First, as an EA person, I want to thank you, because I think this is a great idea, and I very much approve. I think the amazing power of fiction to change people’s minds has been an occasional but important force throughout history; the claim that Uncle Tom’s Cabin got the abolitionist movement to the mainstream seems historically plausible enough to agree that this is, indeed, a useful thing for the EA movement to do, and one I highly approve of.
But the second is as a SF&F author who tries to get his stories published.
As far as I can tell, the reason most SF&F fiction contests don’t use the ‘post on forum, award money to best’ model is because anything once published becomes a ‘reprint’, and reprints can’t be sold elsewhere except at for a few places and usually at a 7x markdown, and anything that can show up in Google searches is published. If you send it to the editor’s work E-mail address, or post it on a password-protected forum only for authors, it’s ‘not published’. But here, it’s ‘published’.
So submitting stories to this content means that I can’t sell it anywhere else if it doesn’t win the prize, while submitting stories elsewhere I can try, try again.
On the one hand it is probably worth me doing this because I believe in effective altruism and the cost to me is pretty negligible, given that individual short stories don’t actually sell for all that much. On the other hand, I think the public posting might mean that the profit motive is pointing in the opposite way from you want.
Thanks for sharing this concern, which is very reasonable.
One of the things that motivated us to run this contest was the desire to have a lot of interesting new content on the Forum — we want people checking in regularly to see new stories, commenting on submissions, and digging through the archives even after the contest is over.
If we used a standard “read submissions in private, publish the best” model, we’d be missing out on that, even if we still achieved our other goal of “find a few really top-notch things to share”.
But I do acknowledge that this presents authors with a conundrum if they want to publish stories elsewhere. Would the following arrangement be fine?
Publish your entry on the Forum
If you win, you leave the post up
If you don’t win, you move the post back to a draft (where Google won’t find it)
This seems like it opens up the chance to submit the story elsewhere again (since no one will be able to read it on the Forum anymore). And if it doesn’t end up getting published elsewhere, you can just go back to your draft post and hit “publish”.
Would this work, or do you think something ever having been published, even if it disappeared again, would make it impossible to submit to some/many places?
I completely understand your goal, which is very reasonable!
But most publishers consider ‘was printed in an obscure magazine that sold ten copies and is now a collector’s item, has never been printed since’ to be ‘printed’. Some people buying reprints are only interested in that kind of obscure thing, but even if it is ‘already published obscurely’, I still think you won’t get much for the reprint.
So although that’s an understandable try at a solution, I don’t think it succeeds.
Thanks for the further feedback. I’ll think more on whether we should open some kind of private submission option, and we may end up doing so. It would be really sad if authors were forced to sacrifice future opportunities in order to participate.
If you’re looking for a compromise solution, stories submitted to the Grantville Gazette Universe Annex (Baen’s magazine) are submitted by being posted on a password-protected forum (Baen’s Bar) that anyone can get an account for, where readers can critique them, then a subset of those are purchased and professionally published in the magazine. Posting a story on Baen’s Bar is generally (some people say explicitly, and it appears to be the consensus unless I’m making a horrible mistake) not considered publication, and stories posted there don’t appear in Google searches.
You’d want to do more research into this, but if you’re interested, it might provide you a base to work off of.
I second interest in a private submission / private forum option! I intend to submit my entry to a few places soon, but that won’t be possible if it’s “published” by submitting it here. If there isn’t a private option I probably won’t submit here.
I think this is a really well intentioned and thoughtful reply.
However, hiding publication on an internet forum seems technically dubious (archiving and forum scraping seems common).
Also, this wasn’t the intention, but it does seem to be the same as, well, fraud. My guess is that authors are required to state their story isn’t published (and removing it after the fact doesn’t alter this state).
I think there is some solution here that should be explored.
So, I have multiple comments.
First, as an EA person, I want to thank you, because I think this is a great idea, and I very much approve. I think the amazing power of fiction to change people’s minds has been an occasional but important force throughout history; the claim that Uncle Tom’s Cabin got the abolitionist movement to the mainstream seems historically plausible enough to agree that this is, indeed, a useful thing for the EA movement to do, and one I highly approve of.
But the second is as a SF&F author who tries to get his stories published.
As far as I can tell, the reason most SF&F fiction contests don’t use the ‘post on forum, award money to best’ model is because anything once published becomes a ‘reprint’, and reprints can’t be sold elsewhere except at for a few places and usually at a 7x markdown, and anything that can show up in Google searches is published. If you send it to the editor’s work E-mail address, or post it on a password-protected forum only for authors, it’s ‘not published’. But here, it’s ‘published’.
So submitting stories to this content means that I can’t sell it anywhere else if it doesn’t win the prize, while submitting stories elsewhere I can try, try again.
On the one hand it is probably worth me doing this because I believe in effective altruism and the cost to me is pretty negligible, given that individual short stories don’t actually sell for all that much. On the other hand, I think the public posting might mean that the profit motive is pointing in the opposite way from you want.
Thanks for sharing this concern, which is very reasonable.
One of the things that motivated us to run this contest was the desire to have a lot of interesting new content on the Forum — we want people checking in regularly to see new stories, commenting on submissions, and digging through the archives even after the contest is over.
If we used a standard “read submissions in private, publish the best” model, we’d be missing out on that, even if we still achieved our other goal of “find a few really top-notch things to share”.
But I do acknowledge that this presents authors with a conundrum if they want to publish stories elsewhere. Would the following arrangement be fine?
Publish your entry on the Forum
If you win, you leave the post up
If you don’t win, you move the post back to a draft (where Google won’t find it)
This seems like it opens up the chance to submit the story elsewhere again (since no one will be able to read it on the Forum anymore). And if it doesn’t end up getting published elsewhere, you can just go back to your draft post and hit “publish”.
Would this work, or do you think something ever having been published, even if it disappeared again, would make it impossible to submit to some/many places?
I completely understand your goal, which is very reasonable!
But most publishers consider ‘was printed in an obscure magazine that sold ten copies and is now a collector’s item, has never been printed since’ to be ‘printed’. Some people buying reprints are only interested in that kind of obscure thing, but even if it is ‘already published obscurely’, I still think you won’t get much for the reprint.
So although that’s an understandable try at a solution, I don’t think it succeeds.
Thanks for the further feedback. I’ll think more on whether we should open some kind of private submission option, and we may end up doing so. It would be really sad if authors were forced to sacrifice future opportunities in order to participate.
Welcome! I’m happy to help.
If you’re looking for a compromise solution, stories submitted to the Grantville Gazette Universe Annex (Baen’s magazine) are submitted by being posted on a password-protected forum (Baen’s Bar) that anyone can get an account for, where readers can critique them, then a subset of those are purchased and professionally published in the magazine. Posting a story on Baen’s Bar is generally (some people say explicitly, and it appears to be the consensus unless I’m making a horrible mistake) not considered publication, and stories posted there don’t appear in Google searches.
You’d want to do more research into this, but if you’re interested, it might provide you a base to work off of.
(Their submission rules; warning, mildly arcane: https://grantvillegazette.com/universe-annex-submissions/ )
I second interest in a private submission / private forum option! I intend to submit my entry to a few places soon, but that won’t be possible if it’s “published” by submitting it here. If there isn’t a private option I probably won’t submit here.
Here’s our new private submission form!
I’ve just submitted two stories! Hopefully they’ve landed properly. Thanks for the form!
Forgot to say thanks, just used it!
I think this is a really well intentioned and thoughtful reply.
However, hiding publication on an internet forum seems technically dubious (archiving and forum scraping seems common).
Also, this wasn’t the intention, but it does seem to be the same as, well, fraud. My guess is that authors are required to state their story isn’t published (and removing it after the fact doesn’t alter this state).
I think there is some solution here that should be explored.
We’ve now added a form you can use to submit your work privately, and updated the post to mention it.
Let me know if you see anything we should change about the form, and thanks for the suggestion!
Thank you! I’ve bookmarked it.