Bryce Beattie's Blog, page 15

Back to the Project

Now that the election is finally over, I can finally refocus a little bit on the literary magazine project.

I contacted some printers and found out that, yes, I can get a magazine/softcover printed significantly cheaper per copy than at createspace. Howver, to obtain that cheapness, I’d need to sell in the neighborhood of 2,000-3,000 copies. That would require a wildly successful kickstarter campaign.

So how likely is it that a literary magazine will have a wildly successful campaign? Not very. There are only a handfull of similar campaigns that have reach wild success. And as far as I can tell, all of those projects are either by a current successful magazine (Lightspeed has several special editions) or by people who have worked in the fiction publishing industry for a long time. I have neither.

So that means for now, I won’t even consider a digest-sized, newsprint paper, magazine similar to the current popular scifi/fantasy magazines (Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, etc). It has to be print on demand. To be fair, though, createspace does a great job, so at least it’d be a quality product, materials-wise.

I’m researching now author contracts for this sort of thing.

Preposterous Pitch – Wedding Planet

Ok, Hollywood, listen up. Here’s the story:

Ted, a sullen former space marine who has sworn off love, takes a job as a wedding planner’s assistant at the largest/best hall on the fabulous wedding planet, the most popular of all intergalactic marriage destinations. When a quirky space bounty hunter shows up to arrest the bride in the hour and a half before the season’s most opulent ceremony, Ted is immediately smitten by her sweet moves and witty banter. Now his is torn between his duty to protect the wedding and his reborn ability to love. In space.

Sci-Fi Action Adventure RomCom. I’m pretty sure everyone would go to see it.

Giant Robot Spider

I was once again stricken with the urge to write bad poetry. Happy Halloween everybody.

To every activity there’s a time and a season,

And when it comes to hobbies, folks have their reasons.

But none knows exactly what went wrong inside her

When Yvette designed and built a giant robot spider.

Crazy money she made from trade empires and commissions,

And her brother had access to steel from demolitions.

So when we started a recycling foundry

The press, they applauded her ecological ability.

Weird Yvette drove down to the plant after close

Every night she toiled building girders in droves.

Servos and gears in bulk she ordered.

Science knowledge filled her head without boarders.

Six years she toiled in secret after hours

and clandestined ’nuff stuff to build a large tower.

‘Till finally the hydraulics were finished all in all

Eight legs, laser eyes over two stories tall.

A spider of metal built far out in the sand

of the desert was ready to strike terror in the land.

The product of talent, hard work, and her money

was ready to destroy, ‘cuz she thought it’d be funny.

First place that it hit was a very small town.

Crushed the car of the sheriff, turned all the pants brown.

With web of steel cable, and with powerful winches

Pulled down water towers, just as easy as cinches.

The govn’r knowing that the fight would be hard

Called up militias and the national guard.

But their bullets were puny for the spider’s thick steel

And large, mighty pincers lifted Humvees off wheels.

In desperation the army tried to kill it with fire,

might as well should have gathered and sung in a choir.

‘Cuz the spider undaunted continued to pound

Cement buildings and freeways right into the ground.

Crushing legs, burning lasers, stinging rockets and cable

The spider destroyed all that it was able.

The monstrous contraption cross country it crawled

Ov’r mountains, through citied, under skies without stall.

Black time without mercy the nation it faced

As toward the capitol the spider did race.

All congress like ants scrambled, running away.

Yvette laughed at the TV in her lair on that day.

But finally of terror the evil genius got tired,

So she sent the command to the spider to hide.

Under water, down tranches, it hunkered down then

To wait on its master to call it again.

So parents take heed to that horrible sound.

It’s eight eight eyes full of lasers just outside your town.

Children take cover, take fear, take flight,

Or the giant robot spider will get you tonight.

The Economics of Starting a Literary Journal

(Even if the fiction contained therein can not really be considered literary)

I’m still considering launching a fiction ‘zine. I spent several hours over the past few days considering what it would really cost to do it right. I built myself a spreadsheet with every variable I can think of to see at what point it could become profitable. Now, I understand many of these type of projects are run purely for the love of the craft, but I’m a dad with four growing kids, so I’m not interested in just dumping a lot of money into a hobby. But I am willing to spend some.

Also, I would want to do this thing right, I don’t want it to look like crap.

Assumptions

I’m going to start with my goal of 10 stories averaging 3,000 words each. That’s 30,000 words of fiction needing to be paid for. Professional rates start a $0.06 / word. That can get expensive fast. This would be $1,800 in author payments. Another option would be to offer less per word or perhaps some kind of flat payment per story. I’ve seen a couple of journals offering $15 or $20 for a story, so I’d at least offer $25. I’m not going to ask a bunch of authors to let me run their work for free. (However, I would totally help put together some kind of short story anthology where authors donated works for free and basically use the collection as advertising…)

Author costs: about $250 (for flat fee) to $1,800+ (for pro rates)

There are some other more static costs, like buying an ISBN (or block of them), paying an artist to do a cover, a new domain and hosting, and a couple more of probable administrative costs. All in all, I figure it to be in the neighborhood of $500.

Fixed costs: about $500

There are several ways to fund this sort of thing, and I’m going to consider two. Crowdfunding and self-funding. If I crowd fund, then I’m going to make the assumption that about 30% of backers will go for the print version, and 70% will go for ebook only.

Considering how to price the magazine is a whole new beast. I’d want to keep the cost down as much as possible. After all, It’s not likely to be a large page count. After all, nobody knows me or my magazine, so if I lower the bar to entry, maybe they’d be willing to take a chance. I’d love to get some feedback as to what people would be willing to pay (especially for the print version). For now, I’m assuming low, $2.99 for an ebook and $6.99 for printed.

30,000 words laid out at 300 words per page is about 100 printed pages.  POD magazine printer MagCloud quotes me $20-$21 per copy as a base fee for a mag of that length. So, you know, that’s right out. So if I want to be able to have a variable amount of copies printed, that means createspace or lulu. I love them both, but createspace’s pricing is a little better, and between my own stuff and some people I’ve helped, I’ve already published a dozen titles there, so I’m comfortable with the process. For a 100 page book (which I’ll call a magazine) with black and white interiors, it costs $3.55 per copy to print. Now, if I did a larger print run, I know I can find magazine printers online that would charge from $1.85 ~ $5.75 per copy. So that could come down a bit if I had a large enough crowdfunded campaign. There’s also printers that would do paperback books similar to the createspace ones near that same cost. SO I’ll use createspace’s numbers as a starting point then.

Printing costs: $3.55 per copy

Projections

Now that I’ve considered all of that, it’s time to answer some financial questions.

What would my crowdfunding goal need to be?

Let’s assume the 30% physical backers I mentioned earlier, and include some fulfillment costs (shipping) and other fees (most crowdfunding sites take 5%, plus Credit Card processing is 3-5%)

To pay the authors, the fixed fees, and printing costs, the goal would need to be a hair over $4,000. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, if the only rewards offered are the two levels, $2.99 and $6.99, then this calculates out to 368 physical book backers and 856 ebook only backers. (1224 total backers). The only campaigns I’ve seen that hit those kind of numbers for a literary journal are run by an established player, namely Lightspeed magazine. Raising the ebook price to $4.99 and the printed to $9.99, I’d only need half as many backers (615 total). That starts to look sort of reachable. And if I could come up with some higher dollar backing plans? Well, that’s be even better. If I self-funded the endeavor, I’d need 5-7% less of starting capital, but still need to sell that many copies.

What if I cheaped out?

Well, if I pay less than I had budgeted for art and do the $25 per story thing, then I could make the magazine happen for about $550 dollars. That is definitely in the range of self-funding possibility. I would need to sell 262 ebook copies at $2.99 and only 157 at $4.99 to break even. Possibly a few less if I crowdsourced. I’d pick up the crowdssourcing fees, but I could deliver ebooks for free, meaning I don’t need to pay 30% in royalties to amazon kdp on a sale.

Maybe I could do a campaign with a sliding pay rate for authors based on goals met.

So what have I decided?

Nothing yet. I still have more to research and think about. It is somewhat helpful to put it down in words, though, so maybe I’ll keep blogging about it.

Considering a Magazine (again)

Off and on again, I have wanted to try to publish a magazine. A couple of years back, I did a test issue of one called “Micro Flash Fiction“, and I published it through MagCloud. MagCloud produces excellent quality printings, but it is quite expensive. Ever since then, I’ve had a desire to do it again, but better this time. I even went so far as to plan a pulp fiction reprints magazine once. I pulled some old public domain stories, figured out a real desktop publishing program, and probably laid out 10 or 15 pages before life got in the way.

What it Could Be

If I did this, I’d want to run an action/adventure stories magazine. It would be all genre-inclusive, so long as every story had at least one good action sequence. I would prefer it to be completely reader funded (as in they pay for copies), as apposed to largely advertiser funded. After all, I’m a staff of one, so my expenses would be minimal. And I wouldn’t put “reviews” and other useless filler in there.

Why?

I love short stories.
I love action / adventure stories. And lets face it, most of the smaller modern mags seem to have the phrase “with a literary twist” in their description. The critic in my head assures me that means they want a lot of navel-gazing and virtually no face punching. Or they allow face-punching, but are highly genre-specific.
Because I want to.

Questions I’m mulling over right now:

Would it be ebook, print, or both? I’d like both, but there are some hangups with print, which I’ll dig into in future posts. But it boils down to “Can I make the printed mag affordable enough that readers will take a chance on it?”
Try to offer professional rates to authors? Token payments? “Exposure?” As I’ve started researching, I’ve seen several indie mags (that still charge) that do not offer the author any form of payment. I think authors deserve money.
New works only? Reprints? Reprints of “classic” pulp stories? A mixture?
Self-Funded or Crowdfunded? I’m not going to be able to convince my wife that we should dump a ton of money on a complete risk with small chance of initial return. So if I self-fund “professional rates” goes right out the window, unless I only put 2 stories in, which would seem lame. On the other hand, running a kickstarter requires time and effort and more learnings on my part, and may fail miserably.
Size? How many stories should go in? What would be a fair word count for a fiction magazine? I guess it depends on how much I charge.
How the crap would I market it?
What would I call it? (I have two ideas so far.)

I’ve been writing some short stories recently, submitting them to various markets. (No success yet, but I remain positive.) So as I’ve been looking at many magazines and submission processes, this urge to publish has welled up again.

If any of you out there have thoughts, get in contact with me via the usual channels. (comments here, twitter, or email bryce at this website.) I’d also love to chat with anybody else that has ever given this a go.

I was just thinking.

Just exactly how much dirt has to be dug up on Clinton and Trump before a majority of Americans vote third party?

re: Pulps and Pixelry

David J. West recently wrote an article called Pulps and Pixelry over at his blog. You might want to read that before this, so you get some kind of context. Anyway, it got me to thinking. What follows is likely to be fairly stream-of-consciousness. Sorry. Someday, I’ll be more focused.

I don’t know about other people, but I can’t remember ever looking at the publisher of a book before I read it. I certainly never had a “I don’t read works by independent, self-published authors” rule. Maybe I’m just morally superior to the rest of the market. I’ve pretty much always read based on personal suggestions, and occasionally national trends like Harry Potter. Also, a story has to be pretty abysmal for me to quit reading in the middle.

I know some people just love love love the feel of books. I get that, and I do like physical books plenty. But when I learned about ebooks, holy crap I was excited. I’ve owned a couple of nooks (tablet and eink versions), an ebookman (old school back-lit lcd. best ergonomic reader ever, but hard to get files onto it), 2 Kindles (currently on a paperwhite) and a couple of tablets. I’ve settled down recently. and have gone down to one eink device and one tablet. But I put all my favorite books into Calibre, where I can easily find anything, and I love it. Also, I don’t have a room like David (see the picture at the top of the linked interview) does in which I can stack hundreds upon thousands of books.

And like I said, I still buy and read based on friends / already-liked-authors recommendations, so the torrent of digital slush out there doesn’t bother me.

You know what bugs, me though, is when the publisher sets the ebook price at or higher than the print version. When I encounter that with a non-fiction book, I’ll often just search the net for a few synopses and call it done.

Speaking of pulps, I have thought about putting together an anthology/starting a magazine/something that is printed in the size/paper of the Farmer’s almanacs. I think it’d be fun. With none of those boring non-fiction articles you see in some mags. Only action adventure stories. I wonder how cheaply those can be made? Doing black and white (or color) interiors on a POD like MagCloud makes a high quality product. However, copies can be cost prohibitive. I did play with that once, though. I want to produce something that could be theoretically handed to a fan with out huge expense.

Of course, I’ll need to get a few fans before that becomes an option. I’d better get writing.

Things my son wants for his 5th birthday.

A real blue sonic screwdriver.
A butler to do his chores.
A monkey.

Dear classified ad responder;

An open letter to everyone who responds to my online classified ad.

Here is how negotiations work with my ad. First, I offer a price for an item. I also provide photos and a description in my ad. Next, you ask any questions you need to determine if you want to buy my item and how much you should pay. Then, you either accept or reject my offer, or you make me a counter offer. Do not just ask how low I’m willing to go. It’s rude. Do not counteroffer less than half of what I have offered. It’s rude. Plus, I’m already giving you a good deal. Trust me, I went and researched what the market value of my item is. Twenty, maybe 30 percent lower is perfectly fine, as long as you can give me a reason. It doesn’t have to be a good reason. We take turns giving counter offers until we reach a place where we either both are satisfied or we decide we cannot reach a consensus.

Thanks,

Bryce

Send a Secret Message! One-Time Pad Generator for Pen and Paper Encryption.

Mary Robinette Kowal recently launched a novel called Ghost Talkers. In the book, there are men and women who can talk to ghosts. During World War I, there is a special corps which uses the ghosts to receive information from the front. It’s a fascinating idea, and cryptography plays a big role in the story. During the warm-up for the launch of the book, Mary has been playing a bunch of secret message games with her fans. I have long had a interest in cryptography. It was one of my favorite things to study in my programming classes.

So Mary’s launch games got me to thinking again about passing secret messages. One of the the most secure systems for doing this is called a one-time pad. I poked around the internet for a bit but I couldn’t find a good printable way to use it by hand. There is some software, but it all appeared to be lame. So I have built one that you are free to use.

I’m not going to explain the ins and out of why a one time pad is awesome. There’s plenty of resources on the internet for that. I’m just going to tell you how to use it. In the version I’m presenting, you will only use uppercase letters, numbers 0-9, and a few selected symbols. 48 characters in all.

What You Need

An Encrypt/decrypt chart. pdf format
A Encrypt/Decrypt Worksheet (not strictly necessary, but super useful)
A one time pad. This is the generator. Just click the link and it will generate a one-time pad for you. Print two copies, one for you and one for your secret-passing buddy. The pads are randomly generated in your browser. Once you hit reload or click away, you will never ever get that pad back.

Using the One-Time Pad
Encrypting a Message

First, get the things I mentioned above.

Once you’ve printed two copies of your one-time pad and given one to your messaging partner, it’s time to encrypt your first message. Write the message you want to encrypt in some boxes on a message worksheet. I’ll encrypt the message HI! I AM BRYCE. And I will use underscores for the spaces. Some people just omit the spaces altogether.

Look at the first box on your one-time pad. The character in that box will be the “shift” for your first character.

On your Encrypt/Decrypt chart, scan down the leftmost column to find the row with your “Clear Text” character, in my case an “H”. Then move to the right until you are in the column of the “Shift”, in this case “#”. the box where that row/column intersect is your encrypted text. In this case, it is an “A”.

Now cross off that first square of your one-time pad. You will never use that square again.

 

Continue, using one square on your one-time pad for each character in your message.Remember h square as you use it. Here’s my message, encrypted.

Now you are done! Write the encrypted message on another piece of paper, or send it in an email or a tweet. It doesn’t matter who else sees it, because it is encrypted!

Decrypting a Message

Now your friend has received and read your message, and sent you a message, J#NP8?X_!HJ,  . Continue using the remaining boxes on the same one-time pad. For ease, you can write the encrypted message on a worksheet. Take note of the next open box on your one-time pad, this is the “shift”. The follow the column down until you see the encrypted text. Go left to discover the clear text. In my example, I scan the first row until I see the column that has the “shift”, in my case the “C”. Then I look down that column until I see the encrypted text, in my case a “J”. I follow the row left to discover what the clear text character is. In my case it’s an “H.”

Write the clear text character above the encrypted text character on your worksheet, cross off the used shift on the one-time pad.

Now I continue in the same pattern until all characters have been decrypted.

Keeping it Secure

If you do two things, you’ll keep your notes ultra secure.

One-Time pad means use it one time . Once you use up the pad, generate another and use it.
Both parties must keep their copies of the pad safe.

Weaknesses

I’m using javascript’s built-in random number generator. Mathematically speaking, it is only pseudo-random, not “truly” random. Maybe someday I’ll make a version that uses random.org’s api. Random.org uses atmospheric data which is much more “actually” random. For a regular person, though, I think you’ll be fine.

In Conclusion

Use this to send love notes to your spouse, or have the coolest pen-pal ever. Don’t use this system to plan your crimes or commit acts of terrorism. In fact, don’t do crimes or terrorism at all. Just be cool, all right?