Musa Publishing

[Anna L.]

Guys, really. You all know that the real test is time. Come back in a year. I'll give you my sale numbers if you like.

[WordCount]

I've looked into Musa Publishing, and I like what I see.

Fast editorial service (I'd have to wait months for Samhain or Carina), is definitely a plus on my list.

I have a few short stories, and a novella WIP, that I think would be a good fit for Musa.

By the way, get well, Celina. I know that must be hard to get endure.

[Dominique Eastwick]

Good Evening AW.

I am stopping in only to check in on the Musa Thread in *cough* Celina's absence. As you can tell by my "High" post numbers I have, I do love to post Okay here are a few points I just wanted to cover from others' concerns. There are four directors at Musa, one of which is the most vocal - Celina. Celina's surgery was not a surprise to us and we have spent months preparing for it. She had things in her department lined up well in advance and we are running business as usual. Is she missed - hell yeah!

I, like Celina, welcome your questions and your concerns about Musa. We are open to the questions. That we are not on the AW thread or not responding isn't that I or the other directors are ignoring it - it's just that we are working. Celina has always been our voice on this forum for obvious reasons. And to be honest we are happy to let her continue to do so. If anyone has pressing questions about Musa they are welcome to direct them to me personally at Promotions@musapublishing.com. If I can't answer the question I will pass it along to the right department.

My main concern at this moment is to make sure Celina rests. Even if I have to pay someone to duct tape her down to do it.

[mscelina]

*sigh*

Oh, for pete's sake. I come to Absolute Write to play.

I am currently off-work from Musa because (a) I hurt; (b) I'm highly medicated; and (c) I feel that's a bad combination of events for decision making, editing, or any of the other various important business things I do. In the interests of full disclosure (not that it's anyone's business, really) I don't have *health problems.* I have a broken artificial disc in my back that was just stabilized with a multiple-level fusion, not a major illness.

Aside from the other three directors, who have shouldered a lot of the responsibilities from the editorial department, my assistants are handling submissions--as they've been trained to do--and the head editor at Urania, Dr. Matt Teel, is monitoring the day-to-day editorial operations at Musa, while the assistant editor at Penumbra, Coreen Montagna, is handling Penumbra.

So Musa, just like any other business entity, has a plan in place and implemented in the case of my absence as editorial director. And it's my opinion that no one at AW would give a damn if a managing editor was off work for six weeks due to a back surgery. So let's talk some more about those kid gloves, shall we?

I don't have any problem with Musa being held to a high standard at AW because so many folks here know me. I DO have a problem with Musa being held to a higher or unreasonable standard because I'm a longtime AW member. My back surgery shouldn't reflect any type of weakness in the Musa administration and I am HIGHLY insulted that anyone would claim that it did--especially anyone who is silly enough to make an ASSUMPTION about what's going on at a publisher they know NOTHING about. There's a difference between asking for information and just being...well, crass. I will happily provide an answer to any question of merit about Musa, because we have established a policy of transparency within our house.

But any kind of slam on my personal affairs, especially when jumping to the conclusion that back surgery is somehow a huge red flag? That goes beyond the pale. Good thing I'm only laid up for a couple of months; if it had been any longer, someone might have started a collection to pay for my funeral. So ask anything you want to about MUSA; keep me and my personal life out of it.

[James D. Macdonald]

For the love of Benji!

There are no safe places to publish. Shall I list respectable, long-time publishers that have gone toes-up?

A couple of things I always counsel:

1) Wait a year before you consider submitting to a startup, to see if they're still in business. (A huge number aren't.)

2) Are their books actually for sale? Have you personally read any of them? Do you know anyone who has? Are they being reviewed in the usual places that review books?

If the answer to any of those questions is "No," what makes you think that your book is going to be any different? (Other than, "Yes, but my book is different!")

My advice to all new writers is the same as the Sassy Gay Friend's advice to Juliet: "Slow down, crazy, slow down!"

So, submit to them or don't. Or wait a year. There are ton of other publishers with proven track records out there. Submit to one of them. If any start-up epublisher is going to make it in the long haul it'll still be here a year or two from now.

[sissybaby]

MsCelina - just wanted to stop by and tell you how much I love your new Avatar. And I hope you're feeling better than you expected, and to heal well.

[FabricatedParadise]

For the record - if anyone did in fact start a collection for Mscelina's funeral, please divert all funds to me and I will dispose of them without delay.



Also, I hope you heal quickly and with much entertainment (I peeked in the other thread ).

[mscelina]

Originally Posted by James D. Macdonald

For the love of Benji!

There are no safe places to publish. Shall I list respectable, long-time publishers that have gone toes-up?

A couple of things I always counsel:

1) Wait a year before you consider submitting to a startup, to see if they're still in business. (A huge number aren't.)

2) Are their books actually for sale? Have you personally read any of them? Do you know anyone who has? Are they being reviewed in the usual places that review books?

If the answer to any of those questions is "No," what makes you think that your book is going to be any different? (Other than, "Yes, but my book is different!")

My advice to all new writers is the same as the Sassy Gay Friend's advice to Juliet: "Slow down, crazy, slow down!"

So, submit to them or don't. Or wait a year. There are ton of other publishers with proven track records out there. Submit to one of them. If any start-up epublisher is going to make it in the long haul it'll still be here a year or two from now.

Word.

Originally Posted by sissybaby

MsCelina - just wanted to stop by and tell you how much I love your new Avatar. And I hope you're feeling better than you expected, and to heal well.

Thank you. I'm doing much better than the rumors of my soon-to-be demise would seem to imply.

Originally Posted by FabricatedParadise

For the record - if anyone did in fact start a collection for Mscelina's funeral, please divert all funds to me and I will dispose of them without delay.

For some reason this rubs me the wrong way. I'll have to think on it--you know, before the funeral home takes their cut.

By the way, I'm putting together some absolute numbers regarding the release schedule, books contracted, and the breakdown of those books according to length while I'm lying around doing a lot of nothing. I'll let you all know when it's ready--you know, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Also, I hope you heal quickly and with much entertainment (I peeked in the other thread ).

[FabricatedParadise]

Uh oh. You may want to fix that. ^

[mscelina]

Okay--

After hearing about the Musa release schedule in varying tones of horror or disgust or disbelief over the past couple of months, I spent this afternoon browsing through and organizing my scheduling tools and have prepared some numbers that might help you all to visualize what we're doing at Musa more clearly. (What else am I going to do on a Sunday afternoon after football season?) Therefore the first thing I have to say is--

--four hundred was not the correct number. This is what I get for coming up with a number off the top of my head. The numbers I'm about to share are correct until I left for my surgery on February 13. I believe 4 or 5 other books have been contracted, but at this point this is close enough for my purposes.

Musa is comprised of nine different imprints, three of which have their own head editor and editorial staff, and Penumbra, our speculative fiction digital magazine. Musa launched on October 1, 2011 with 41 books. Of that 41, 38 were reissues--the Aurora Regency imprint I'd built at AMP was purchased by Musa from the owner of AMP at the beginning of September. Of the three new releases, we had one novel, one novella, and one short story.

In the last three months of 2011, Musa published 141 books. Of that number, 53 books were reissues. Also of that 141, 59 books were novels, 36 were novellas, and 41 were short stories. 5 fell into an alternate category--1 chapbook, 3 anthologies, and 1 combination of poetry/short fiction.

Right now, if we add in the number of books we have either already published or contracted for 2012, Musa is at 293 different books--making the total to date for 2012: 152. I am currently scheduling releases for late August/early September, and I do have some spots set for series (like Homer Eon Flint) and sequels to upcoming books. This number includes the 10 or so books that are on hold due to personal issues on the part of the authors.

Of that 152, 73 are reissues--including the Homer Eon Flint collection, which comprises 27 of the 73 reissues. So far this year, we have published 36 books, with 15 novels, 9 novellas, and 12 short stories--4 of which are reissues.

So there we are--hopefully the break down of our release schedule will lead to a better understanding of what kind of work Musa is doing. One of our imprints, Urania (speculative fiction) is already releasing one book (whether short story, novella, or novel) each week in 2012. Our YA imprint, Euterpe, will go to a release a week in June, while the third imprint with a head editor, Erato (GLBT) is currently building its writing stable and its schedule within Musa. By the first of June, we hope to have that imprint releasing every other week as well. These three imprints have their own acquisitions readers and editorial staff and operate pretty much as autonomous small presses.

As for Penumbra, that's my baby. Right now, we're routinely getting 300+ submissions per theme. My acquisitions editor weeds out that initial slushpile to about 1/4, or 70 odd stories. From there, the stories are whittled down again by either me, another Musa editor or a pool of interns. The final 10-15 stories are sent out as a single raw file with author names removed to a pool of 5 readers. They are asked to rate the stories from 1 to 10 (or 15) and I build my issue out of that, usually ending up with 5 to 8 stories.

Since we assumed the electronic subscriptions of Realms of Fantasy, we have also added nonfiction content. We have two monthly columns, feature articles and interviews. I usually work closely with my interns (editorial interns) on Penumbra. Our interns got hands-on training when they produced (under my supervision) the December, 2011 issue. Right now, one intern is working with the layout/formatting for the magazine, one as a feature writer with me, and another in advertising sales. Two other interns are scheduled to act as editor of individual issues--one for our April issue and another for a June or July issue.

So--for 2012, we're looking at weekly releases of multiple titles at Musa, biweekly releases for the Homer Eon Flint collection, and monthly releases of Penumbra.

Whew! I'm actually glad I did this. I'll be able to present these numbers to our senior staff at our staff meeting tomorrow. Hope this helps.

[lweinberg18]

Just submitted a short story! Yay

[Smiling Ted]

Heal quickly, O Doom Bunny.

-a fellow back-sufferer

[WordCount]

I have a question, what is the minimum word count? I have a couple of MSs sitting around, and most of them are pretty short.

[Anna L.]

Originally Posted by WordCount

I have a question, what is the minimum word count? I have a couple of MSs sitting around, and most of them are pretty short.

What do you mean by 'pretty short'? Too short to count as short stories? Micro fiction? Twitter fiction?

Penumbra (Musa's short story mag) accepts stories between 300 and 3000 words. That's the shortest stuff they'll take.

[WordCount]

Originally Posted by Anna L.

What do you mean by 'pretty short'? Too short to count as short stories? Micro fiction? Twitter fiction?

Penumbra (Musa's short story mag) accepts stories between 300 and 3000 words. That's the shortest stuff they'll take.

Thanks for answering.

No, nothing quite that short. We're talking 500-1200 words.

[Sage]

Musa will consider submissions of any length from short story to epic novel for all imprints.

http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/p/submissions.html

[WordCount]

^Thanks.

The main reason I asked was because the definition of short-story isn't that well defined. Some people think a short story is longer than 2k words, some think longer 1k..etc.

[mscelina]

A short story at 500-1200 words is too short for Musa to publish as a standalone ebook--we want to publish shorts above 5K and below 15k for our short story lines.

If your stories are speculative fiction, however, you can submit them to Penumbra, our spec fic eMag. BUT--and there's always a but--we have announced submission calls out for the specific themes we're looking for on the Penumbra website. Don't just lump all those stories and throw them into an email and submit them; the only submissions calls we're currently accepting manuscripts for are (1) Dreams, for our August issue; (2) Native American folklore for our September issues; and (3) Edgar Allen Poe for our October/first anniversary and Halloween issue. I strongly suggest that you go to our website for submission guidelines and deadlines.

[WordCount]

Originally Posted by mscelina

A short story at 500-1200 words is too short for Musa to publish as a standalone ebook--we want to publish shorts above 5K and below 15k for our short story lines.

If your stories are speculative fiction, however, you can submit them to Penumbra, our spec fic eMag. BUT--and there's always a but--we have announced submission calls out for the specific themes we're looking for on the Penumbra website. Don't just lump all those stories and throw them into an email and submit them; the only submissions calls we're currently accepting manuscripts for are (1) Dreams, for our August issue; (2) Native American folklore for our September issues; and (3) Edgar Allen Poe for our October/first anniversary and Halloween issue. I strongly suggest that you go to our website for submission guidelines and deadlines.

Thank you, Celina.

I went to check a couple of those themes out on Penumbra, and I like some of the themes.

My personal favorite, is for the December issue.Utopian!

[lweinberg18]

Originally Posted by mscelina

A short story at 500-1200 words is too short for Musa to publish as a standalone ebook--we want to publish shorts above 5K and below 15k for our short story lines.

Stupid question, just submitted a story at 4,100 words (I have a 5,250 word version), so the 4,100 words is too short?

[Catadmin]

Originally Posted by WordCount

The main reason I asked was because the definition of short-story isn't that well defined. Some people think a short story is longer than 2k words, some think longer 1k..etc.

The people you're talking to aren't looking at industry standard definitions, then. While the maximum word count accepted by a publisher varies, there is an actual defined limit to each type of "story." Here's the breakdown as I know it.

Flash Fiction - Up to 1000 words
Short Story - 1000 to 7500 words
Novelette - 7500 to 20,000 words
Novella - 20,000 to 50,000 words
Novel - 50,000 +
Door Stopper Fiction - 120,000+ (it's still a novel. It's just BIG.)

[WordCount]

Originally Posted by Catadmin

The people you're talking to aren't looking at industry standard definitions, then. While the maximum word count accepted by a publisher varies, there is an actual defined limit to each type of "story." Here's the breakdown as I know it.

Flash Fiction - Up to 1000 words
Short Story - 1000 to 7500 words
Novelette - 7500 to 20,000 words
Novella - 20,000 to 50,000 words
Novel - 50,000 +
Door Stopper Fiction - 120,000+ (it's still a novel. It's just BIG.)

The 2K definition is set in by SFFWA for the Nebulas. That's where that comes from. Which is really the only reason I asked said question. The people I've talked to say above 1000, but I'm not exactly talking to the New Yorker.

Thanks for answering!

[Polenth]

Originally Posted by WordCount

The 2K definition is set in by SFFWA for the Nebulas. That's where that comes from. Which is really the only reason I asked said question. The people I've talked to say above 1000, but I'm not exactly talking to the New Yorker.

The Nebulas don't have a minimum word count for short fiction. Anything under 7500 counts as short fiction, as far as the Nebulas are concerned. I nominated a 190-word story last year. So I don't know who said that, but they got their wires crossed.

[Catadmin]

Originally Posted by WordCount

The 2K definition is set in by SFFWA for the Nebulas. That's where that comes from. Which is really the only reason I asked said question. The people I've talked to say above 1000, but I'm not exactly talking to the New Yorker.

Thanks for answering!

In reverse order: You're welcome.

I didn't get my numbers from SFWA, though I did look for their page first (I couldn't find it. It got buried somewhere), so I googled it and found the above definitions elsewhere (which are the same as the ones SFWA uses). EDIT: And, as stated above, I don't think SFWA has a 2k limit on anything related to the awards. Maybe on what they accept for membership, though.

Just a note, though. "Door-Stopper Fiction" is a word made up by Sandra MacDonald to describe my monstrosity of a novel when I brought it to our crit group. It's not an officially recognized size or standard, even though there are books that big.

[WordCount]

I'm not explaining this very well, do put up with me.

I'm talking about their definitions of size.

It says:

Flash Fiction: Anything below 2K words
Short story: 2K-7500
Novelette: 7500-17500
Novella: 17.5K - 40,000
Novel: Anything above 40K