July 2010
Stepping off the Roller-Coaster:
An Interview with Six Female Editors
By Jeremy L. C. Jones
Introduction by Lettie Prell
I own a copy of SF: The Best of the Best, a collection of stories edited by Judith Merril and printed in 1968 by Dell. Among the writers featured are Carol Emshwiller, Zenna Henderson and Shirley Jackson — alongside Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight and Theodore Sturgeon. This was far from Merril’s first edited volume, by the way. She’d been at it since 1950. An alien anthropologist, given this artifact, would not guess that women today have struggled to make it in this business as editors, let alone writers. Or is that a preconceived feminist assumption? The following interviews feature the perspectives of six contemporary women editors. Let’s explore what they say, and see what insight we might gain on the issue.
One caution, however. These women are not really focused on what it is to be a woman editor. They’re busy being the gatekeepers for quality fiction. More importantly, they’re busy shaping what we’re reading.
Jeremy L.C. Jones has selected a variety of editors “submitted for your approval” as Rod Serling would have said. Their positions run from slush reader to publisher, and the publications they edit encompass on-line and print mediums, and firmly sf/f to, well, the weird. However, there is a unifying current. They all love reading, and they all want the same thing — a story that fits their magazine, that moves them, that has that special quality that other stories don’t. And this, given Judith Merril’s wonderful introduction to the 1968 Best of the Best anthology, is what she wanted, too. And not because she was a woman.
These interviews come at a poignant time for me. After five years, I’ve stepped down as editor of the Broadsheet. Unlike the women that follow, I have not edited fiction. Instead, what I’ve hopefully done is helped raise awareness of women in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres — because perhaps it hasn’t always been as easy for women as our alien anthropologist might be led to believe.
The Editors
Nancy Fulda is an editorial associate at Jim Baen’s Universe.
Susan Marie Groppi is the editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons.
Deb Taber is a senior editor at the Apex Book Company and Apex Magazine.
Ann VanderMeer is the editor-in-chief of Weird Tales.
Sheila Williams is the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction.
Beth Wodzinski is the editor-in-chief of Shimmer.
Broadsheet: What should a short story do? Or, put differently, how does a story work on the reader?
Nancy Fulda: I believe it was Orson Scott Card who once described a story as a collaboration between the author and the reader. The words, the plot, and the chain of events come from the author, but only the reader can provide the emotional responses that make a story memorable.
So for me, a good story should set up a space where the reader’s imagination can work, and then get out of the way. Most of the beginners’ errors I see involve the author tripping over his or her metaphorical feet: throwing in info-dumps, melodrama, or ambiguities that hamper the reader’s emotional engagement with the story.
Susan Marie Groppi: A good short story needs to strike a balance between opening new worlds or new ideas for the reader and being a self-contained piece of narrative; some of my favorite short stories are the ones that act like a small window into a larger and richer landscape. I know this sounds a little vague, but I think that’s because there are a lot of different ways that a short story can succeed. Some of them showcase an interesting moment in a character’s life, some of them show something technologically or scientifically exciting, some of them are just action-filled thrill rides. Some stories succeed by being beautiful, some by being intellectually awesome, some by being epic, some by being witty. There’s no one right answer.
Deb Taber: First of all, the story must communicate what the author is trying to say, whatever that may be. Some aspects of plot and character may be open to interpretation, and readers will certainly bring something of their own to any story, but if the story is opaque to the vast majority, it probably hasn’t done its job.
If you’ll allow me an analogy here: I used to teach stagecraft to high school students, and when teaching them about lighting, I would always ask what the designer’s job was. Answers that came back were usually along the lines of “creating mood,” “establishing setting and time of day,” etc. It always took some prodding to get the most essential answer: to allow the audience to see the performers. Writing is the same: the audience must be able to see the story through the words. The story may be intentionally shadowed and take some work on the reader’s part to see clearly, and that’s fine if it’s done skillfully — I actually prefer stories I gain more from on the second and third and tenth reading — but the reader must be able to recognize the story somewhere in the shadows.
What that story does once the reader finds it depends partly on the author’s intent and partly on the readers’ interests. I love stories that disturb me, because they force me to think about them, to churn them in my mind until I can invite a new idea inside and get comfortable with it. Stories can teach, or they can entertain, or they can do both and more. It’s always up to the reader which aspects of the story he or she decides to let in. A good story offers readers something they don’t already have; it’s up to the readers to accept or decline that offer.
Ann VanderMeer: A good story should pull the reader in and compel them to read further. A good story should engross the reader and take them somewhere else. And a great story will stay in the reader’s mind long after it’s read.
Sheila Williams: Stories entertain us and make us think. Good stories cohere, and usually offer us something new — an original character, idea, plot twist, etc. Readers need the sense that the writer is in complete control from the get-go.
Broadsheet: How did you come to become an editor?
Nancy Fulda: Serendipity. I was hanging out at the Baen’s Universe Slush Conference, submitting and critiquing stories, and I got an email from Paula Goodlet out of the blue. She said they were looking for someone with an editorial eye and would I be willing to help out. I said yes (of course), and the rest followed from there.
Susan Marie Groppi: In college, I interned at Circlet Press, a small press specializing in SF/fantasy erotica. I had to leave that position when I graduated college and needed a real full-time job, but I started working with Strange Horizons a couple of years later. I don’t have any formal qualifications or training to be an editor — I don’t think most editors do. A love of reading is usually a good start.
Deb Taber: I’ve always been a grammar and spelling nerd. I made it to the regional spelling bee in... I think it was the fourth grade... then crashed out in 11th place on the word “equestrienne” because I got cocky as a nine-year-old horse-loving girl and spelled “equestrian” without asking for a definition. The irony here is that I now edit a horse magazine as my day job. I also used to proofread my older sister’s papers, and acted as the resident live dictionary when people needed an instant definition or spelling help. After attending the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in 2004, I joined the Clarion West communications committee as a volunteer proofreader, but at that time my day job was still in technical theatre, not editing.
As far as becoming a speculative fiction editor, I had a story (my first paid publication) accepted by Apex and was following their blog, waiting for the release date of the issue containing the story. Jason Sizemore (Apex Founder/Editor-in-Chief) posted a call for a new slush editor, and since I already corrected people’s grammar for fun (fun for me, not for them, most of the time), I asked if he’d be interested in giving me a shot. I started off in the slush, as most editors do, then Jason tossed a couple of test stories my way to edit, and then a few more. After the decision to pursue a full book line rather than just publishing a couple of anthologies in addition to the magazine, I ended up taking over that end of things while our Senior Editor of the magazine side of Apex, Gill Ainsworth, handled the short fiction. It’s worked out well that way, especially since Gill’s in the UK and we publish several UK, Canadian, and Australian authors, so she and I pick each others’ brains on the intricacies of foreign style when we are working on a manuscript in each other’s mother grammar.
The Apex work, along with the bad pay in the theatre business (even worse than publishing) led me to seek out more editing as a full-time occupation, leading to my current work as Managing Editor at the above-mentioned horse magazine.
Ann VanderMeer: I’ve always been a reader, reading everything I could get my hands on. I read a lot of short fiction magazines back in the late 1980’s and thought I could do one myself. Ha! It was a lot harder than I thought, but I enjoyed it. And I learned a lot along the way.
Sheila Williams: I pounded the pavement, putting my résumé in wherever SF was published. I finally found out about a job opening at Davis Publications (the original publisher of Asimov’s), by attending an author’s reading at Columbia University — I was living in the neighborhood.
Beth Wodzinski: It sounds facile, but I’d always thought it would be fun, so I started Shimmer. I’d read a lot of small press magazines, and was impressed with how distinctive each was, how each had its own personality, and I wanted to see what I could do. I did a little research, and found out that it was actually possible, so, with the generous help of Mary Robinette Kowal and Jason Radley, we opened in 2005. It’s been an extraordinary experience: fun, fascinating, educational, and endlessly challenging.
Broadsheet: Has your understanding of your job as an editor changed since you started out and if so, how?
Nancy Fulda: Yes. I used to think that an editor could step in and shape a story to match his or her own preferences. After sending out a few rewrite requests and reading the resulting revisions, I realized that an editor can only refine the story that the author has already created; trying to turn it into something else is a guaranteed route to frustration.
Susan Marie Groppi: I’m not sure that it’s changed all that much. I think I’ve gotten better at it, with practice, but my sense of what I’m supposed to be doing is pretty much the same as it always was. One aspect is screening incoming submissions to find the ones that are right for your publication, and the other aspect is working with writers to make sure that the story you’re publishing is the best it can be. My job is to shepherd things along, to act as the conduit between the writer and the reader. Oh, there is one aspect of my understanding of the editor’s job that has changed. Most people don’t realize how much non-editing work most editors do — on top of the actual “editor” work, there’s usually some “running the publication” work as well, which has nothing to do with editing. It’s a weird confluence of jobs — the skill set that makes you a good editor is probably completely distinct from the skill set that makes you a good magazine manager.
Deb Taber: I think I had a rather naive vision of an editor being a person who sat quietly in a solitary space and performed an unending stream of line edits. There is a lot more to the job than reading and correcting, and much of it is fun (some of it isn’t). Working back and forth with authors on edits to try to come up with something they are happy with, yet conforms to what I would consider a standard of readability can be either exciting or grueling, but it’s also why I prefer editing fiction to non-fiction — it’s a creative process of balancing a set of rules and conventions with an art form.
Ann VanderMeer: I started out as a Publisher/Editor. Now I am a fiction editor only (Ed. Note: Since the time of the interview, Ann has been promoted to editor-in-chief.), which makes my job a lot more fun. The actual reading/acquiring/editing hasn’t really changed all that much, just the technology that an editor uses. It’s easier in some ways, but also harder in other ways. There is a lot more pressure to be fast. Sometimes I think that speed is being valued above quality nowadays — not just in fiction but everything. You see writers out there competing to see who can write the most words per day. That does not impress me. I’d rather see a writer take six months to write an amazing story than six hours to give me something quickly.
Sheila Williams: Over the years, editorial work has largely remained the same, but magazine editors have absorbed many of the duties that used to be done by typesetters, production editors, and the art department. Work is far more streamlined. Editors have more control over the final product. In many ways, though, they now have a lot more work to do, and many more responsibilities.
Beth Wodzinski: I’ve learned a lot more about my role as publisher; that’s a much larger part of what I do than the actual editing. Early on I was naive; I guess I thought elves would handle the administration and marketing and coordination and all the other non-editorial parts, and I’d just get to bask in the stories. Ha! It doesn’t work that way. I do have a dedicated group of talented people helping out, fortunately; there’s no way I could do it all myself.
Broadsheet: What sort of story are you looking for?
Nancy Fulda: For Baen’s Universe, I’m looking for stories that make me feel like I’ve just stepped off a roller coaster. I want something out of the ordinary, a little quirky, and filled with the unexpected. At Baen’s we often say that we want upbeat stories, but that’s not strictly true. What we want are stories with a fundamentally optimistic view of the universe, even if the story itself ends sadly.
Susan Marie Groppi: Good ones? I know, everyone says that. It’s a tough question at Strange Horizons, because we have three primary editors in the fiction department, and we each have different kinds of favorite stories. Speaking broadly, though, I’m looking for a story that shows me something I haven’t seen before. For example, we get a lot of retold myths and fairy tales. Some of them are beautifully done, but at this point in my career as a reader, I want something more than “Snow White from the witch’s point of view” or “Sleeping Beauty with a feminist slant.” That story’s been told. Tell me a new one.
You’ll notice I said “in my career as a reader,” not as an editor. Editors are basically just readers who have read way, way, way more short stories than anyone else has.
Deb Taber: We like dark science fiction at Apex. In our books, we have published some dark fantasy and straight horror, but for the magazine we only take dark science fiction — technology, science, medicine, alien cultures, future worlds, etc. We aren’t particularly interested in magic that has no root in science, and we tend to be especially uninterested in vampires and werewolves. I like both, personally, but not for Apex.
The “dark” element is open to some amount of interpretation, but the basic thing to remember is that we don’t want happy endings. This doesn’t mean we need the SF version of Reservoir Dogs; we’ve published stories such as Patrice Sarath’s Pigs and Feaches, that are dark in a haunting way rather than being particularly violent or frightening. There’s just a certain feel — I like to think of it as “gritty” — that tends to make a story appeal to us. “Visceral” might also be a good word. We want to feel the story, and it should hurt, at least a little. I’d love to see more true SF in our novel submissions, especially submissions from women (see more on this in the “advice for writers” answer below).
Ann VanderMeer: Unique, unusual, thought-provoking and unforgettable. Well-written character-based fiction that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else but Weird Tales.
Sheila Williams: Mostly science fiction. Some fantasy, though generally fantasy of the ghostly or surreal, not the traditional tropes of fantasy.
Beth Wodzinski: Our sweet spot is contemporary fantasy stories, beautifully written, with a strong (and often tragic) emotional core. If you look at our 10th issue (available free online), Carnivale of Abandoned Tales, by Caitlyn Paxson, and River Water, by Becca De La Rosa, are really great examples of what we’re looking for. But as that issue shows, our tastes are a little broader than that: we’ve got some funny stories and some science fiction and even a few heart-warming stories.
Broadsheet: What are some of the reasons that you might reject a story?
Nancy Fulda: Nothing’s happening. We get a lot of submissions where most of the action is taking place in the character’s head. The character wakes up and spends a paragraph remembering what happened the night before. The character eats breakfast and wonders what to do about Antagonist X. The character goes to visit a friend and they discuss why Antagonist X wants to... you get the idea.
This kind of story can be done well, but all too often it becomes an exercise in futility. I need the external world of the characters to be dynamic rather than stagnant.
Too much is happening. Some authors try to generate interest by opening their story with an action scene. Now, I’ve got nothing against a high-adrenaline opening, but frequently there are so many bullets flying around that I can’t get my bearings. I can’t get involved in a gun fight unless I know who’s battling whom, and why.
I don’t care about what’s happening. This is the heartbreaker. Sometimes a story has all the right ingredients, but it just doesn’t resonate with me. In about half the cases, this is simply a market mismatch and the story will do fine when it’s submitted elsewhere. In the other half, I think the problem comes because the author him/herself isn’t emotionally involved in the story. As wiser heads than mine have asked: If you don’t care about what happens to your characters, why should I?
Susan Marie Groppi: One, it’s not doing anything new or interesting. Two, the writing is boring or lifeless. Three, it relies on some tired or trite stereotype. (God help me, if I never see another “henpecked husband and shrewish wife” story, it’ll be too soon. Same goes for “guy is too stubborn to ask for directions even though his long-suffering wife told him so.” Believe it or not, those sad old clichés are even more boring when the characters are a henpecked space-alien husband and his shrewish space-alien wife.)
Deb Taber: The most common reason is that there just isn’t anything that makes it stand out. Probably 80% of the stories I read make me think, “I’ve read this before.” Not that it’s plagiarized; simply that the plot, the characters, and the storytelling all feel familiar. There are always going to be elements of a plot that have been done before, so the writer must bring something new to keep me interested. Plot-oriented fiction can certainly work, but it takes an author who reads widely, both in and out of the genre, to understand what has already been done and then take it in a new direction.
Flat characters are also a major issue. Characters are one of the easiest ways to bring an element of uniqueness to a story, a different slant to the readers’ view, and a vitality that keeps the reader engaged. Clichéd characters or those who seem to exist only as props for the plot tend to make a story fall flat. My personal pet peeve is whiny protagonists. I wouldn’t invite a stranger over to whine about his miserable life, so why would I do it for a fictional character? This doesn’t mean that characters must be happy, by any means, but wallowing in self-pity is going to be a hard sell.
Bad mechanics. If I count five errors in the first ten lines, I’m automatically done with a story. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened. I’ll certainly forgive an author for not knowing some of the more intricate rules of punctuation, but misused words, blatant typos, and abused homonyms are all signs that the writer has not taken the time to learn the basics, or has not taken the time to re-read and polish the story before submitting. When it comes to mechanics, it’s my job to know the details, but it’s the writer’s job to know the basics. However, if English is not the writer’s native language, it doesn’t hurt to put that in the cover letter. I might be a little more lenient with that in mind.
Ann VanderMeer: Predictable. Typical. Two-dimensional characters. Poor use of language. Too many exclamation points.
Sheila Williams: Story is boring. Character is boring. Character’s situation is boring e.g., lousy job, lousy marriage, etc.
Story is too predictable. Character meets exactly the doom I imagined was in store for him or her. Character reaps reward, is rescued, in exactly the way I imagined he or she would be on the first page. Characters are too clichéd.
Stories are underpopulated. One main character, who may be a lot like the reader. Good stories usually show a few people interacting with each other realistically.
Beth Wodzinski: I don’t know how useful my reasons are; it’s all incredibly subjective, anyway. I often see stories that we’ve passed on show up at other markets, and that makes me happy — that stories I thought had a lot of potential found their right editor.
If you must have reasons, though: one question we’re always asking ourselves about stories is, does it do enough? A story might have lovely writing, or a really memorable setting, or a great idea, yet not be complete enough or go deep enough. Does it do enough?
Broadsheet: What are some of the most common problems you find in stories that you’ve already accepted for publication/during the editing process? And how do you and the writer fix them?
Nancy Fulda: Others handle most of the pre-publication work, so I’m not the best person to ask about this. Generally, though, we only accept a story if we like it just how it is. At that point, the editing process consists primarily of line-edits and grammar checks.
Susan Marie Groppi: I don’t really know how to answer that one — we don’t usually accept for publication stories that have significant problems. Most of what we do in the editing process is clean up phrasings that we think could be clearer or smoother. Every once in a while we find tense shifts or continuity issues, but we don’t do major substantive editing on stories that we’ve accepted for publication.
Deb Taber: Sometimes there are sections of a story that just don’t work. Perhaps the action is unclear, or the language is out of accordance with the rest of the piece, or, most commonly, there’s a logic flaw. When this happens, I generally give a writer a list of reasons for wanting a change, propose a direction to go, and request a rewrite of that section. I don’t want to put words in the author’s mouth, so I try not to get too specific, unless the issue is word choice. In that case, I try to offer a couple of suggestions and let the writer know that she is welcome to come up with an alternative, as long as it suits the story’s tone. Rewrite requests aren’t unusual for sections of a novel or novella, but they’re less common with a short story. If a short story needs a rewrite, it’s unlikely to be accepted in the first place. With longer work, you can have a really strong piece that just has some minor glitches, and most authors are open to a rewrite of small portions to make the book stronger overall.
Tense changes are one of the most common issues. I’ve noticed that especially in the last year, writers seem to have thrown tense into the wind, and I think part of it is because few people are taught simple rules for past vs. past perfect; I think the increase in casual writing on the Internet has also contributed to a lot of shifts between present and past tense as well, because when you’re just writing an email to a friend, you know she’ll understand you even if you mix tenses, so people pay less attention and rely on the reader to figure it out. This is generally handled through line edits, so like all other line edits, I make the changes in the manuscript, then send the marked up copy to the writer to accept or veto or work on a compromise.
Punctuation corrections probably make up the vast majority of my edits, but they are fairly easy to correct and don’t generally result in any objections from the author.
Ann VanderMeer: When I edit a story, I pass the edits back to the writer to see before publication. There are no common errors. Each story and writer is different.
Sheila Williams: I work out structural issues before I buy stories. Most stories are in pretty good shape once I buy them. Sometimes, though, there are small inconsistencies that are usually left over from former drafts of stories. When these issues pop up, I usually ask authors to repair stories in galleys.
Beth Wodzinski: We’re usually pretty happy with a story before we accept it, so our edits tend to be fairly small. As we go through the story, we’ll call out things like spots that could be clarified, passive phrasings that could be more active, skimpy descriptions that could be enriched, places where adding a line or two might add additional layers and nuance to the story. Sometimes there’s a bit of back and forth with the author before we get everything just right, in a way that works for both the author and us.
Broadsheet: How do you balance time, the number of submissions, and the needs of an individual story?
Nancy Fulda: We’ve got a large editorial team, so we handle it through specialization. I focus on incoming submissions. Sam works with new authors via the Slush Conference, and Paula handles a lot of the line-edits. If there are major changes needed to a story once it’s been accepted by the magazine, Mike [Resnick] or Eric [Flint] typically handle it.
Deb Taber: By giving up sleep, generally. Sometimes our submissions editors get overwhelmed, and the rest of us try to step in and help. Sometimes I get overwhelmed and have to push a deadline back by a week. We’re a small press, so we all have day jobs and other commitments to balance with the work, but we do this because we love the stories and the genre. Because of this, the needs of the individual story don’t get sacrificed, even if it means a scramble at deadline or that our response time gets a little longer than we’d like.
Ann VanderMeer: Not as well as I’d like to! Right now I am averaging 40-50 submissions a day. I won’t take a story that needs a lot of work because of this. And unfortunately because of space limitations I turn down a lot of good stories. And sometimes the writers will have to wait 6-8 weeks for a response. I know that this frustrates some of them to no end as they are getting too used to a 2-5 day turnaround from other publications. Sorry about that but it can’t be helped. If they don’t want to wait, they shouldn’t submit to Weird Tales.
Sheila Williams: I don’t balance these two things. Large numbers of submissions are read through very quickly. Work on an individual story is like all the other work I do to get the magazine out.
Beth Wodzinski: Since we reopened, our submission volume has been about double what it was before! It’s a challenge to keep the response times down, and we’ve added some readers to help with that. That’s also allowed us to be really picky: if we’re patient, the right story will come to us; the individual story doesn’t usually need much improvement. At a personal level, I’m still struggling with balance, with making my day job, my other interests, my home life, all work harmoniously with Shimmer. There’s always about three times as much stuff to do as there is time!
Broadsheet: Who are some of the most exciting women speculative fiction writers working today?
Nancy Fulda: Julie Czerneda, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Mary Robinette Kowal.
Susan Marie Groppi: When you use the word “exciting,” it makes me think up-and-coming! Alaya Dawn Johnson is someone to keep an eye on. I’ve just finished reading her first novel, and it was beautiful and captivating. Based on what I’ve seen of her short fiction, she’s got a great range as a writer, too — that’s something I find very exciting in an author, someone who can do very different things and do them all well.
In terms of what I’ve read of their short fiction, I’m also excited about Genevieve Valentine, Meghan McCarron, and Margaret Ronald, all of whom are doing very interesting work.
If we’re talking about writers whose careers are a little more established, I think Nancy Kress is brilliant. I still don’t understand why her Probability trilogy didn’t get more attention; those books are some of the smartest and coolest science fiction I’ve read in a long time. Kelly Link’s writing has set a new standard for both beautiful ideas and beautiful language.
I know I’m at risk here of running on indefinitely, so I’ll just close out the list by adding Kate Wilhelm and Nicola Griffith, two writers who consistently put out amazing books, even though they’ve both moved a little bit away from speculative fiction lately.
Deb Taber: That is an incredibly difficult list to narrow down, and I’m trying to think of how to look at the “most exciting” approach. Nisi Shawl’s Filter House, which just won the Tiptree Award, excited me when I read it. It’s the kind of book that makes you realize you were hungering for stories that weren’t being told. I enjoy Camille Alexa’s work quite a bit; again, “hunger” is the closest sensation I can use to describe the feeling her stories generate. And, of course, all of us at Apex love Jennifer Pelland and Katherine Sparrow. I’ve named all short story writers because that’s what I’ve been reading lately. I’m behind the times on female writers of SF novels. If Octavia Butler were still alive, she would be at the top of that list. I also wish there were more novels by M.J. Engh in the world.
Ann VanderMeer: Let me tell you who I am excited about in short fiction today. Kelly Barnhill, Rachel Swirsky, Cat Rambo, Karen Hueler, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz just to name a few. There are many others and my list continually grows.
Sheila Williams: This is an impossible question to answer. I don’t like to limit myself to a few writers because there are so many excellent writers out there, each with her own exciting style.
Connie Willis, Nancy Kress, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch are incredibly strong and powerful voices whose work should never be taken for granted.
Exciting newer authors include Elizabeth Bear, Sara Genge, Felicity Shoulders, Deborah Coates.
Other authors whose work I love include Mary Rosenblum, Carol Emshwiller, Kit Reed, Karen Joy Fowler, Lisa Goldstein, Kij Johnson, and naturally many names that just aren’t popping into my head right now
Beth Wodzinski: Well, that’s an impossibly broad question — there are so many incredible women writing spec fic! So I’m going to limit it to authors I’ve published: Becca De La Rosa, for her amazingly gorgeous stylistic feats, which so perfectly suit her stories; Shweta Narayan, who writes with a particular warm grace and emotion; and Angela Slatter, for the dark and perverse undertones of her stories.
Broadsheet: Do you have any advice for writers — and perhaps women writers in particular — looking to break in at your magazine?
Nancy Fulda: The problem with that question is that no matter what I answer, some well-meaning author will use my advice to shoot themselves in the foot.
There’s no one-size-fits-all recipe for getting into Baen’s Universe, and especially not for learning how to write in general. Some authors need more passion. Some need less. Some need better plotting. Some need stronger characters.
Interestingly, the authors I perceive as the most successful aren’t the ones who have mastered all skills equally, but rather the ones who are exceptionally brilliant in one or two areas even if they fall short in others.
So I guess my advice would be: “Learn your strengths and capitalize on them. Learn your weaknesses and how to cope with them.”
Susan Marie Groppi: Keep trying! We have pretty good publication statistics for female authors at Strange Horizons, so I don’t know that women need any specific advice when it comes to our magazine, but speaking more generally I’ve found that women do a lot more second-guessing with their fiction than men do. They hold stories back longer before sending them out, and they’re far more selective when it comes to which markets they’ll submit to.
Deb Taber: Read our guidelines, and read interviews with our editors. We’re a rather outspoken lot, so much of what we like and don’t like can be found on our blog (http://www.apexbookcompany.com/blog), both in posts and in links to external interviews.
I would love to see more true science fiction from women. We tend to get more dark fantasy from female writers, but whether it’s hard science or soft science, I’m in this genre because of the influence of women who wrote science fiction — namely Octavia Butler, Connie Willis and Pat Murphy, and before that, Monica Hughes — and there is something about the way women approach topics such as biology, physics, and technology that I think fills a need in a lot of readers, male and female alike.
So write dark science fiction, and write it well, but don’t be afraid to push the lines of the genre a little bit. We’re kind of sticklers for mechanics, too, so polish it up before you send. And most of all be professional, which I’m sure all Broadsheet readers know. I’m always amazed by the cover letters that do everything that the most basic cover letter how-to will tell you not to.
For women especially: Don’t hide behind male pseudonyms. We want fiction from women, and while your name won’t be a deciding factor in whether the story gets accepted, it’s good to let the world know you’re out there.
Ann VanderMeer: My main advice would be to believe in yourself. Don’t jump on the latest trend and write what you think will sell. Write what you want to write, what you must write. Be patient. And keep writing.
Sheila Williams: The first thing any author has to do is to send in her work. It won’t sell to an editor if the editor hasn’t seen it. A writer should never assume a rejection is due to gender. That will only cause the writer to give up before she gets started. Culturally, our society needs to do more to promote an interest in science and engineering in young women. That would increase the number of women interested in reading and writing SF. That problem doesn’t affect the women who actually are interested in writing SF, though. Unfortunately, their numbers make up no more than about thirty percent of SF’s readers and writers. The women who like science, who study it, or keep up with it as laypeople, are just as likely to be published in Asimov’s as the men who feel the same way
Beth Wodzinski: I recommend reading an issue or two of the magazine. We made our tenth issue a free download to celebrate reaching #10 — that’s a great way to see what kind of stories we’re interested in. Other than that, it’s just the usual mix of luck, skill, and persistence.
Broadsheet: Where do you see your publication heading in the future? Are you concerned about survival? Are there major changes occurring within the genre or readership that you’d like to be responsive to?
Nancy Fulda: One goal of Baen’s Universe is to break down the walls between authors and editors; that’s why staff spend so much time in the Slush Conference.
The other major goal has been to revitalize short fiction by paying rates comparable to novel-writing. Established professional authors earn up to twenty-five cents per word writing for us, which is enough to lure some very respected names to our pages.
In the future, I expect we’ll see both of those policies continue, along with a more flexible payment structure that lets customers buy individual stories as well as individual issues.
Susan Marie Groppi: I don’t have any significant concerns about our survival. We’re funded primarily by donations, and that means that we’re as vulnerable as anyone else to the current economic crisis, but our operating costs are also very low. We also benefit from the fact that we’re a nonprofit organization.
The elephant in the room in most of these discussions is the fact that short fiction isn’t a commercially viable enterprise, and hasn’t been for decades. Genre publishing isn’t unique in this respect, though. Science fiction people like to mourn the good old days when you could make a living writing short stories for Amazing Tales or whatnot, but back in those same good old days, non-genre writers could also make a pretty good living writing short stories for literary publications. No one makes a living anymore writing short fiction for Redbook or Playboy or the Saturday Evening Post, and in literary fiction, short stories are a kind of experimental proving ground, published either in small-circulation journals (run on a non-profit basis) or in story collections (generally loss-leaders for publishers trying to build an author’s reputation prior to publishing a novel, which is where they expect to actually make money). We need to accept that short stories occupy that same niche in the science fiction landscape as well. I’m a big fan of the short story, and I think it’s a form that’s thriving from an artistic standpoint, but its days of economic self-sufficiency are long gone.
That said, of course there are changes in both the genre and the readership that SF publications should be responding to. The podcast is one area where short fiction has a chance of becoming economically viable again. Strange Horizons has no plans to start doing our own audio versions of stories, but we’ve done a bit of cross-promotional work with Escape Pod and other podcasting venues, and we’d love to do more of that. Not only that, but the landscape of genre narrative is much broader than traditional print publications usually acknowledge — really high-quality science fiction storytelling is happening all over the place, in movies and on television and in video games and ARGs, and we’re trying to raise the profile of those forms of narrative in our non-fiction content at Strange Horizons. It’s a big exciting world out there, and I want us to be as much a part of it as we can be.
Deb Taber: I really don’t feel I’m knowledgeable enough about market trends and readers’ buying habits to make any sort of predictions, but we’ve found through experience that while the magazine is a difficult venture to make profitable, our book line is successful and growing. That’s where our focus is. The magazine is there — and will remain — because we love it, but the business is in the books.
As far as responding to the readership, we’re returning a bit more to our dark science fiction roots in the book line. We’ve branched out into dark fantasy, horror, and even one nonfiction book, but our best sellers are generally science fiction.
Ann VanderMeer: I see a future that takes Weird Tales more into the mainstream, to a larger audience. More into the same pop culture audience that embraces graphic novels, video games, music and fashion. I really believe that Weird Tales fits in well with these things. Survival? Yes, I think we all worry about that, no matter what our industry. But the economy will turn around and we will be ready.
Sheila Williams: The magazine will continue to publish cutting edge fiction from well-known authors and brand new writers. Survival looks good at the moment. The format of the magazine has already changed. In addition to our print issues, we are available in several downloadable formats. We can be purchased at Fictionwise for all sorts of e-readers and we are available on the Kindle.
Beth Wodzinski: I’m not particularly worried about our survival; frankly, we’re tiny, with correspondingly tiny expenses, so as long as it’s an enjoyable process, we’ll keep going. I like offering a print edition, but would like to take advantage of more online opportunities — an iPhone app, Kindle versions, and so on; that’s probably the biggest change that’s on my radar right now.
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