Hey Guys,
Music to write by: “Lazy Eye” by The Silversun Pickups
Welcome to the first post in my “Markets for New Genre Writers” series. First up: Raygun Revival.
Background
Raygun revival was founded by Johne Cook, Paul Christian Glenn, and L.S. King in April of 2006. They founded the magazine because they believed that “space opera has fallen on hard times, and [they] intend to revive it.” Although the magazine falls under the umbrella of Double-Edged Publishing and its editors are Christian, don’t be afraid that your story must focus on religious themes. They admit that their preference is on good storytelling rather than religious overtones. In fact, I cannot recall any overtly Christian stories being published in the magazine.
Why is the magazine attractive to you?
They are always putting out calls for more submissions and have been known to publish debut stories from a variety of authors.
As a plus, their magazine covers look awesome and your name goes right on the front. Definitely something you can brag to your friends about.
Final words
My one caveat about the magazine is that they run serial fiction written by the editors, which is usually a negative. The quality of the serials runs from “needs improvement” to “quite good”. I’m not sure how many readers come back from week to week just for the serials, but your story is sure to get some “spill-over” from those that do.
Since the magazine is published in an aggressive bi-weekly schedule, your story won’t languish for too long before seeing print, and might even get podcasted by Raygun Radio. All of these bonuses make this magazine a great market for new writers
11 Comments(+Add)
Presentation counts for a lot, I think. RGR is one of the nicest looking SF web magazines around. One thing that strikes me as problematic, however, is that the magazine is published exclusively in PDF format. And as useful as the PDF is at creating a virtual printed work, they tend to be slow, and clunky, and take poor advantage of what internet publication has to offer. The problem is that while the PDF might *look* like a book or a magazine, it isn’t *easy* like a book or a magazine.
Readers are so used to viewing everything in-browser, especially as the level of functionality available in-browser continues to increase with each passing year, that having to download something, or wait as a seperate window, or seperate application opens is an impediment. Many wanderers of the internets no longer have the patience for it.
Ideally, a web publication would be able to replicate both the look, and ease of magazine browsing. One publication, although not of our genre, that strikes this balance very well is The Escapist (http://www.escapistmagazine.com). Navigation is quick and easy; the style and layout *feels* very magazine like; and because it is all done in browser, simply, and isn’t dependent on any new-fangled cascading ajaxery, so it can be viewed in the same way, and a comfortable speed in pretty much any browser.
Ultimately, we are shallow shallow critters, rendered even more shallow by a culture not of “quick gratification” as previous generations termed it, but “bit-sized gratification”… we are grown impatient and small-stomached. I read RGR occasionally, because it is good looking, and I’m sure that even more people would read it even more often if it was even better looking, and more importantly, quicker to open up and read.
First: Dammit! After spending all of that time writing an entire stinking essay, Wordpress stole my paragraph breaks like a theif in the night.
Second: Scratch that suggestion that RGR could be even better looking. Look-wise, I think it doesn’t really need to look any better. Have you seen the current cover? Gorgeous. The most important thing is ease of use. I, like most people I know, have a pretty mediocre PC at the office, and my mediocre office PC chokes and sputters when trying to navigate big PDF documents in a browser window. And I think the office crowd is one to cater to, as they’ll always have a few minutes here or there to commit to reading a thrilling yarn about space pirates and star wenches.
Damn you wordpress! Damn you to heck! The formatting thing does suck, but it’s less buggy than Blogger and more flexible than LJ so what are you going to do?
As for RGR, I read them at the office too, and sometimes the PDF download does stall on my PC. I think they did it so that you could download it and print it out like a magazine, but it would be nice if it was also available in an office-friendly format!
Hey guys,
Thanks for the article, Jordan. It’s great!
There are two things I can mention about accessibility:
1) Try Foxit Reader as a fast, free, alternative to Acrobat Reader. Foxit has a small footprint and is loads faster than Acrobat. (I was running into the same problem as you guys at the office, and Foxit has helped to ease that pain just a little.) Find Foxit here: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
2) I’ve been talking to Overlord Loriendil and we’re kicking around the idea of developing RGR for web output in addition to .pdf. The new version of InDesign CS3 gives me some new capability that I’ll have to check into; XHTML > Dreamweaver. We’re going to examine this more closely. If we can write once / develop many, this looks like a no-brainer thing we can do to make it easier to enjoy RGR in the ever-more connected world in which we live (and, more importantly, read).
Thanks for the review and the comments.
Johne Cook (aka Overlord Phy)
Ray-Gun Revival is definitely a good publication. I, too, am a big fan of space opera, and there is a sincere lack of it in the market today. It’s nice to see a publication that will specialize in that.
I question, too, the idea of a publication putting out works by its own editors. Much like you, Jordan, I think that might be stepping over a bit of a professional boundary.
Also, I looked over at “The Escapist”, and I agree that the presentation is nice, but it’s a bit too flashy for my tastes. It is presented a bit too much like a newsstand magazine with lots of pictures and very active pages. Interesting articles, but not my style.
Thanks for a good new segment, Jordan. Also, do you have email?
Featuring our own serial stories was a mechanism to prime the pump as we didn’t see anybody else doing ongoing serial works. The larger idea was always to feature serials by other authors. However, in the beginning, we just needed to get a foot in the door, show prospective authors how it could be done.
As the serial novels wind up and roll off, we’ll be running serials by other authors (as we’ve already started to do a bit with John M. Whalen’s Jack Brand stories).
Boone,
I agree with Johne. Normally, it IS bad form to have editors print their own stories in their magazines, but RGR’s biweekly print schedule is really aggressive.
It’s my feeling, and Johne can correct me on this, that RGR’s page count would be much smaller without them due to a lack of quality submissions in the magazine’s earlier days.
Additionally, it must be very difficult to get authors to submit serial stories as the number of markets that accept them are few and far between. I’ve never written a serial for exactly that reason.
Johne, Lee, and Paul had a vision, and I believe that their serials helped fulfill that. That said, when the submission pile begins to fill up and stories are getting published six months after they are accepted, I expect much less of the magazine to get taken up with the editors’ own work.
I will note that I’m not one of the editors, and didn’t really have anything to do with the magazine’s founding…Johne and Lee invited me to write one early on, based on reading some of my other work.
I’ve been very grateful for the opportunity ever since. Deadlines are a tremendous aid to writing :).
I’m constantly amazed at the quantity of good fiction you put out every month, Sean. I’d love to be able to write that fast.
Sometimes, it feels like I’m lucky to turn out a story a month!
Hi Jordan,
Just got back from vacation and saw this discussion of RGR. I’d like to add my comments along with Sean’s that the editors of RGR have been nothing but encouraging and supportive in my writing endeavors for the magazine. What started as the submission of a single story has turned into a series (as opposed to a serial) for RGR. It’s been a great opportunity for me as a writer, not only to reach readers I otherwise wouldn’t, but also to develop my writing skills, whatever they may be. And it’s due mainly to the Ray Gun Overlords’ openness to new ideas and willingness to open the door and make room for new faces.
John M. Whalen
John,
Thanks for your input! The Overlords know how to run a good zine, judging from the number of comments on this thread.
RGR’s openness to new writers has, I think, made it accessible to new readers. That’s one problem magazines like Helix have. They only accept stories from SFWA members.. which is a little shortsighted I think.