I hate when a submission call raises red flags. I ran across a call for an anthology titled "Twice Upon a Time" which was looking for retold fairy tales with a spin that they be written in a variety of sub-genres. Sounded good. Scrolling down through the guidelines I discovered that when the call was first posted they were paying a $50 advance but now were only paying royalties because they got too many submissions!!!
Okay, so do the first people who were accepted still get that advance or are they screwed? Can they withdraw their stories? Or are they stuck with a basically non-paying market?
The second red flag was raised when I noticed that this was some guy who had decided to turn his blog into a press and had a fundraiser going on Fundme. He's half way through and has only raised 9% of the $5000 he's looking for. This doesn't bode well for the press if he's depending on that money to publish the anthology. And there's no mention if the project will go forward if the funding doesn't come through.
The third red flag waved at me in the form of empty squares on the blog that read "Buy this advertisement space". Now, I know that other publishers run ads on their websites, but in the drop-menus there are also various places where he's asking for donations. What bothers me about all this is the fact that he's jumping into business without any funding, so how is he going to pay his authors?
Now, maybe he'll make a go of this enterprise, but you need to ask yourself as a writer if you want to be part of his experiment. I've linked to the anthology call so you can check it out and decide for yourself what you want to do, just proceed with caution.
2 comments:
Another flag is the long period they're buying the rights for.
I didn't think a year was too long for an ebook. I've seen them ask for up to five years in some places which is excessive.
Post a Comment