SNM Horror Magazine
If You Build A Mausoleum...The Dead Will Come!
STEVE'S PICKS FOR WRITER'S RESOURCES
Hold the Press! 
We're all booked up!
*Writer's Market - Get your copy of the Writer's Handbook in the most recent year before submitting for publication. This is the original source of publishing for writers to find agents and publishers in their respective genre markets.
Library of Congress - Get all your work copyrighted here before submitting any work to publishers. It is your only protection from having others who are less talented than you plagiarizing or stealing work. It's a writer's condom!
*www.duotrope.com - One of the top-rated directories for horror writers to seek a wide variety of top publishers that provides theme submissions, updates and deadlines as well as reports and info about the publisher's listings. Very professional looking site with invaluable information
*Preditors & Editors - A complete writer's review source of publishers: Who's legit who's not and whether they are a royalty paying or a vanity publisher. An aspiring writer's bible for breaking into print and submitting for first time publication. We are very big fans of theirs and use them.
Weird Tales Magazine - One of the top recognized paying magazines who has been around for quite a long time. They publish strange, well-written Poe-like short stories. They're a professionally bound print magazine with some excellent credentials and really boost writers' recognition.
*Means the link is available to click directly into the site. *For the others, just do a normal Google search on them. *Please note that we do not endorse Lulu.com anymore. *Please research each and read all the contracts carefully. *We're simply writers trying to help newer novice writers. **See below for a complete list of royalty paying markets.
Authors Advisory Against Using Lulu.com
Lulu Alert:
Furthermore, if you try to delete your project, they declare as a retired project. Basically they claim that if any books have sold on an open market they cannot withdraw it. They're still taking and sending out orders, but some authors and publishers are not receiving any royalties.
Note: This is my opinion based on my experience. Others may share a different viewpoint and please share yours. Until they persuade me otherwise, my belief shall not be compromised.
*Updates on Lulu Awareness Alert*
This is a follow up to the Lulu Scam Awareness Campaign that we launched about a month ago, helping new, aspiring authors and making them aware of the new developments regarding Lulu book publishing and their latest sneaky tactics and "new" site policies. Much like The Resistance fighting the evil Skynet in Terminator we're the underdog vs. a monstrous corporate entity. Those who have a dream are the easiest to prey upon...
To start with, it is now 3 months since my first query and still I have not received any reply to "where are my royalties?" in four different queries. Ticket numbers are generated with an auto reponse for a reply that never comes. Our most recent payment was supposed to be issued on May 14th. It is now August 15th and my account still does not say "check issued" where it used to, even despite that I have over $100 in earned royalties due me. Not a big amount personally, but it's the principle. If you multiple that by 8 million+ authors, it adds up to quite a lot.
Please keep in mind that this is my experience which may not reflect the views or experiences of all, that's why I am posting this bulletin to acquire "all" feedback regarding their experience with Lulu.com. Now some authors avidly oppose having any problems with them may have to find out firsthand the hard way. Others may do their due diligence and...draw their own conclusions. Also note that I am not endorsing any other book publisher in its place, nor am I advocating that self-publishing is bad. But here are a few things that you should know about Lulu.com...
3 points:
1- Ever since Lulu had made a partnership with Amazon.com things have been slowly going straight to Hell. Lately, it's gone straight to Hell, no going back. When big, monstrous corporate entities merge, little people get swallowed whole. Now Lulu has just bought Poetry.com who has one of the worst names in the industry as far as scamming authors. You are with whom you publish. They are with whom they sleep with for monetary gain.
3 - My books were self-published over a year ago and I never agreed to these "new terms" and "unconditional" conditions. Lulu has now changed all its agreements to make it *look* like the agreement was made from the start, but has essentially voided out its previous agreement with its authors who never agreed to the new term policies. So any newer authors will not be able to dispute it even though it is highly illegal because of these changes. Authors who published with them before Jan of 2009 most likely didn't print out a copy of the old agreement and can't even dispute it. Either way your hands are tied. Even taking it to court won't do anything; I'm sorry. All you can do is complain to the BBB, Consumer Reports or Complaintsboard. Lulu knows what they're doing is wrong and they don't care so long as they keep making money unharmed.
Now, on to the loophole. I have just received some feedback from my attorney who has looked further into this matter and has stated the following without you having to hire a laywer:
(He) informed me that in order for authors to fully protect their projects and themselves from the new "retired books loophole" Lulu just created -- meaning that if authors try to delete their work and now they can't technically, as Lulu possesses "first publishing rights" to it -- you can just go to the retired projects and make all the pages blank. It's a little complicated and has to be done fast because the automated system will default the project to retired, meaning (can't be revised) but it can be done. I've just done so myself and it worked!
This is what I did:
- Make retired project "Private." (Get any last in-print books )
- Quickly click on "Purchase Revision" (You don't actually buy anything unless you want your final copies in hand.)
- Click on the "Approve/Deny" link as fast as possible and then the "Create Revision" on the bottom of the page.
- Once in the Create Revision part, you're safe, the system won't default to "retired" until you've finished the revision.
- Start the Creation Wizard, upload a new PDF of 306 blank pages (the page count of my book). The first page will have a message that basically says "We're sorry, this isn't a legitimate copy, if you would like a legitimate copy, go here" etc, please contact your book dealer. (All nice and polite of course, and perfectly legal, although morally irreprehensible, if I may say.)
- Finish the Creation Wizard and wait. Within a few minutes the automated system will default the project back to Retired. But! The revision will be there and is now permanent! Hah!
Finally, in Lulu's email (the only way to contact them) say Fuck you to Lulu/Skynet. The humans have again outsmarted the computer machine droids! Oh, but that would just be soooo unprofessional!
Darkest Wishes,
Steven Marshall
Senior Editor/Moderator
SNM Horror Magazine
Exclusive SNM Interview with Dave Kuzminski
20 questions:
SNM: Greetings Dave, pleasure to have you here. There’s quite a history behind Preditors & Editors. Let’s start with how and when P&E came about. What fueled the fire and how did you form the directory?
Dave: P&E came about when I created a web page to answer questions from writers after I had accepted a chat moderation position on Prodigy. It didn't take me long to realize that almost every new writer had the same questions so it made sense to create a web page that I could refer writers to instead of typing in the same answers every time. About the same time the web page exceeded a printed page in length I gave it a name because I could see then that it would grow. The name came out of recognizing that writers wanted to know who to trust and who not to trust. What truly fueled the fire was an attempt by one non-recommended business to shut down P&E. The harder they tried, the more I saw a need to resist and the more important P&E was to writers. They needed a site that would stand up to bullies and zombies. So far, we've stood our ground and no writers have had their brains eaten.
SNM: How many on staff in total and what are their functions?
Dave: Right now, it's just me and some volunteers who email info to me. Last two months, there were just two of us.
SNM: What was your background prior to starting P&E?
Dave: Prior to P&E, I had worked as a programmer and had also had some limited success in getting short stories published in print and online and was just starting to see my first efforts succeed in getting my novels published.
SNM: So you also have a background in writing? Please share your published novels with our readers. Any how-to published works?
Dave: I had various non-fiction articles and a couple of poems in magazines along with a monthly bulletin for a Fortune 500 business I put together for over three years and some computer programs that were published in computer magazines back in the mid 1980s. But no “how-to” publish articles that I can recall. These are my novels to date as my short story publications are too numerous to mention:
Protector of Seaswams
Guardians of Riverswams
Touch of the Sea Witch
Shield of Truth
The Aliens Is Coming!
Beasts Are Us
Censored by Earth Command: Arrows and Lasers
Censored by Earth Command: Bullets and Lasers
Censored by Earth Command: Cavalry and Lasers
Crystal Creasure
Dark Unicorn
Karmic Warrior (Available for free on Scribd)
Knight Spirits
Mark II
Redwing, Dragon Detective
Attack Butterfly
Dust Bunny
Paravoid
Rust Bucket
Space Rescue One
Washout
Will Fight Evil For Food
SNM: Since your listing information is posted on the website under the “Freedom of Speech Act” and I’m just asking your opinion who are the top 3 Preditor Pariahs you’ve encountered?
Dave: There are no top three predators. We consider every scam to be equally reprehensible. For the record, we misspell predators as Preditors for trademark purposes.
SNM: How often do you update your listings and how long do you post dead markets for?
Dave: Except for a few instances such as when power was knocked out, P&E has been updated on a daily basis. That means we post new listings or updates every single day of the year and we've been doing that since 1997 when we took on our name. I believe P&E was actually in operation as early as 1995 or 1996. We keep dead listings because sometimes they come back to life when they acquire new funding or they come back when they realize playing dead doesn't work to get them out of being not recommended. And other resources don't always provide information about a market being dead so our listings help fill that gap.
SNM: If a bad press preys on writers and closes shop then operates again under a different name, how do you connect the threads?
Dave: We have many sources who provide P&E with various documentation. Some of them voluntarily help P&E keep track of the bad sites and their operators. Obviously, the bad sites don't like that especially since we keep all of the information on file so we can alert writers when a bad site has a long history of misbehavior.
SNM: P&E, Duotrope, Ralan are the 3 best known directories today. Who else was around when you started, directory wise?
Dave: There were other resource sites around but they were shut down by sites who opposed them or had a lack of funding. Writers'
SNM: With so many start-up presses, would you recommend publishers/magazines begin online before going print today?
Dave: If a publisher of books or magazines doesn't have the funds to do it right, then it makes no difference whether it starts operations in print or online. Without proper funding, it's unlikely to succeed. Also P&E doesn't reveal its criteria for being recommended.
We did so briefly only to have a scam attempt to weasel-word its way into being recommended. And we accept all sites onto our listings regardless of whether they're recommended or not. In fact, the majority are listed as acceptable though we prefer not to list a publisher until it has produced at least two books or issues. That's generally a good sign that it's a stable market.
SNM: Are the number of failed presses today increasing or decreasing?
Dave: This is difficult to state one way or another since P&E and I don't have any concrete numbers about how many are in business or have failed. In fact, too many hide the fact that they're failing until their actions cause harm to writers and themselves. My guess, however, is that the number of failures is probably more because too many individuals are desperate to be published and see that failure as reason enough to start up a publishing company.
SNM: What are some of the keys to success for magazines and publishers to have staying power in the industry?
Dave: Learn the business first. Hire knowledgeable individuals with the right skills for the tasks that need to be performed in order to succeed.
SNM: What are some trends you’ve noticed in the downfalls of magazines and publishers?
Dave: They lack funding, lack skilled personnel, don't know how to market and distribute their product, and read too little. Also, they're usually too much in a rush.
SNM: When did you start hosting the award polls and how many total votes were tallied from all categories this year?
Dave: The Readers Poll began in 1997. The last poll was our thirteenth. This year we received well over 19,000 votes.
SNM: Has ballot stuffing and duplicate emails become more of a problem in tallying the votes?
Dave: Actually, our programmer (not me) has managed to build a new program that weeds out most attempts to stuff the ballot. Beyond the programming, we do a manual review of all the votes to eliminate anything that might have gotten through. The good news is that our programmer's efforts have resulted in far fewer suspect votes getting through
SNM: Will there be future awards that reflect the “opinions of the editors” based on certain criteria, rather than popularity via voting?
Dave: It's something I've given thought to for the past few years. What's needed is a way to approach that so that the results are equitable and fair.
SNM: How long do you plan on continuing to host P&E?
Dave: I plan on operating P&E until I'm no longer able. I'm sure that's both good news for writers and bad news for those who don't like P&E.
SNM: What is your preferred genre of reading and what are your top 5 all-time favorite books?
Dave: I tend to like science fiction, humor and history. My top 5 favorites include several of my own. I think it's important for a writer to like his own work. If I can't like mine then I guess I shouldn’t be a writer. Anyway, in no particular order, I like Knight Spirits, Guardians of Riverswams, Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Keith Laumer's Bolo and Andre Norton's Galactic Derelict. There are many others I equally like but these I remember exceptionally well.
SNM: Do you have any plans on revamping the layout of the website in the future or listing information differently?
Dave: P&E has always undergone revamping when it became obvious that a change would be good for writers.
SNM: What other sources of income does P&E generate aside from public donations? How can writers, editors and publishers donate?
Dave: Except for legal expenses, P&E has not asked for nor received any funds from the public. At present P&E has only a donation button for legal expenses.
SNM: What is the best way for writers to access your directory?
http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/
Thank you, Dave, for taking the time to give us this behind the scenes glimpse into P&E. Many new writers see P&E listings as a writer's Holy Grail. I’ve been using the site and heeding to the recommendations since 1995. 15 years later, you're still around providing an invaluable service to all writers. Keep up the good work; the writing community needs you.
Writers: Be sure to check out this directory if you're submitting and see if any other authors have had any past difficulties or positive experiences with the said listed presses and magazines. It can save you lots of grief and money as it did for me. They have been in existence since 1995 and list the complaints and compliments that authors have made with certain publications .
HORROR ROYALTY-PAYING RESOURCE MARKETS!
Horror Short Story Markets
Looking for somewhere to submit your short Horror fiction?
You will find plenty of horror markets to choose from below.
Our horror market listings are sorted in the following categories.
Pro Paying horror markets listed as paying more than 3 cents per word
Semi-Pro Paying horror markets listed as paying between 1 and 3 cents per word
Low Paying horror markets listed as being from fractions of up to 1 cent per word
Token Paying horror markets listed as paying between $5 and $15 flat rate per story
Non-Paying horror markets listed as paying either exposure or contributor’s copy.
Keep in mind, many of the lower-paying markets may consider reprinted stories. This is a great market place to search if you are looking to re-sell something that has already been printed elsewhere. Don't discount them just because they pay a little less. They may still provide valid, published homes for your work! It all starts with getting your name out to the masses.
Download the Horror Short Fiction Market Listings ebook now, FREE!
Disclaimer:
Dont hold Steve responsible for any unpleasant experiences or rejections. It's just an unfortunate part of this business.*Even Steven has had his share of rejections! These are simply some writer's resources using the latest, most reputable compilations. The opinions reflects those of the chief editor.
