http://comicsalliance.com/kareem-abdul-jabbar-mycroft-holmes-preview/


You guys are probably familiar with this comic. I thought it looked intriguing and had no idea Kareem wrote anything. I was never familiar with his off court activities aside from being a student of Bruce Lee.

On a different topic I started an online magazine called Teleport Magazine. Currently I'm looking for submissions. Here's the link to my site: https://www.teleportmagazine.com

Sounds interesting. Keep us posted.




Again, interesting.

You may want to add in a bit more information for prospective contributors, e.g.:

Whether the magazine will only accept first-publication pieces, or whether it will consider works that have appeared elsewhere either online or in p[rint.

How long the magazine expects to have "exclusive" rights to publish the piece (e.g, 1 year, 2 years; if you want sole perpetual rights then you need to let the author know - that will chase off a lot of potential contributors though.

Some more detail on limits of contents. Is swearing allowed? What about explicit sex, or explicit torture, or abuse of animals? Are the stories meant to be PG13 or hard 18 or what? What's your policy on characters in the stories (as opposed to the authorial voice) using words like "nigger" or "faggot".

What the deadlines are. When do you expect the magazine to be out there? Some authors contribute free short stories to promote some book they have coming out. For example before Vinnie De Soth, Jobbing Occultist I gave away a coupl;e of shorts featuring him to a couple of anthologies just for readership character awarenesss; but that depended on knowing that the mags were out before my book was due.

When you will let people know if their contribution is accepted(so they can peddle it elsewhere if it isn't) and how you will contact them. Will you give specific feedback on the stories you;ve accepted or rejected, or will it be a polite form letter?

With a new mag you can't report the circulation (how many downloads or subscribers) but you can estimate it based on how you intend to market it. Writers wanting to find new readers will be more likely to contribute if they know a free publication will reach a wide audience.

You might also want to describe the intended size and frequency of the magazine (e.g. 25,000 words quarterly).

IW

_____


If it helps, here's a copy of submission call I received recently:

Big Picture Stuff
-----------------
1. First and foremost, be advised that this invitation to submit is no guarantee that your story will be included. [Company] has a reputation for setting the bar for indie fiction pretty high, and this anthology series continues that tradition.

2. The purpose of the anthology is two-fold: to showcase the breadth and quality of what indie authors are doing in fantasy and science fiction; and to introduce participating authors to as wide an audience of new potential readers as possible.

3. We will give away ebooks of the work for free. Authors may purchase at-cost print copies for resale at live events.

4. Theme/Genre: The only theme is good stories, well told. But to keep our audience focused, we are once again limiting the genre to science fiction, fantasy, and their related sub-genres. For example, time travel, paranormal, space opera, supernatural horror, urban fantasy and steam punk are all perfectly acceptable sub-genres. But stories that seem to be romances, westerns, spy thrillers, murder mysteries etc. are not, unless they contain obvious elements of a fantastic or speculative nature.


Story Content Requirements
--------------------------
Genre: Science fiction, fantasy, or related sub-genres
Length: Min 2000 words. Max 15,000 words.
File Format: MS Word or Markdown
Sexual content: racy is fine, pornographic is not
Coarse language: is fine, so long as it is organic to the story
Reprints: welcome (we want your best, even if it's not your most recent)
Marketing content: none (We will ask you later about your bio, your awards, your first kiss, and any other info relevant to the marketing of the story/collection.)

Submitting
----------
Deadline: Friday, Sep 30, 2016.
Method: email as an attachment to [address]

Marketing
---------
Throughout the production process, we'll be sending a web form to each author where you can enter your bio, previous publication information, web address, etc. All of these materials will be included with your story in the final book.

When we get closer to launch day, we'll begin discussing a launch plan with the authors and alumni, to ensure that we get the word out, both loudly and often.


Distribution
------------
The ebooks will be available on Amazon, Kobo, Nook, Apple, and Google Play.

We ask authors NOT to send ebook copies directly to their readers or friends. Instead, we ask you to send them a link to the book page on one of the ebook vendor sites. By doing it this way, we can still give the ebooks away for free, but each and every download helps to raise the ranking of the book, which makes it more visible on the vendor sites and gets us even more exposure. (If we allowed copies to be sent out by email, we would lose all of that potential momentum.)

Contracts
---------
Amazon requires the publisher to have a contract of some kind, granting publishing permission for the stories in the collection. We'll be using the same agreement we used last time, which will be sent around once we've made the final selections, but the contract essentially restates the details described in this email.

Sales/Revenue
-------------
E-books will be distributed free and do not generate revenue.

The print version will be available at cost to authors for in-person sales at the set cover price; authors retain the profit from any copies they sell.

The print version will also be available on Amazon and CreateSpace, under my account. Proceeds from that source will be used to reimburse the production costs and maybe pay for some advertising. If we accumulate more than that, the excess will be accounted annually and distributed to all authors equally. (To date, we've made about $50US from print sales of [previous publication].)

Of you have concerns about something I've outlined, feel free to contact me.

Other than that, I look forward to seeing your submissions.

Thank you very much for the information. Those are a lot of things I hadn't considered, especially the issues of rights and such. Truth be told, I wasn't planning on rejecting any story as long it's half way coherent and in the genre of science fiction, fantasy, or horror. I wasn't planning on paying anyone either since I'm broke and my magazine doesn't have advertising.

It's possible over time this project will evolve into a professional publication but for now, I'm learning and just playing with Wordpress.

Even for a "free givaway" type magazine, the key thing is to get circulation. Readership = reputation = people wanting to work with you.

How to do that is the bit where everybody struggles. So here's the "basic template" that a lot of people try. The winners seem to make it work by a mixture of talent, luck, and good networking.

1. Get a product - the magazine itself. Edit the stories. Be clear and honest with creators. Decide on a house style for grammar etc. (e.g. is it "red, yellow, and green" - with the comma after "and", or "red, yellow and green", without that last comma? Tabbed paragraph openers or not? What is abbreviated and what isn't?) Get the creator to agree (on record, via email or whatever) to the final laid-out version before it goes to print.

2. Prepare the issue in whatever editing programme you want - Word works fine for most things - including illustrations etc. Remember that the layout will need to auto-adjust to handheld devices like phones and ipads. Kindles will ignore fancy fonts and layouts anyhow. So get a product that looks good on a "traditional" computer screen but that still looks okay on other types of screen too.

3. Include hyperlinks. Include "invisible" link points, especially one called "Contents". Some ebook readers (including Firefox's in-browser ebook readers) automatically look for that link as a starting point.

4. Get the small print right. Include a copyright notice for each contributor and one for the edited package as a whole for the publisher. Acknowledge the authors' rights to be acknolwdged as the creators of their content. "Free" doesn't mean someone else can print out copies and sell them - say so. Include a contact - email is fine - for people to get in touch for permission to reproduce stuff etc (otherwise your copyright claim can be challenged because you gave no way for people to legitimately ask).

5. Pick a good cover. Remember that it also has to look good and be readable as a thumbnail on a sales page. BIG titles with bold single images work best. The artwork will need to be 300dpi, minimum 6"x9", .jpg or .gif so it fits any device without loss. Be really careful about using images found online; a lot of big companies like Getty Images troll for illegally reused images and make a nice sideline out of "pay us $300 and avoid a big lawsuit" threats.

6. Get permissions from all creators - authors and artists and any external editors - that clearly state their agreement for you to publish. Amazon and most other online retailers insist you have them so that their backs are covered. Let me know if you need a basic template agreement to use. The agreement should clearly state:

- Title of work

- Name of author and preferred pen name

- Approximate word count (to help prove the story you published is the one described in the contract)

- Date of agreement

- Whether the permission to print is exclusive and for how long (e.g. "Publisher has exclusive rights to release this story in print, digital, and audiobook format for one year from publication or from 1st November 2016, whichever comes first. Thereafter Publisher has the right to use story in additional sales of existing publication but the story is no longer exclusive.")

- The author warrants that the work is his or hers, that he or she has the right to license it, and that he or she indemnifies the publisher from claims caused by falsely saying this (i.e. somebody plagiarises someone else's work, you publish it, some big company's law firm get heavy - you need a liability shield)

- Whatever arrangement of payment there is, even if there is no payment. This includes frequency of payment and minimum payments (i.e. if the author is due $3 do you need to send a cheuque? Most publishers hold off until there's at least a $25 minimum royalty to send. A few have never sent me anything).

- Whatever entitlement the contributors have to free copies or to at-cost print copies.

- Name and address of all parties in the contract and how to contact them; if it is to be by email, specify addresses and how address changes are notified.

- Mention that legal disputes will be resolved in whatever state and country you want them to be resolved in, usually your state of residence. Otherwise you could end up trying to defend a copyright claim in a Japanese court or something.

7. Look at e-distribution. That Word file should convert to a .pdf and other more professional editing suites. Kindle etc. accept Word and pdf files now; experiment on which gets ported across better. You can uplaod your magazine for free to those vendors and you can set the price to $0.

8. Look at hard-copy distribution. The same work you did for the e-book translates very handily to Createspace and its competitors with hardly any extra effort. Pick one and make a print copy available. If nothing else, some authors like a physical copy of their stuff; some have doting parents too. There's no cost to you, because it's print-on-demand; but you will have a print editorial credit to your resume.

9. Publicise the hell out of the mag. The thing lives or dies by this. Social media is vital. Websites, interviews, "online tours" of people's blogs etc all rack up awareness. You need Facebook "likes", Twitter hashes, Amazon stars, reviews. Also start an e-mailing list so you can alert readers to subsequent issues (include a link, don't send out the mag; that way you can better monitor downloads and you don't piss people off by clogging up their inboxes).

10. Take then minutes. Repeat.

IW

I just printed out this check list. It'll be easier to refer to having it beside my laptop. I think the first two things I should focus on are the house style for grammar and the fine print- copyright, acknowledging the author's rights, and a contact inclusion.

Thank you for the detailed information.

Quite often author submission guides are specific about the format they want the stories to be sent in. The main practical reason is that they will need to copy/paste the things into a single publishing document, and Word and its imitators tend to slip in lots of secret formatting codes if you're not careful that them muck up pdf or epub reformats.

So typically, I get told to send in documents as follows:

MS Word or equivalent

Font: Times New Roman, 12 point

Single spaced (or sometimes double spaced depending on publisher preference)

Format style: Normal (the styles are shown in a drop-down box in Word)

No space between paragraphs (occasionally they want one blank line)

No hard-tab paragraph starts (those tab markers really screw up some publishing software, so editors have to strip them out first thing; modify the Normal style to use "soft" tabs that don't port across so the publisher can use their house style)

No formatting other than bold and italics except by previous agreement; this includes no underlining or font size changes. Any fancy stuff requires negotiation with the publisher. Some guides forbid even bold font.

No headers or footers (except sometimes they ask for right hand side page numbers at the bottom)

How to signify a story break, like a scene change or time passing. Some publishers like three asterisks in a line like this:
***
Others prefer you to leave two (or even just one) blank line. The advantage of asterisks is that you can globally search-and-replace them with some fancy graphic of your own at the formatting stage if you want to.

Your guide might also:

Specify whether you want American or British English if you care about it; you may wish to cite a dictionary or online dictionary which you use as your guideline. In the UK this is usually the Oxford English Dictionary.

Specify that reported speech is in double quotations, reserving single quotations for citations etc; eg, "She said we were 'taking a break', whatever that means."

Some publishers now prefer internal dialogue to be in italics rather than single quotes; eg He knows full what she she meant, Mandy thought.

Specify italics for names of books (except the Bible and other major religious texts like the Koran), ships, songs, plays, and unfamiliar foreign words; eg: If you check in The Science of Star Trek, the USS Enterprise D is Galaxy Class, so stop kvetching about it.

Specify if you want to use abbreviation points in things like A.D. or O.K. or I.D.

It is reasonable to ask writers to proofread and spellcheck their work before they send it in. Some won't.

You may just refer writers to the Oxford Style Guide, the Cambridge Style Guide, the Harvard Style Guide, etc, all of which are available online, but are really set up for academic writing not for fiction.

Publisher guidance on content is spotty in my experience, but the best stuff I've seen has included:

A list of things the publisher won't accept, or wants to discuss first. This is almost always things that will bring in hate mail: graphic rape, violence against children, underage sex, homophobia or racism, religious hardcore bigotry or religion-bashing, partisan politics etc. Mostly its a matter of knowing where the lines are. A story that dramatically cuts away can sometimes be more effective than one that includes extreme detail.

Guidance on bad language. This depends on the target audience of the book, and its age range. Very occasionally I get very specific rules like "one fuck or cunt per 1000 words". Mostly it's "keep this about PG-13" or "keep this Disney" or "anything goes". Some publishers are very strict now on racial and homophobic insults. Some still count profanity as swearing, so no "Oh my God! Sweet Jesus, dont!" etc.

A caution about quoting modern movies or songs. A line from Star Wars is usually fine. The entire lyrics of a Michael Jackson song - sometimes even one line, has led to lawsuits. Some publishers ask for the author to indemnify them by stating that neccessary permissions to quote have been sought. Anything more the 70 years old is public domain.

A caution about using real people, events, or commercial entities. You know the small print in the books and movie credits about "no resemblance to any persons living or dead..." etc? You need that. An author can theoretically include any dead person as a character in their works; if I want to portray a vampiric Mother Teresa of Calcutta I could probably get away with it. Portraying a werewolf Donald Trump will get me sued; even portraying a plump presidential candidate werewolf called Darryl Rump might get me in court - with my publisher. I'd have to use a satire laws defence.

Some publishers won't accept stories written in the first person. Most won't accept stories written in the second person.

The "said" question: Some editors don't like repeated use of "he said" or "she said". They prefer more dynamic attibutions: "he growled", "she gasped" etc. One editor I know word-search counts the "said"s and rejects short stories with more than 25 of them. Other editors really hate the circumlocution and forbid the florid replacements. If you have strong views, say so in your guide.

One editor I know really hates any sentence that begins with "Suddenly" or "Then". Bless him.

As editor you'll need to Google any character names and company names to check that they don't accidentally match real-life ones. The BBC nearly got into bother once with a planned TV series about a high court lawyer called Horace Rumbold. They found out just in time that there actually was a high court lawyer of that name who worked at the Old Bailey court. The series had great success as Rumpole of the Bailey. I know of one author who got into trouble because the name of his evil megacorp turned out to actually be the trading name of an actual megacorp who were not very happy about it. Writers should check this stuff - you could include it in guidelines; editors have to check it!

https://www.teleportmagazine.com

https://www.teleportmagazine.com