Wing stubs giving me grief today. Started feeling them last night as I hunched over our desktop system. While I applaud the use of CSS in web development, I find it incredibly annoying when people lock a font size in which is teeny-tiny, so I have to squint and strain to read the text. Also topping my list of infuriating web developers: people who use dark red print on a black background. Not only is my eyesight screaming bloody murder, but my wretched posture, prolonged for several hours, has aggravated by TOS. Ouch. Might be time to break out the Clonazepam again.
Writing Stuff:
Read and started writing the review of this week’s Sci-Fiction story, “Volunteers” by Alex Irvine, for Tangent. Ye olde editor has again faded into some mystic unknown dimension. My reviews of the last two weeks still haven’t been published.
Heard from the editor of the Dreams and Shadows 2 anthology which I sold “Cyberevenge Inc.” to that he found a publisher for it–Cyberpulp. I’ve got mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it’s always good when a project gets green-lighted. On the other, I’ve been intentionally not submitting to the Cyberpulp anthologies because I’ve been uncertain about their business model. They don’t seem to provide hardcopy contributor’s copies to their writers, among other issues, plus their anthologies seem to be primarily aimed at the eBook market, and I still much prefer the look and feel of paper. I’m not going to pull the story, as I knew it wasn’t going to be a big money-maker anyway, but I would have preferred it if the anthology had found a more traditional publisher.
Get Opera. Kill bad CSS.
Those people who are NOT text oriented really irritates me. I have one LJer one time who ONLY use “italicics” fonts and men…did those hurt my eyes. One solution–delete him from my friends list. Why even use italics when you can use NORMAL prints? Duh. People are dumb. *shakes head* They think it looks pretty but not really. Anyway, hope your feel better later…
Cyberpulp is… yes. Well.
I sold a story to one of their anthos. Didn’t get a print copy (although the contract doesn’t specify any copy at all, so I guess I should count myself lucky I got the e-book copy.) My dad bought a copy from them via lulu.com, and the shipping costs (to Canada) more than doubled the price of the book. It wound up totaling around $60 Canadian.
The book itself looks fine at a glance, but when you get close you see that the editor’s name has been chopped in half at the bottom of the cover, the back cover is blurry and has a white border around the portion with text, the table of contents has no authors’ names to correspond to the story titles, the text is ragged on the right margin, and the start of every story looks like they just copy-and-pasted from the submitted files (ie, drop several lines, title, double space, by, double space, author’s name.)
It was my first book publication, but when I look at it and say “I could have put this together better myself,” well, it kind of takes a lot of the fun out of it.
So I’ll be avoiding them in the future, because they just don’t offer what I’m looking for in a publisher.
I’m surprised you submitted to an anthology that didn’t have a publisher yet. It seems out of character.
“I’m surprised you submitted to an anthology that didn’t have a publisher yet. It seems out of character.“
I got a call for submissions emailed to me from the editor, a guy I email occasionally and chat with on his Yahoo Group, just as I’d had the story resoundingly rejected. It fit his theme, so I sent it to him. I thought he already had a publisher (since it’s the second in a series), but when I found out he didn’t, he’d already accepted it, and I let it go. I figured he had a good chance of finding a publisher again since the first one had. I’ve definitely got mixed feelings about this, though.
Eugie
Hope you’re feeling better. “Cyberrevenge Inc.” is a great title. Good luck with the anthology. One of your stories is a feather in their cap. Hope to see you in chat tonight.
Re: Eugie
Sorry I missed chat last night. My wonky sleep cycles took over. Fell asleep after dinner, and by the time I woke up again, it was too late to join chat. Sigh. I read the transcript, though. Sounds like it was a good one!
Cyberpulp
That’s interesting info, Eugie. I wasn’t aware that markets can do that. Thanks!
Joel
waywriter.blogspot.com
Re: Cyberpulp
Oh there’s a huge continuum from great market to poor market on the rights they buy and what you get for it. It’s always a good idea to read both the guidelines and the contract real closely . . .