mamatas, Theodora Goss and Jeff VanderMeer. On Twitter Lavie Tidhar noted that it really doesn’t make sense for so many online magazines to target 1st of the month publication, and I think he has a point. Salon Futura #1 needs to be out in time for Worldcon, but after that I think I may drift towards mid-month publication so as not to cause too much of a reading log jam.

Clarkesworld #46

Another month, another issue. What have we got for you this time?

Our lead story is “Beach Blanket Spaceship” by Sandra McDonald, which is just perfect for warm summer days (with apologies to our Southern Hemisphere readers). As ever, the story is available as a podcast, narrated by the fabulous Kate Baker.

The second story is “The Association of the Dead” by Rahul Kanakia which, as you might expect, involves “Braaaaiiiiiiinnnns”, though hopefully not as you would expect. This one will be podcast in a couple of weeks time.

This month’s interview is with Jeff VanderMeer’s artist friend, Scott Eagle. There are some splendid images accompanying it.

My purchase for July is an ecology article by Sarah Goslee. “Packing for a Very Long Trip” is all about creating sustainable micro-environments for use on space stations, lunar colonies, generation ships and the like. It appears that the Chinese are being rather smart about this, though you may not like what they have on the menu.

And finally our cover art is “My Secret Friend” by Murat Turan. He’s from Turkey, which is rather nice as I’ve just started reading Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House.

As ever I must remind you that Clarkesworld is funded in large part by your donations. I’m please to see that our census is filling up nicely. For details as to how you, too can become a minion of Princess Cheryl (or someone else if you really must), see here.

Hopeless Fangirl

Quite by chance while looking though what was available on the BBC iPlayer I came across a program called Guitar Heroes which is simply a compilation of performances by rock bands and other guitar players from the BBC archives. The episode in question caught my eye because it included a performance by one of my favorite rock groups: Horslips. The track that they played was “Dearg Doom”, from a performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test. I was pretty sure I’d be able to find it on YouTube, and I was right. Here it is.

The song comes from the album, The Táin, which is a musical retelling of the Celtic legend, Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). The song title means “Red Destroyer” and it is the signature tune of the Ulster hero, Cúchulainn, who single-handedly holds back an invading army while the rest of the Ulster warriors are suffering from a curse.

Much of what Horslips did in The Táin, and also in The Book of Invasions, was re-tell Irish myths in rock music, but using themes from traditional Irish tunes. The guitar riff from “Dearg Doom” is based on “O’Neill’s March” which, as I understand it, was the battle song of the Uí Néill, a prominent Ulster clan whose badge, a red hand, has become the official badge of the modern province of Ulster. Here it is being performed, rather incongruously set to scenes from Braveheart.

Somewhat topically, the song eventually ended up being used as part of a theme tune for the Irish soccer team during their 1990 World Cup campaign. Here Eamon Carr and Barry Devlin of Horslips talk a little bit about the history of the song.

If Jason Heller ever does an article about fantasy-based rock albums to partner the science fiction one he did for Clarkesworld I expect Horslips to feature in in.

Linkage, Etc.

Herewith, a bunch of things that I have been meaning to post about.

– If you are in the UK, and have the bandwidth, please download Paul Cornell’s Pulse from the BBC iPlayer. The BBC will be counting downloads when deciding whether to commission a series.

– If I’d been more alert yesterday I would have posted about this and got there before The Guardian, but I’m glad they picked up the story. A woman in New York is suing Citibank because, she alleges, they fired her for being too attractive. Apparently her male colleagues were unable to concentrate on their work with her around. For the benefit of those straight male and lesbian readers who would like to check out Ms. Debrahlee Lorenzana’s alleged hotness, here’s The Village Voice with some photos.

– Subterranean is offering a free story, “Elegy for a Young Elk”, by Hannu Rajaniemi. (Yes, he’s one of my Finnish friends. He’s also very good. Just ask Charlie Stross.)

The New Yorker has published a list of 20 hot new writers under the age of 40. It includes Karen Russell, who featured prominently in the article I bought for last month’s Clarkesworld. Some of the other writers listed have written weird stuff as well. Two of them have been in Best American Fantasy. Of course this didn’t stop people around the blogosphere complaining that the list didn’t include any SF&F writers. Matt Cheney is suitably scathing.

– Meanwhile in The Guardian top Spanish writer, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, has been picking his favorite Gothic novels. The man has excellent taste. Now I’m annoyed with myself for missing his appearance on Sky’s The Book Show.

– Talking of The Book Show, also at Hay this week there was discussion amongst historians about the propriety of fictionalizing historical characters. The Guardian summarizes. I mention this for the benefit for Guy Gavriel Kay, who trots out this argument regularly when asked why he writes fantasy rather than (presumably more acceptable) historical novels.

– My congratulations to everyone at SpaceX for the successful launch of Falcon 9.

– And finally, an amateur astronomer in Australia has shot film of a bright flash on Jupiter. The prevailing theory is that the planet was struck by a large meteor, and the flash was the result of it burning up in Jupiter’s atmosphere. However, we remember how dismissive Ogilvy the astronomer was when he first saw those flashes on the surface of Mars. Who knows what might be coming.