'Zine Call for Submissions from a Blogger?

M.A.Gardener said:

This blog is calling for submissions for a 'zine. I'm wondering if anyone else has heard about it. I'm a little leery just because it seems really easy for a blogger to take my story and run with it. I know, I know, that can happen anyway, but this is an actual call for submissions and seems different somehow.

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It might help if you gave us the name of the 'zine.

And I don't find that necessarily suspicious, but it could be a sign they aren't a paying market. You can always check Duotrope to see if they have a listing.

Or the name of the blog. Otherwise, um, no idea.

Well, zines are kind of old school, but Christine Bylund does seem to exist and match the focus stated. So I think this is a real solicitation. I would want to know a little more before submitting (like how the zine will be produced and distributed and whether it is non-profit).

This is kind of relating to a question I have. A lot of the places I want to submit my short stories to are blogs, but they still pay the author. Like your story would be in a blog post. Could that be a problem?

A problem how? If you want the money, and the blog is not disreputable, the only issue is that even when the rights revert the story will probably be discoverable online.

veinglory said:

A problem how? If you want the money, and the blog is not disreputable, the only issue is that even when the rights revert the story will probably be discoverable online.

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Of course, many electronic publications archive any story they publish. (Most will take something down if the author requests it after a certain length of time passes - 12-18 months seems to be pretty standard.) Since none of them are password protected Googlebots/thewaybackmachine etc always have a potential to have cached the work.

The question to consider with blog-pubs is - are they offering monetary compensation that is comparable to a more traditional publications (electronic or otherwise)? If the rights they ask for are similar, and the pay is similar, and they seem to be fairly reputable/have a decent readership there isn't much difference between someone publishing your story on their blog and publishing it on a seperate website. (If you really want to be published on paper, well, there's not any substitute for that.)

The Twitter fic publishers use dedicated websites, blogs and their own Twitter feed to publish work.

Where do you want to see your stories?

And as an upside, online stories can be used as samples/promotion.

Here are the places that I found, if anyone wants to look:

http://www.everynighterotica.com/submit-story/


This is very NSFW! :

This place has a short story section and they have started publishing books, but I just wanted to submit my shorts

http://www.oystersandchocolate.com/SubmitContent.aspx

Here's their book press, if anyone is curious, again kind of NSFW :

http://oceroticbooks.com/submission-guidelines

I've sold three stories to EveryNightErotica. They have a very high acceptance rate, but very low pay. $3 Canadian.

Oysters and Chocolate is pretty legit and pays reasonably well. Don't know about their acceptance rate though.

Thank you. I wasn't entirely sure if they were both legit, and I wanted ask. I kind of wanted to test out the waters with publishing some short stories before I went any further. I know publishing with a publishing house, and publishing with one of them would probably be a lot different but it gives me some experience I would guess.

M.A.Gardener said:

Interesting feedback. I was most interested in writing short stories, but now one of my pieces has taken on a life if it's own. Guess I'll try doing both!

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You try submitting to some anthologies I guess. Some publishers have a minimum of 5000 words with a maximum of 10,000 words for a submission. Just an idea.

Both EveryNightErotica and Oysters and Chocolate like a 2000 word maximum I think.