Clarkesworld Magazine is recruiting readers for their slush army!

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Vintage Season

My only issue with the comments is that some of them seemed to be snarky, for no other reason than that they could be snarky. Call me old-fashioned, but when the existence of a publication depends upon volunteer effort, it didn't seem like an out-of-bounds request to pass along.

At the time, I didn't know that it was a free, all-volunteer publication, I assumed it to be a small but commercial publisher. And, under that assumption, call me old-fashioned, but I think a for-profit business trying to sucker the public into doing for free what they should be paying professionals to do is slimy. It reminds me (again, under my original assumption of it being a commercial publisher) of a sizable company I worked at having a contest to design a logo to represent the company, where the winner got a whole 500 bucks! Some people were excited by it-- I saw it as a job that would cost thousands from a commercial design firm and, as the official symbol for the company would be recognized, a big part of their brand image. $500 for that would be an insult.

[Vintage Season]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

At the time, I didn't know that it was a free, all-volunteer publication, I assumed it to be a small but commercial publisher. And, under that assumption, call me old-fashioned, but I think a for-profit business trying to sucker the public into doing for free what they should be paying professionals to do is slimy. It reminds me (again, under my original assumption of it being a commercial publisher) of a sizable company I worked at having a contest to design a logo to represent the company, where the winner got a whole 500 bucks! Some people were excited by it-- I saw it as a job that would cost thousands from a commercial design firm and, as the official symbol for the company would be recognized, a big part of their brand image. $500 for that would be an insult.

I agree. Although Clarkesworld does sell an annual anthology, and tee-shirts, and mugs, anything they make in profit goes right back into the magazine, and allows them to pay a full ten cents a word for the stories they publish (up to the first 4000 words; anything above the first 4k is paid at five cents per word). They also accept donations, from people who appreciate what is being offered, to cover bandwidth and such.

After paying for stories, artwork, bandwidth and associated production costs, there is not enough left to pay slush readers... hence the call for volunteers.

I am not eligible to be one... hence the reason I passed along the request.

- M.D.B.