An Opportunity for Writers at Baen
Posted: November 22, 2005, 12:59:59 PM
Anybody who hasn’t been watching Ralan may have missed this.<br><br>Baen Books is putting out a quarterly fiction journal starting next year. The rates sound good, but the really neat bit is how you can submit to it.<br><br>You can email it over with attachments, or you can post your story in Baen’s web forum. If you go the forum route, you get feedback, and can even make revisions without it screwing up your chances for getting in. <br><br>Because everyone has to sign up to even be able to read the pieces and no money changes hands (and some other careful lawyering, I’m sure), the pieces posted on the forum don’t count as being published. You keep all your rights and get a chance at some feedback.<br><br>If you don’t make it in, the comments could help you sell it somewhere else.<br><br>Another neat bit is that their new publication, called Baen’s Universe, will always have 2 newbie slots for people who don’t count as SFWA pros (like almost everyone here). Newbies compete only against other newbies, and not everyone else, too. If you can rise to the top of the ever-growing pile of slush posts, you have a shot.<br><br>New stories go in the “Baen’s Universe Slush” forum, and then you post a message in the “Baen’s Universe Slush Comments” forum, asking for comments on your story. (It’s clunky and slow, but that’s how they do it.)<br><br>I tried it with a story called “Walnuts & Witchcraft”, and got some good comments that caught me off guard. If you log on, it should still be in the top 60 posts (all you can see without doing a search) for at least a few more days.<br><br>Even cooler: They have a slush editor there who, if you ask her in the “why I would reject this manuscript” thread, will look at your story and tell you why it wouldn’t get out of the slush pile. But beware the burn—I’m still reeling from what she told me.<br><br>http://bar.baen.com<br><br>Nate