The world changed quickly because of COVID-19.
People are scared. People are worried. People are losing their jobs. People are sick and dying. People don’t know what the future will bring.
But people are also pulling together and helping one another. People are social distancing but keeping each other in their lives. And this is true both for the larger world and the genre world.
Artists and authors are trying to help each other, as with the Society of Authors launching an emergency fund for writers. People are also creating websites such as COVID-19 Freelance Artist Resources, which features info on emergency funding and much more. Others are fundraising to help, such as with Ijeoma Oluo creating the Seattle Artist Relief Fund Amid COVID-19.
For many authors and writers, especially those who support themselves by freelancing, the economic fallout from COVID-19 is frightening. A lot of freelance work is being stopped or put on hold by businesses. In addition, books tours are being cancelled, as are other places where authors promote their work such as conventions. (Locus Magazine is keeping an updated listing of all genre convention cancellations and delays.)
But people are adapting the best they can. The 2020 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in SF/F Writing was presented virtually, with Rona Wang reading her winning story through Zoom. Many authors are also taking their in-person visits virtual, such as with N.K. Jemisin’s upcoming April 3rd appearance at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.
SFWA is also partnering with r/Fantasy to “host their 1st ever virtual con with AMAs, giveaways, & more. Slots are available for April and May.” (For info on how to participate, go here.)
Others are also setting up virtual conventions, with Everywhere Book Fest for kidlit authors, books, and readers being among the first.
I wish I knew how all this would turn out. I wish I could say that people wouldn’t be hurt and devastated in the coming months. But I can’t do that.
What I can say is that during times like these people help each other. As we’re already seeing.
Thinkerbeat Just Ain’t Thinking Right
Thinkerbeat Reader is the submission system and community supporting Unreal and Unfit magazines. However, it turned out the editor behind these sites, Daniel Scott White, had been posting online the names and rankings of many of the magazines’ rejected authors.
Other issues have also been raised about the magazines, including Thinkerbeat Reader requiring a membership fee after the first three months (meaning authors may have to eventually pay to submit).
Many, many people called out the editor and magazines for doing this such as Benjamin Kinney in a very good post on his website. And some authors published or reprinted in the magazines, including Yoon Ha Lee, said they wouldn’t have published there if they’d known what the magazines were doing.
In response to this criticism, you’d think an editor would simply say “my bad,” apologize, and fix the issues. If White had done this the genre would likely have been pretty forgiving.
Instead, White doubled down, telling authors who complained that he was “being disruptive, sure, but that’s what it takes to displace other magazines on the way up.” The editor also emailed some accepted authors and said “There’s an angry mob on Twitter that is threatening to ban me at the SFWA” and proclaimed the magazines might “put a ‘banned by the SFWA’ sticker on my next cover. Should be our best selling one yet.”
As an FYI, SFWA doesn’t ban magazines and doesn’t even have the power to contemplate doing so.
For more on the responses from these magazines, see this thread by Diabolical Plots (who runs the respected Submission Grinder website).
Thinkerbeat eventually stopped publishing the ranking and title of stories but they still name rejected authors. Yet there is (note my sarcasm) good news because now the rejection earns you a “Thinkerbeat Award!” The site even urges rejected authors to put the award icon on their websites and social media pages. Sigh.
Other news and info
- For a continually updated listing of COVID-19 resources, info, and assistance for the science fiction, fantasy, & horror communities, go here.
- According to Presente.org, “Latinos make up only 3% of execs in publishing, only 2% of editors, only 4% of the sales force, only 5% of the marketing team, & only 5% of interns.” In response to this, Presente has started a petition asking the New York governor to investigate discrimination in the publishing industry.
- Roxane Gay’s Gay Magazine is ending after Medium didn’t renew their contract.
- Cory Doctorow has an excellent essay in Locus describing how current copyright and contract law is being used more and more to harm creatives, including authors.
- The Weird Tales website has been down for at least a month (archived version here) and in this public Facebook post some subscribers are saying they haven’t received their issues. The first issue of the relaunched Weird Tales was published last year and featured fiction by Victor LaValle, Josh Malerman, and Lisa Morton.
- Mary Robinette Kowal issued a statement on behalf of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America about how the organization has been working with Goodreads to correct the book review site’s security issues. This follows trolls creating dozens of false accounts as part of a harassment campaign against writers including Patrick S. Tomlinson, as first reported on my Patreon. I’ve been told that SFWA has also raised the security issue around author quotes on Goodreads, which I covered in a previous column.
- How not to respond to an editor’s rejection, per F&SF. And as a side note, CC Finlay notes that submissions to F&SF are way up this year.“Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 17, we’ve averaged 45.7 submissions per day, compared to 35.2 per day during the same period in 2019.”
This thread by Marianne Kirby on how stories must have some hope in them, and how the “big narratives getting pushed on us by corporations are mostly about prolonging agony,” really touched a nerve with me. A must read.
Jason Sanford
Jason Sanford is a two-time finalist for the Nebula Award and has published more than a dozen stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which also devoted a special issue to his fiction. In addition he has published numerous stories in magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other places, along with appearances in multiple "year's best" anthologies and other collections. His fiction has been translated into nearly a dozen languages including Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, and Czech. Jason's website is www.jasonsanford.com and he publishes a weekly Genre Grapevine column on his Patreon at www.patreon.com/jasonsanford.