Does anybody know of any good, legitimate magazines or websites that pay for stories and such (I mostly write sci/fi and fant, but I can certainly try other things)? I know of the Glimmer Train magazine, which will pay about $700 for a standard story, but I'm nowhere near as good of a writer as those guys! I feel like a lot of sites don't pay out as well, and there are so many people who just post little nothings on there just to get a few cents. Jobs are near impossible to find where I live and I'm starting to hurt for money. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Jim Baen's Universe paid $1250 for a 5000 word story (science fiction or fantasy). They also took short novels up to 40K, and paid something like $4500. This was for online publication. Too bad they closed after April 2010. We could use more markets like that.
The reason they closed is probably because it's an unsustainable pay rate. $1250 for a 5k story is $0.25 per word. When you consider that $0.05 per word is the cusp of professional rate, and you can't really find anything over $0.08 per word on the market nowadays, $1250 for a 5k story is nothing short of extraordinary. God, I wish I was writing 10 years ago...
Yeah. Baen has the money to make those kind of payments. Their subscriber numbers weren't high enough to justify it though, so I suspect you are right in that they were losing money and basically keeping the online magazine afloat with money from the book publishing business of Baen.
Clarkesworld pays $0.10 per word up to a certain point, but they only accept two stories a month. It's remarkable how far the payments of short fiction markets of the world have fallen. On the other hand, there are now far more reputable places, especially online, that do pay, even if it's just a token $0.01 per word or less. I'm still determined to crack the paying markets, even if it is the lower end of the market to start with.
Yeah, it is an interesting conundrum. On of the editors at Baen's, who is a very well-known science fiction writer and editor, advised never to sell to a market that pays less than pro rates. Ever. And he said never to let a non-paying market publish your work. In his view, it was an admission that your work isn't good enough for professional markets and reflected poorly. I don't agree entirely, but to some extent the perception of an editor becomes reality for the writer submitting work.
I disagree with that frankly. Particularly as a beginning author, the exposure alone is payment. I prefer paying markets over non-paying, but will still happily submit to quality non-paying, just because it's getting my name in print. There'll come a day when I change that outlook, but for now as a beginner, I just want to build up some presence.
