I wrote a little discussion of my submissions stats to elucidate the comment thread from a few posts back. Jim seemed surprised that I had over 100 rejections. I checked and I had over 150. I think that Jim should get in synch with Heinlein’s rules and start submitting until somebody has a lapse of judgment and buys a story. The only way to sell a story is to keep banging it on editor’s heads.
The whole idea of “selling” is suspect, though, if you get less than minimum wage. My programmer bill rate is $76.50 an hour. If I take 4 hours to write a 3500 word story (a quick story indeed), it should be worth more than 8 cents a word. Instead, I feel lucky if I get $20 ($4/hour) for the whole thing and usually accept much less. I would say that you should write for the glory, but there is precious little glory in most websites.
So Jim, send me your stories and I’ll publish one. Use the email link – Contact Webmaster – in upper left hand corner of this page. Do it for the glory. (You can’t submit diretly at ScienceFictional.com. Since ScienceFictional.com is a zine prototype for my own amusement, I disabled the submission link in order to drive authors crazy.)
One Comment
If I wote just for money, I’m in the wrong business. I don’t write for instant gratification. I get min wage as it is at my day job. $8/hr and if I’m only in life for the money I’d still be in Amway.
I write for fun. If I wanted to get rich and I was healthy and some years yonger, I’d grab onto the Alberta advantage and make a lot more then what I’m doing now in the oil patch. Money isn’t important to me. I’ve been with the same company for the last 6 years and I’ve had other job offers commanding $10-15 an hour. I stick with where I am not out of loyalty but out of complacency mainly.
I don’t think at any time in my life I’ve ever had more then $2,000 bucks cash on hand, and that’s only been maybe a few times in my life. So much for doing it for the money.
Very few writers make a living writing SF or anything else for that matter. I think it’s something 25% in the fiction marketplace.
If you recall I said previously, I don’t want any payment for the story. I’ll just submit the story as is. Once I go give it the once over. You should see the submission by Sunday
apologize if my tone seemed out of my character :-)