When I was starting out as a writer, I used to think a lot about the trajectory of my career. After all, much of what I knew about publishing short fiction came from Isaac Asimov's autobiographies. In them, he talks about moving up the ranks of the science-fiction magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, getting more recognition and better pay, until he was consistently appearing on the cover of Astounding Magazine, which he (and just about everyone else) considered the top of the SFF field.
As a teenager, I imagined a similar trajectory for myself, ending in Hugo and Nebula Awards and collections of short fiction as beloved as I, Robot. From a sample size of two (Ray Bradbury also seemed like a good role model), it looked like the natural way for things to proceed. Needless to say, this hasn't exactly happened.
Frankly, I'm not sure that the career path that Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury took is still open to anybody. The short fiction market is very different today than it was in the 1930s and 1940s. But even in their own time, there were hundreds or thousands of other writers actively working who didn't get the kind of improbable career trajectory that those two had. For those other writers (and for me, it turned out), the trajectory hasn't been so much a constantly rising line, but rather a series of dots and dashes, chaotically scattered all over the graph, and sometimes with large gaps in between.
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This was the context in which I realized a few years ago that I seriously needed to rethink my early hierarchical view of SFF short fiction. It wasn't productive for me as a writer to be obsessing over where the publications I was submitting to "ranked" in the scheme of things. And yet, this kind of thinking is baked into a lot of SFF short fiction discourse. We even have names for the different ranks of publications: "pro", "semi-pro", and "token".
These distinctions are based purely on the pay that writers receive, and yet they have somehow solidified into what are essentially major and minor leagues for SFF short fiction. Ask writers how they choose where to submit their stories, and they will often say they "start at the top" and work their way down.
This is natural enough, and I often act this way myself. We all need money, after all, and pay rates at pro zines can be ten times as high as those at semi-pro zines. In addition, publishing in the pro zines will often get you reviews and sometimes fan mail. If you're hoping to see your work discussed, there really are a few big zines to target.
But lately, I've been thinking about those smaller zines and feeling more and more affinity with them. If my career trajectory as a writer is a dotted line, and if the biggest existential question facing me is how to make sure that I keep writing in the face of indifference and few tangible rewards… then perhaps I have something in common with the publishers and editors of semi-pro and token zines who are almost always unpaid and unheralded, but tenaciously hanging on all the same.
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I did the math long ago and realized that writing short fiction is never going to pay my bills. Even in my best and most productive years, my earnings never topped a few thousand dollars. The calculus may be a bit different for folks in countries with a lower cost of living, but in the United States in the twenty-first century, writing and publishing short fiction on spec is strictly a hobby.
I write because short fiction appears to be how my brain processes ideas. And I submit my writing for publication because I love connecting with editors who have a similar sensibility as I do. Responses from readers are often sparse or nonexistent, but it's always a joy to hear from an editor who gets what I'm trying to say.
And I'm starting to think that editors and publishers might also like connecting with me. I like to think it makes their days a bit brighter to receive a submission that fits with the kind of work they'd like to publish. Or even one which is not quite right, but causes them to think and muse, and ask themselves, "Is this the kind of story that we publish here?"
This is where the semi-pro and token zines really shine. Because they pay less, there are so many more of them, and they don't necessarily need to focus on stories that can attract a big paying audience. The weirder and more esoteric my stories get, the more I find that the editors who really dig them are those who operate outside the pro-paying zines. The mere fact that this alternate publishing world exists makes me feel empowered to follow those odder paths in my writing. Without a big ecosystem of little zines, operating largely outside of any concern for commercial viability, the stories that get published would not be nearly as varied.
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Having accepted that writing is a hobby for me, I have become an unapologetic proponent of semi-pro and token zines. When I read and tweet about stories now, I make sure I'm not just reading the ones from the SFWA qualifying market list. Likewise, I try to direct my money and output to those markets as well. Over half the subscriptions and recurring donations I make go to lower-paying zines, and one-third of the new stories I submitted over the past year went to a semi-pro zine first.
I've always had a fondness for little zines, but my feelings have only intensified over the past few years working as First Reader at Lackington's. I've learned that it can be just as lonely to run a little zine as it can be to be a writer with a dotted line for a career trajectory. At Lackington's, we cheer every time we get another $5 donation on Patreon. (Seriously!) And we notice every single review, award recommendation, and tweet that concerns one of the stories we publish.
I've come to realize that the publishers and editors of these little zines want the same things I do as a writer. They want to belong to part of a community, and to know that they have at least a few fellow travelers who like to read the same kinds of stories that they do. So these days I try to take my role as a member of that potential community seriously, and make sure that they know I appreciate what they are doing in whatever way I can.
After all, these editors and publishers need as much encouragement as I do, and I really want them to keep going. I want their semi-pro and token-paying zines to continue to be part of the field for years to come, and I want them to become respected, if only through their tenacity and experience. I want them to keep searching for the stories that tickle their individual fancies, to keep encouraging the writers who only seem to get rejections from pro zines, and to keep pushing the field to grow bigger and weirder and more unruly.
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M. Bennardo's recent short stories appear in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, The Future Fire, Syntax and Salt, Mirror Dance, and Mithila Review. He is also first reader at Lackington's. The next issue of Lackington's (theme: Cocktails) will be publishing in June. The next submission window (theme: Archives) will be in July.
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