Big Click Bizarro Crime Issue, And Recommendations For Editors

The new Big Click is out, and it's a special Bizarro issue, featuring work by Cameron Pierce and Stephen Graham Jones. I haven't even read it yet, as we had a guest editor in the form of Molly Tanzer! (lj's own vegan_vulcan )

The interesting thing about this to me is how excited Molly was to guest-edit. She's 'worked' for other magazines, handling submissions and scheduling and other office management type stuff, but nobody ever looped her in to creative decision-making. This seems to be a universal in the current crop of supposedly "professional" magazines that exist primarily via a volunteer labor subsidy. Whether it's managing editors who do only scut work, or slush-readers who are given zero training, no way to "move up", and no real input, they are why magazines actually get published in a timely manner. Slush-readers are generally not even allowed to submit their own fiction to the magazines for which they volunteer, which is craven madness.

Compare this to, say, the seemingly unprofessional New Yorker—one of the best ways to get published the magazine's pages is to be an intern there first. At World Horror Convention, someone I know lamented that she couldn't submit to some magazine she was reading for and Ellen Datlow—actual professional editor—said she felt that was a silly rule. I agree.

I've always told people who want to write that they should spend six months reading the slush for some magazine or publisher, but no more. My joke is "Six months, and you'll improve your own writing via negative example. Six months and one day? PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE."

Now, no more jokes. I've just seen too many people be endlessly exploited for the chance to play Pretend Editor. I still think reading slush is good for new writers, but if the editor of the publication for which you read slush is basically using you as a mail sorter, quit. Right now. Let them read their own shit.

Editors: here is what you should be doing with slush readers and office staff, even if the staff are all virtual volunteers.

If they find a story worthy of publishing, let them edit it.
Have a slot or two for a slush reader to select.
Use their input not just as a way of collecting the cream of the crop for you to read individually, but as a way to actually create issues.
Talk over edits and other issues with them.
Let them guest edit, write copy/reviews or conduct interviews, and submit their own work.

(Aside: I put my money were my mouth is: Kathleen Miller made her publishing debut in The Battle Royale Slam Book. She is a former VIZ intern, and she went through the normal editorial process, got paid the same rate as most anyone else, etc. Real publishing companies do this.)

Or, if you can't or won't do any of the above, pay your readers a small honorarium. Even fifty bucks a month will do.

But using volunteers as an email sorter is a shit move, and is unprofessional, no matter what you pay your writers.

Yes, I am sure to receive plenty of "Oh oh, but I do that!" comments from some editors but I am betting—and I am betting because I've already talked to any number of slushpile volunteers—that I won't hear such enthusiastic claims from the ranks below.

Incidentally, we have a couple more guest-edited issues of The Big Click coming up, and I would be interested in entertaining even more ideas for guest editors. Drop me a line, with a real thematic idea and some author suggestions, if you are interested.