Small Press Zines

[coalescent]

There's an interesting discussion going on at the moment at the Nightshade forums, titled 'The resurgence of the small press zine'. It starts out as an enquiry about what zines are out there--things like Flytrap, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Electric Velocipede, and so on--and moves on to consideration of the value of such outlets. Following the suggestion that the pro mags are 'too conservative' for the material being published in the zines, Ellen Datlow responds:

In fact, I'll go further. I read all the boutique magazines mentioned above and others-- and they're basically just mixing genres and throwing in some mainstream. Some of the stories they publish are good. Others not as good. Very few break any kind of new ground in form or content. But overall, if you read all those magazines all the time only a few of the stories stand out. This is not to put them down but to put things in perspective. They aren't doing anything that hasn't been done before. It's always a positive to create more markets for good writers. More markets encourage more writers to continue to write short fiction.

And then on to why some writers, such as Jeff Vandermeer, aren't appearing much in the major venues:

Early on, I sent Ellen tons of stuff at Omni. Some of it, frankly, sucked, and some of it didn't fit Omni's brief. Since she's gone online I've had to overcome my natural aversion to submitting original fiction to non-hardcopy venues (which I'm over now). But now the problem is I'm writing very little short fiction and a lot of it gets snatched up by specific anthology venues. So Ellen's right--she's seen maybe 3 or 4 stories from me in the last few years. She didn't get a look at "Three Days" or "Secret Life," for example. I've decided to become more systematic in my approach with the short fiction I do have, so she will be seeing just about everything first from now on. Which doesn't guarantee anything. It's very *wrong* to assume an editor is not open to surreal or cross-genre work just because they're not taking *your* work.

And Gordon van Gelder talks about balancing commerce and art:

As I've been reading through this thread, the comments of one veteran editor keep ringing in my head---he said to me, "Of course Analog is selling better than any other magazine: it's the least risky."

I bring up that comment, I guess, to defend against the charge of a conservative attitude in F&SF. I don't particularly like that word, "conservative," but I'll be the first to say that I've got to balance the artistic side of things with the commercial side. For every reader who appreciates the challenge that a story like John McDaid's "Keyboard Variations" offers, there are two or three readers who favor less challenging work like Ron Goulart's lighter fare.

For what it's worth, I think 'Keyboard Variations' may be my favourite story of the year so far.

Anyway, there's more in the thread and it's all good, including Jeffrey Ford pointing out that any distinction between 'experimental' and 'traditional' fiction is essentially meaningless. What it did make me think about, though, was Hugo nominations. You'll be hearing a lot more from me about Hugo nominations over the next couple of days, but it just occurred to me that there's actually no category in which LCRW or Electric Velocipede are actually eligible for anything. They're not big enough to be semiprozines, and they're not fanzines; Locus put them in a category of their own, 'the miniscule press'. Have I got this right, or are they actually eligible in one of the categories? Anyone?

Comments

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Uh, exactly how are they not fanzines?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I guess that's what I was wondering: are they? I don't know. The ballot definition of fanzine is:

A generally available non-professional publication devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects which by the close of the previous calendar year has published 4 or more issues, at least one of which appeared in the previous calendar year, and which does not qualify as a semiprozine.

And the ballot definition of semiprozine is:

Any generally available non-professional publication devoted to science fiction or fantasy which by the close of the previous calendar year has published 4 or more issues, at least one of them in 2004, and met at least 2 of the following criteria in 2004:

1. had an average press run of at least 1,000 copies per issue,
2. paid its contributors and/or staff in other than copies of the publication,
3. provided at least half the income of any one person,
4. had at least 15% of its total space occupied by advertising,
5. announced itself to be a semiprozine.

I would have thought most of them fail point 3 in the semiprozine definition, and I'm pretty sure a number of them fail the '4 or more issues' test for fanzine.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Oh, you mean entirely in reference to Hugo eligibility.

First, I would point out that the Hugo rules don't say that anything is "not a fanzine", they just say you have to have published four issues including one in the previous calendar year in order to be eligible.

Second, you're simply wrong--Electric Velocipede is definitely eligible, having published over four issues including at least one in 2004. And although I can't lay hands on a 2004 issue of LCRW, I'm pretty sure one exists, and they've definitely published more than four overall issues as well.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You're right, I misread the category--I saw 'four issues per year' rather than 'four total, with one in the last calendar year'. Thanks.

[drplokta]

If they want to be semi-prozines, they can be. All they have to do is to declare that they are semi-prozines, and pay a contributor or staff member one cent, and they are eligible in the semi-prozine category.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

See my reply to pnh--the ballot definition seems to make semiprozine a bit more rigorous than that.

[drplokta]

They don't have to meet all of the criteria for semi-prozine, they only have to meet two -- and the "paid something to someone" and "declared self to be a semi-prozine" can be met by anyone.

They do have to have published four issues, though, and if they haven't then the problem is not that there's no space for them in the Hugo categories, but rather that they're still too newly established.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yep, it looks like I was reading too quickly! Thanks.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

And here's the $64,000 question: anyone have addresses for these zines? Or, at the very least, a decent list of URLs? (I'm not wanting to flood the slushpiles: I'm honestly curious, seeing as how I started my joke of a writing career on the first desktop publishing boom.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yes, sorry, I should have included those in the original post.

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

Electric Velocipede

Say ...

Flytrap

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Much obliged. I'd heard of Flytrap before, but I didn't have any idea of where to get it. Thanks.