Tag: Duotrope

Capitalism conquers Duotrope

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

duotropeI have long been an advocate of the website Duotrope as a source for short fiction market listings and tracking story submissions.  It is great for predicting response times and acceptance ratios.  The search functionality and market categorization is good for targeting stuff.  I have also supported supporting Duotrope financially through donations.  I’ve donated several times, though I don’t think I did this past year since I haven’t been subbing many short stories and thus haven’t been using the site.

Alas, the site has grown to the point where donations seem no longer sufficient to sustain it and they are going to subscription only.  I get it, but part of what makes Duotrope so useful will die with this change, particularly the response time tracking.  Duotrope was the ultimate source for response tracking because so many people were reporting there, largely because it was a great place to track submissions for free.  I suspect you’ll still be able to report responses, but you won’t be able to access that information without a subscription so the benefits of reporting will be vastly reduced.  Reduced benefits lead to reduced reporting which leads to reduced quality of the information.  From my perspective, charging for the service will make the service no longer worth the price.  Ironic, no?

So will I subscribe?  Probably with the monthly plan, $5 per month.  That way I can drop a little money and use it when I need it and let it go when I don’t.  The annual subscription of $50 will be a bit steep for how I use it and would eat most if not all of my likely annual writing income unless I can sell a novel.

Is it really worth subscribing to a paid list to find non-paying markets?  Or token paying markets?  Not for me, even if I did still send to those markets.  Besides, I’ve sent to enough markets that I can probably find a lot of that info in my own records.  And there is always Ralan’s for a market list.

I’m afraid $50 is just too rich for my blood.  I suspect I’m not alone.  And I’m sad about it.  I still support the mission of Duotrope, but I fear that a subscription will reduce its relevance in the fiction world.  The change is set to take hold January 1st.  If you use Duotrope and aren’t planning to subscribe, be sure you download your stats before then.  I keep a spreadsheet, but I’ll have to make sure it’s current.  Duotrope helped me get my career where it is today.  I hope it can make the transition to a pay-based site and maintain that value for the subscribers.  Good luck to them, but I won’t be a regular there.

Holding My Breath Just Made Me Dizzy, Nothing More

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

A SFWA pro-level market just rejected a flash story of mine (FS).  I was a tough rejection to take because response time was making me hopeful.  Why oh why do I pay attention to stuff like that?  A long response time just means they haven’t decided yet.  It doesn’t take any longer to say “yes” than “no” so getting caught up worrying about how long editors scratch their heads is counterproductive.

I have plenty of irons in the fire and I need to find a different fire to toss FS back into.  There’s a good chance I can see my third SFWA-qualifying sale on the horizon already, but crossing fingers and refreshing Duotrope aren’t going to make it happen any sooner.  I just need to keep the writing flowing.

 

My Worst Heinlein Rule

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

If you are writing science fiction, hopefully you already know Heinlein’s Rules of Writing.  If not, I’ll let Robert J. Sawyer explain them.  I confess that I struggle with them all.  I go through spells where rule-one comes hard.  I have at least a dozen rule-two violations on my hard drive.  Rule-three…well, I’ve never been sold on that one because I do a lot of good work in the revision stages.  Rule-four is likely the one I’m best at, but its corollary rule-five is my nemesis.

Heinlein’s Fifth Rule of Writing: You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.  If I had a dollar for every excuse I’ve used for breaking this rule, I could write full time.  Or not, since that would take away half those excuses…but I digress.

At this hour three days ago, my Duotrope Submission Tracker (you support Duotrope, right?) had four stories on it.  Four.  Meanwhile my sreadsheet that pairs stories with target markets contained twelve stories.  That’s twelve finished, ready to submit stories.  Worse, two of those stories I was tracking on Duotrope were reprints and not even on my target list.  So that was two out of twelve stories in circulation.  Those two received responses on the same day.  That’s when I realized how badly I’d let Heinlein down.

The good news: I have been using the last few dwindling hours of my vacation to remedy that situation.  And I’m still sitting at seven stories on my Submission Tracker.  (For those keeping score, I’ve gotten five of the twelve out the door.)

Why so few?  One, I have a four-year-old who is also on vacation, so she has been a bit needy.  Then there’s a wife, housework, shopping, lame excuse, boring excuse, worthless excuse…  Oh, and then there’s my overwhelming urge to violate rule-tree and revise stories I had once declared as “finished”; that takes time.  I’m hoping to get a couple more out before bedtime and I have a goal of all twelve being out by Friday.  How many of these could have sold by now if I’d just kept them in circulation?

It’s all well and good to tout a few publications and call myself a writer.  It’s another to be a writer.  There’s no boss to remind me of my menial responsibilities; there’s just me.  Time to writer up.