Aphelion

The February Issue is online. Welcome to the 13th hour....er, year!

The "Valentine Conundrum" author error was presumably a slip on Iain's part (he supplied the HTML index file)...

The topic title misspells "February" (a common typographical error, often made by people at the liberry).

The masthead Issue Number, Volume Number and date need to be updated.

(And so it goes, when folks have day jobs and the same set of everyday distractions as those who DON'T put out a webzine.)

RM

I don't know how different things are between what I do for the challenges and what you do as an editor in terms of amount of work. Perhaps it's a ton more than me, and I don't know my keister from a hole in the ground.

Editors do great work without reward. They do, and I know that.

Honestly, though, I think the day job card gets played too often.

I have a day job, too. One that calls for me to lately put in 50-60 hours of work a week, creating a brand new community newspaper on top of the regular load, plus be a Dad to a family with 3 kids, plus complete my very first ice sculpture (I always wanted to try it).

Together with that, I coordinated a challenge for us to collectively write a story for the Bill Warren series with Dan's blessing and wrote an 8000 word universe example to go with it. I came out on time without problems (at least, none so far).

I am grateful for the opportunities that are given: a kick-ass zine with a loyal readership and a forum most publications would kill for. I am very appreciative of the winners announcements that go at the bottom of the Shorts page. Thank you for those.

Problems arise. Delays happen. I understand that. It just seems that there are an awful lot of apologies and excuses lately when it comes to the zine coming out. It was a double issue. There were two months to know it was coming.

I had a phrase I used to hang on my wall: fix the problem, not the blame.

I really love doing the challenges. They're tremendously rewarding. Many of the forum denizens that comment on the zine, participate in them. But I don't for a minute believe that the challenges could exist without the zine. People tune in for the zine, and I run a teeny, tiny side show. Without the zine, my regulars will move on eventually.

The practical upshot here is when the zine does better, my little part of the world does better, too, and when these things that look like production problems keep happening... they don't help everywhere.

kailhofer wrote:I don't know how different things are between what I do for the challenges and what you do as an editor in terms of amount of work. Perhaps it's a ton more than me, and I don't know my keister from a hole in the ground.

Editors do great work without reward. They do, and I know that...

To prepare for this issue, the editors did the usual reading of submissions, and reviewed 11 months' worth of material to pick "Best of" entries. (In my case, I only picked half as many new stories as usual, being a lazy git.)

While your 8000-word example is impressive, the monthly challenges involve writing a 1000-word sample story and reading maybe 10,000 words of entries. Short story submissions run from 1,000 to 7,500 words, and I normally read AT LEAST 10 per month (if I'm lucky and there are none obviously needing major rewrites), and do line editing on those chosen for publication. McCamy gets fewer submissions, but some of them are several times the 7,501 word minimum in length, so she may well be reading as much wordage as I do...

The editorial content was mostly ready more than a week ago. The beleaguered Webmaven, however, has a job that probably entails as many hours per week as yours, with occasional disasters to deal with...
What we need is a better mechanism for handling occasions when Rob is indisposed by disasters at work (a definite timetable and duty roster for creating a cover and doing the actual "flip" to put the new issue online). I can handle MOST of the technical odds and ends (HTML conversions, uploading, etc.), but can't do the actual flip and could only do a makeshift version of a cover...

Maybe YOU (Nate) should be the whipholder who makes sure that the essential tasks get done more or less on time. (Talk about a busman's holiday -- come home from coordinating production at the printing plant, and try to get people back on schedule via e-mail...)

RM

Robert_Moriyama wrote:To prepare for this issue, the editors did the usual reading of submissions, and reviewed 11 months' worth of material to pick "Best of" entries. (In my case, I only picked half as many new stories as usual, being a lazy git.)

While your 8000-word example is impressive, the monthly challenges involve writing a 1000-word sample story and reading maybe 10,000 words of entries. Short story submissions run from 1,000 to 7,500 words, and I normally read AT LEAST 10 per month (if I'm lucky and there are none obviously needing major rewrites), and do line editing on those chosen for publication. McCamy gets fewer submissions, but some of them are several times the 7,501 word minimum in length, so she may well be reading as much wordage as I do...

The editorial content was mostly ready more than a week ago. The beleaguered Webmaven, however, has a job that probably entails as many hours per week as yours, with occasional disasters to deal with...
What we need is a better mechanism for handling occasions when Rob is indisposed by disasters at work (a definite timetable and duty roster for creating a cover and doing the actual "flip" to put the new issue online). I can handle MOST of the technical odds and ends (HTML conversions, uploading, etc.), but can't do the actual flip and could only do a makeshift version of a cover...

Maybe YOU (Nate) should be the whipholder who makes sure that the essential tasks get done more or less on time. (Talk about a busman's holiday -- come home from coordinating production at the printing plant, and try to get people back on schedule via e-mail...)

RM

What you do definitely sounds like more work than what I do. How many hours does that take?

I do coordinate production all day, which is probably why the delays bother me so much. Could I do the same for Aphelion? I have no doubt I could.

I have to light a fire under the ass of creative people every day. If I don't, presses, folders, & stitchers sit idle, which costs the company a lot of money. Newspapers and magazines don't skip deadlines or drop dates. They can't. So, if someone is dropping the ball, you light them up. If that doesn't work, you put another person on it. If that doesn't work, you push them out of the way and do it yourself... but that publication has to get out, even if you work all day and all night at it. If an individual story or artwork can't be ready, it gets left until the next issue, or just cut.

That's the way I am in life. If you make a commitment, you meet it. I've not missed a deadline for the challenges by more than 15 minutes since they started. I can be downright mean if I have to be. I have no problem with the idea of publishing the zine without any section that's late, and a note saying "There aren't any x pieces this month because _____ was too damn lazy to get their job done by the deadline."

I don't know that Aphelion is ready for that. Plus, Jeff is already listed as Production Editor.

In publishing terms, this seems much easier than any printed piece. You don't have ads or inserts to fit copy around. You have stories, poems, or features, that are self-contained pieces on their own pages. The pages all have the same basic layout & design. All they need is indexes to link to them. Last week Tuesday one typesetter and I put a newspaper that had 183 parts--news stories, photos & ads--and had to fit in exactly 16 tabloid-sized pages. I made her a mock up, then she put in all the parts until she had to leave, then I took over and finished it.

Professionally speaking, your suggestion of cross-training and backups sounds good. Tao's has merit, too. Waiting until the end for everything makes a lot of work all at once instead of a little here and there throughout a month. If only one person could "flip" the issue, or write the editorial, or edit the stories, or make the cover, that would be unacceptable in the real world. What happens in a "flip" and why can't someone else do it??

There may be very good reasons for the way things are, but from an outsider's perspective, they're not obvious.

Well, let's get started!!!!

Just for the record, while I appreciate Robert's attempts to give me a plausible excuse, the lateness of the issue is my fault, and I don't ask for anyone to excuse me for it.

We'll try to drop the next one a bit closer to the deadline, ok?

rick tornello wrote:I'm not and editor, however I do agree with Tao. I write for the fun of it and the sharing of ideas and comments and getting my flash stories crushed by davidsonhero all the time. One of these days buster.(':twisted:')


OK so "we're" late. This isn't a missile launch.
My 2 cents.

RT

Truly, Aphelion has a tremendous community, as well as a sense of community.

But can you be so sure that everyone wants to participate 'for the fun of it'? I don't think so.

How many contributing authors look at this and think, 'Sure, I'll send in my story that I spent months sweating over just because I love the idea of joining in somebody else's hobby.' ?? Sure, some people write for the community in the forum. I do that myself a lot. Contributors to the zine, however, want one thing at the base of all other things: for an audience to read their piece.

That sounds kind of simplistic, but that is the vehicle that a zine provides: a way to provide stories, poetry, and features so they can be read by the public. It's not like putting them up on your own blog. These were submitted so they could be seen by a new audience, an audience of many, not just your friends.

Writers work hard to make their pieces the best they can be for that audience. Separating the publication from the staff for discussion purposes, editors do the same thing, for the same reason. The function of the zine itself, then is to disseminate that work in as timely, efficient, and attractive way as possible so that it can be read.

But what does the audience want? It's easy to overlook the needs of the audience when producing a publication. People think, 'We make it, so they'll read it.' That's not necessarily true. Does the audience want to tune into someone's hobby? No. They want to read stories. They want value: a quality value of entertainment that's worth the investment they put in. Investment may be a strange term for a free webzine, but it's true. The audience invests their time. They don't have to be here. They could read a book, or watch tv, or practically anything else. Instead, they come here because they believe they'll get the worth of their time or better by reading the stories.

Every day or every time a difficulty prevents the zine from appearing, it's value is lowered to the audience. They don't care why it's not there. It's not their job to care. It's their role to read and be entertained, and maybe even be moved to the point where they log in and give feedback.

Some delays are unavoidable. Problems happen, but let me put it another way: this is the 'best of' issue, holding a compendium of all the very best that has appeared in the zine for the last year. Who is reading it??

It's been out for what, a week and a half now? Judging from the lack of forum comments, it landed with a thud instead of fanfare. It was the best Aphelion writers had to offer, and no one appears to have even noticed.


That's not much value.


It is not my intent to attack Rob in all of this. The zine could not exist without him. It is my intent to attack a way of thinking about the zine that I think cripples it's potential. There are writers out there who contribute because they think that Aphelion is one of the best zines out there. I know because they've told me so. Editors and writers together have made that happen. Aphelion can't be just a hobby, or it wouldn't have survived a dozen years, but it is still thought of as one by some.

It's more than that. It's a community. It's a creative process, an unwritten pact between authors, editors, and the audience. It's a source of pride--I know I'm proud to have had my stuff published here and ever so proud to show the work of the souls who joined in the challenges... And it's a fun place to be, as the members of the forum have noticed.

However, it can't be thought of as just a hobby anymore, or it does a disservice to every person involved who invested their time.

That's my 2 cents, or maybe 25 cents.

Nate