Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Worlds

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Wow, I'd never heard of Archway Publishing, it is a shame to see SNW associated with that.

Interestingly, "Archway" was a Simon & Schuster imprint for certain junior "Star Trek" tie-ins in the 80s.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Archway_Books

I'm kind of confused by the idea of paying a company thousands of US$$ to get a book published.

"Vanity" press. (That serious authors and would-be authors were always warned about.)

It's sounding like a sponsored or mentored self-publishing venture, and I don't recall if the new rules say that the final book (or eBook) prize would be Star Trek-related. It may be for an original manuscript down the line?

Doesn't the author usually get paid when their story is published?

Yep. More and more, publishers are expecting authors to do so much more. I've heard of authors having to prove they have had (paid) outside editing help when submitting a spec. manuscript, how they can assist with distribution (organising non-returnable bulk purchases by local book shops), or guaranteeing what amount of social networking promotion the author can do.

 

[Bibliomike]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

It's sounding like a sponsored or mentored self-publishing venture, and I don't recall if the new rules say that the final book (or eBook) prize would be Star Trek-related. It may be for an original manuscript down the line?

That's my understanding of the rules. They specify the self-publishing prize package cannot be used to publish Star Trek fiction. If you won and wanted to use that prize, you'd have to publish an original, non-Trek novel. (Or maybe it could be used for non-fiction as well, I don't know.)

My impression is self-publishing doesn't have quite the stigma it once did, but my opinion is it is better to be paid for your writing than to pay someone to read it.

 

[Idran]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

My impression is self-publishing doesn't have quite the stigma it once did, but my opinion is it is better to be paid for your writing than to pay someone to read it.

I don't think that second part is even opinion, I think that's pretty solidly objective fact.

 

[JD]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

My other big heistation with self-published stuff is the lack of editorial oversight. If I'm going to spend money on a book, I want to know I'm getting a professional level product that's been thoroughly edited and proofread by a professional. Now, freebies don't bother me, or even stuff that's like a dollar, but any more than that and I'm out. I know there have been some popular books that have come out through self publishing like Eragon and The Martian, but chances are if it's that good it'll end up getting picked up by a publisher.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

self publishing like Eragon and The Martian...

I would bet that those authors paid for the services of a professional editor.

Even many small presses expect that of authors these days, as it reduces their costs.

 

[Idran]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Yeah, there are freelance editors for hire just as there are freelance writers. Professionals that often have the same sort of credentials as in house editors at publishing companies.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Yeah, there are freelance editors for hire just as there are freelance writers. Professionals that often have the same sort of credentials as in house editors at publishing companies.

KRAD is one.

 

[vegaslover62]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

The real tragedy as far as my stories are concerned, is that I wrote a story that I didn't think was up to snuff, and thus didn't submit to the original contest, but when I put it on Fanfiction.net, it got rave reviews. The contest had ended by then, so it was too late. Now that it's back, the new 7,500 minimum word requirement was engineered to eliminate all previous entries, which were 7,500 maximum, and the one I should have entered is actually kinda short, shorter than even the 7,500 stories. I've even written another that also got great reviews on Fanfiction, but it's over the new contest's max word limit.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Yeah, there are freelance editors for hire just as there are freelance writers. Professionals that often have the same sort of credentials as in house editors at publishing companies.

I know, I have several friends who do such work, too, but my point is that many smaller (and ven larger) publishers now insist that authors pay their own editor first, before submitting their manuscript for consideration for publication, because there isn't enough in the publisher's budget to do the kind of work they used to do.

I've even written another that also got great reviews on Fanfiction, but it's over the new contest's max word limit.

You can try shortening it. But the works are supposed to be unpublished, and publishing online is still publishing.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

But the works are supposed to be unpublished, and publishing online is still publishing.

I don't think amateur publication counts. This is supposed to be for authors/stories that haven't been professionally published before. Didn't some of the original SNW's authors have a discussion board where they posted their stories for mutual critiquing, or something?

 

[Bibliomike]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Didn't some of the original SNW's authors have a discussion board where they posted their stories for mutual critiquing, or something?

There was an AOL forum where we actively discussed the contest and got "hints" from Dean (you can find a good number of them in the back of SNW 3 - the same things kept coming up multiple times) and each other, but, at least in that space, there was no online posting of stories. It might have gone on elsewhere.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

self publishing like Eragon and The Martian...

I would bet that those authors paid for the services of a professional editor.

You would lose that bet. Neither of those books was edited professionally until after a major publishing house picked them up. The Martian wasn't even written as a book.

 

[Idran]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

But the works are supposed to be unpublished, and publishing online is still publishing.

I don't think amateur publication counts. This is supposed to be for authors/stories that haven't been professionally published before. Didn't some of the original SNW's authors have a discussion board where they posted their stories for mutual critiquing, or something?

For what it's worth, that's the standard in academic publishing. Don't submit a paper you've already had published in another journal, but if you've "published" it by throwing it up on the ArXiV, no big deal at all.

 

[vegaslover62]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

You can try shortening it.

I honestly have to scoff at the unsolicited advice some people think they can just freely give to writers. "If you want, you can even expand it." Oh, yeah, sure. Like whatever goes on in my head is unlimited and I can tack on so much more to what I already think is the complete story. "You can try shortening it." Even better. Every writer writes like journalists do, with a series of compartmentalized information segments an editor can JUST take out on a whim, as if everything in fiction prose is not interconnected and we can just excise a chapter willy-nilly without the whole story being affected. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother telling people I'm a writer...

 

[Idran]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Professional fiction writers have to expand or shorten their stories to fit publication limits all the time, though. When someone says "shorten", they don't mean "cut out a part and don't make any other changes", they mean "rewrite the story so that it is a shorter length with whatever that entails".

 

[Christopher]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

You can try shortening it.

I honestly have to scoff at the unsolicited advice some people think they can just freely give to writers. "If you want, you can even expand it." Oh, yeah, sure. Like whatever goes on in my head is unlimited and I can tack on so much more to what I already think is the complete story. "You can try shortening it." Even better. Every writer writes like journalists do, with a series of compartmentalized information segments an editor can JUST take out on a whim, as if everything in fiction prose is not interconnected and we can just excise a chapter willy-nilly without the whole story being affected. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother telling people I'm a writer...

If you're a writer, then you should know that the ability to lengthen or shorten a story to fit the requirements of a given market is a necessary part of the craft. You can't expect a publisher to change its rules to accommodate you; they're looking for writers who can adapt their work to accommodate them. Their length parameters aren't arbitrary, but are determined by what's practical and necessary for their publication. They have a lot of other people competing for the same few openings, and if you can't write a story that fits their length requirements, they'll have plenty of other submissions that do fit their needs, so you won't have a prayer.

Indeed, it's a good idea on general principles to try to shorten your work as much as possible, since first drafts tend to be more bloated than they need to be. Stephen King's rule of thumb is that you should try to trim at least 10 percent out of your first draft. Often you can cut out the first chapter or scene without materially affecting your story, because it often tends to be "walking to the plot," setup that delays getting into the interesting stuff. It may be something you needed to write to figure out how to position the characters on the stage, as it were, but the story doesn't really begin until they've gotten there. Otherwise, there are plenty of other ways to shorten a story. I always try to do a few editing passes to trim out unnecessary verbiage or repetitive exposition, to make the sentences more concise. Or there may be bits of worldbuilding and description and character business that were interesting to write, but that aren't needed to advance the story.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

You can try shortening it.

I honestly have to scoff at the unsolicited advice some people think they can just freely give to writers.

I am a writer. I write professionally-paid book reviews. I am often asked to write to a set word count, or to expand or edit down at someone's whim. It goes with the job. As a teacher, I help kids expand and reduce stories every day. I once turned an essay from a "pass" to a "distinction" by dumping 50% its content to meet the strict word count.

Scoff at the advice all you like, but writers are no strangers to such requests. And probably every time I've shortened a piece to meet a reduced word count, I've ended up improving the piece, or at least making it acceptable to the person paying for it.

 

[Bibliomike]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Amen to what the pros are saying about word counts. I write for a lot of professional religious education curricula, and editors depend upon writers hitting specific word counts, on specific deadlines. It behooves you to make your editors happy. Happy editors will give you more work.

I don't know how much that directly translates to writing fiction, but I would think fiction writers want to keep their editors happy, too!

 

[Therin of Andor]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

... editors depend upon writers hitting specific word counts, on specific deadlines. It behooves you to make your editors happy. Happy editors will give you more work.

The professional journal I edited was sometimes allowed to add pages, and the expense was actually quite negligible, but we could only add batches of eight pages. See the editor and designer scramble to fill those extra pages and make it not look like a rush job or "padding"!

 

[Jim Johnson]

Re: Free Star Trek eBook by S&S (US only) and return of Strange New Wo

Didn't some of the original SNW's authors have a discussion board where they posted their stories for mutual critiquing, or something?

There was an AOL forum where we actively discussed the contest and got "hints" from Dean (you can find a good number of them in the back of SNW 3 - the same things kept coming up multiple times) and each other, but, at least in that space, there was no online posting of stories. It might have gone on elsewhere.

I started a Yahoo Group for SNW Writers 2002 that's still in existence but hardly ever used any more. I don't remember how many members we had that went on to sell SNW stories and other professional-rate stories and novels, but I know it was a bunch.

The group was private and a lot of the writers uploaded stories for critique and review and discussion. It was a good group for the time, I'd say.

I'm happy to see SNW back. As mentioned up-thread, it's the only open market for Star Trek short fiction. Anyone in the US who's interested should take a shot at it, with the caveat firmly in mind to be very wary of the ASI/Archway prize. Other than that, a pro publication credit and a thousand bucks in your pocket for a placed story doesn't suck.