considerations moving forward

1. considerations moving forward

   #1

   This is for discussion of nuts and bolts that I took away from issue 1 and want to invite conversation on for issue 2. I will try to organise things but this will probably be more of a brainstorming post delving into various issues.
   
   1. Big Picture Stuff
   
   Publication Frequency: there is talk of making this a periodical, or at least that's the stated long term goal now. The ultimate aim is put down as being a quarterly publication. But I'm thinking for the short term, the best we can do is half yearly and I don't even know whether issue 2 can be pushed out that soon given that we have zero stock in publishable material. One can argue that we probably don't need half a year and a little over again to collect publishable material for issue 2 again, esp. given that there' s a long time 'lost' during that half a year span when various members become disenchanted with the endeavour whatsoever.
   
   A subsidiary point is that I'm thinking we can start from yearly or half-yearly and then slowly build up to quarterly. I've even went so far as to have thought up the themes for the first year that we will release a quarterly issue: the 4 seasons of the year.
   Themes for each issue: for issue 1, we put in place a theme more or less pre-writing (after much fuss over whether we'll have one or not). I don't want to change what we had agreed upon but personally speaking, it's been hell for me to have a theme locked in place when I'm brainstorming for a story. So here's what I would like to suggest as a newish approach to try for issue 2 and onwards. How about we keep at any single time a list of ten themes that writers can work with and go from there? This way, we can stockpile stories across different issues all in one go and also don't hamper writers in the foot before writing for those of us who can't really work with constraints. 
   
   
   2. Communication
   
   Deadlines: I think from issue 2 onwards, we should announce all deadlines before we even start calling for submissions. We didn't for issue 1 cos everything's experimental and laisse-fares and we didn't really have momentum. So I think we should learn from that.
   
   Sub-point is that we need to decide on how long to leave story submissions open for and that in turn hinges on decision about publishing frequency.
   Intention announcing: We have 12 members including myself within this group. I count at least 5 who are on board as just commenters/production team. But what's happening with the rest of supposedly authors? I'm not admonishing anymore but I feel that we need to have at the very least an indication of intentions from all authors over whether they will be contributing to a particular issue, a show of hands for each round when submissions of work is open. If we want to go more sophisticated, some mechanism to make this enterprise a little less 'suit-your-own-whims' and more of a serious enterprise? I'm NOT suggesting that we force people and yoke people to this enterprise though, but you know, some way to tease out a little more commitment from authors.
   
   
   

2. Re: considerations moving forward

   #2

   sound thinking

3. Re: considerations moving forward

   #3

   I am of two minds on theme. When we first picked shapeshifter, I hated it, but found that I had no trouble adapting and writing with the constraint. I'm a little concerned about marketiing with such a narrow theme but only the future can tell with this

4. Re: considerations moving forward

   #4

   
   I am of two minds on theme. When we first picked shapeshifter, I hated it, but found that I had no trouble adapting and writing with the constraint. I'm a little concerned about marketiing with such a narrow theme but only the future can tell with this
   

   
   
   My point is that my suggested new approach is compatible for both sides: those who can't be hampered by themes and those who can't write w/o a theme. Anyway, minor point that. The real important message I draw out here is a concern over whether to market with a theme or not: I think those for a theme in marketing see it as the glue to tie all submissions together else it feels like a work of random stories pulled together (essentially the short story collection view). But you are concerned with a narrow theme not pulling enough people. As you said, that's for the market to tell us. But I think at this stage, we're going with this being a speculative fic specialised epub/ezine and each issue having a 'theme' that authors include in their stories somehow (can be strict or loose eg. Atop a Pine-covered Mountain is pretty central in shapeshifter theme but Empress is probably just loose). So basically, overall marketing as speculative fic pub is what I'm saying.

5. Re: considerations moving forward

   #5

   With Axle's forum poll, we might have up to 5 themes running at the same time. I think that's a reasonable start to my ambitions, 10 is probably too unmanageable given how many writers we have now.

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