Thursday, June 6, 2013
The Hard-Boiled Dimension - Closed Up Shop
I've pretty much reached the point where I hate posting new markets. In May I posted about a new mystery market called The Hard-Boiled Dimension and today I found that it's home page has been removed. No reason given. Be nice if these publishers would get their shit together BEFORE posting up a new market.
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6 comments:
Tell me how you really feel. You're right, my shit wasn't together. But more importantly, I didn't get any submissions. Just 1 actually. Not enough to do what I wanted, and that's after being live for about a month. I didn't think it'd be fair to publish someone's work if the site wasn't going to be a success, so I took down the page. I contact Ralan's to have it listed as closed a couple days ago.
I put the website back up temporarily with an explanation about closure.
Thank you for the information, Dusty. It's always helps to understand why a market is gone. One of the best ways to get a zine started is to solicit a few stories from writers you know and admire and post them so writers know you're serious about the zine. It also gives them some idea of what you're looking for.
Sorry to hear that you only received one submission. I remember Todd Robinson said once that he had to publish some of his own work to fill in his zine because he hardly received any submissions for Thuglit in the beginning.
I hope you will keep posting new markets, and folks like Dusty will keep trying to create them. New things are often risky, but nothing new can succeed until somebody takes that risk.
Seems like a chicken-or-egg paradox for new publishers. Writers worry that the market won't publish and so they don't submit, so publishers don't get submissions and can't publish. Jump-starting with some invited content seems like a great solution.
I'd guess it takes extra time for new pubs to start getting submissions because stories will make the rounds at EQMM, omdb, ADR, KRL, anthologies, and the other usual suspects before being sent to the new market (unless it's run by maybe Otto Penzler). Jump-starting would also buy time for stories to become available. Spreading the word about the submission call, a lot, might also be needed.
Maybe there are other clues writers should look for in new markets. Would be interesting to brainstorm that notion.
My fear about soliciting writers was that my friends are simply too good, or too busy to contribute. I'm not, my publishing history is minor at best. But the one guy who mentors me and is my friend also happens to be Nebula nominated. I also have a friend who has crime stories published and I hoped he'd be on board as an editor, but he's been too busy as a professor to help and now that class is out he plans on beginning a novel.
Hopefully once I get a bit more seasoned I can jump back in with a better reputation and better resources and create a nicer zine.
Yes, Peter, I will keep posting new markets. It just gets frustrating, especially in the past six months when markets I post close up with no explanations - even paying ones.
And yes, writers and editors do need each other to make a publication work. I think the bottom line is do you trust that new market or are you waiting to see what they do with it before submitting.
I look forward to that new zine, Dusty!
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