Two more days of reading.

Posted on 2009-11-10 at 03:20 by montsamu

Another little update on progress on the submissions inbox. There were 2 more stories which trickled in late Saturday, and a nice little stream continued Sunday and Monday. Everybody should have at least received an acknowledgement by now, so if you haven’t, please give submissions at bullspec dot com a ping. It’s hard rejecting any of these stories and our “short list” is starting to grow. Thanks so much for trusting your stories to a new market.

Posted in meta

We're pleased to announce that BULL SPEC BENEFIT NOVELLA #1 will be: William Shunn's Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated "Inclination."

Posted on 2009-11-09 at 18:41 by montsamu

The Manual tells us that in the beginning the Builder decreed six fundamental Machines. These are his six aspects, and all we do we must do with the Six. We need no other machines.


I believe this with all my heart. I do. And yet sometimes I seem to intuit the existence of a seventh Machine, hovering like a blasphemous ghost just beyond apprehension.


There is something wrong with me, and I don’t know what it is.

Posted in announcements, benefit-announcements, benefit-novella-announcements, bull spec benefit novella #1, inclination, novella-announcements, william shunn

We're pleased to announce that BULL SPEC BENEFIT SHORT #1 will be: Joe Meno's "The Architecture of the Moon."

Posted on 2009-11-09 at 17:58 by montsamu

By Monday the moon has stopped glowing. One moment it is the singularly most important shape in the nighttime sky and then it is gone...

In lesser hands, these unconventional forms and outlandish leaps of imagination would feel like empty concepts, but Meno fills each of these stories to the brim with heart. There is true emotion hiding behind every trick mirror, and it comes across in spades. As I finished each story, I found myself looking forward to the next, wondering what Meno would surprise me with. But what sets this collection apart, and moved me the most, was that his characters consistently choose hope over despair. Meno brings great skill to every line, and proves, as in his story, ‘The Architecture of the Moon,’ that human connection can be the small light used to illuminate a great darkness.

Posted in announcements, benefit-announcements, benefit-short-announcements, bull spec benefit short #1, joe meno, the architecture of the moon

The BULL SPEC dollar.

Posted on 2009-11-08 at 12:08 by montsamu

We’ve been getting some questions about our “donate what you like” model. So let’s walk through a $10 donation to a typical BULL SPEC story:

1. If it’s on SMASHWORDS, they take their cut (their servers host the files and their software makes multiple e-book versions possible for us) and the rest goes on to step 4.
2. If it’s on our audiobook host (now TBD), they take their cut (their servers host the (large!) files) and the rest goes on to step 4.
3. If it’s on the BULL SPEC site itself (through the story’s dedicated PLEDGIE link) 100% goes on to step 4.
4. Right now we’re (and PLEDGIE is) using Paypal for electronic donations. So Paypal takes their cut and the rest goes on to step 6. Alternative electronic micropayment gateway suggestions are welcome.
5. If it’s a check mailed to us (we’re working on a PO Box for that), 100% goes on to step 6.
6. See below.

Posted in meta

Attachments, thanks, and stats.

Posted on 2009-11-08 at 03:03 by montsamu

Based on some feedback to our guidelines, we’re considering accepting attachments. (We aren’t yet but we’re thinking about it.) The most likely ones for us are (1) .txt (2) .pdf (most likely to render the same for you and us) and (3) .odc (our internal document format). We have had problems with both .doc and .rtf rendering sanely across operating systems and client software in the past and aren’t that interesting in putting our precious pennies into the latest and greatest commercial editors which use .doc as a native format.
We know you’ve spent a lot of time agonizing over a good manuscript format (may we recommend William Shunn’s) and so have we. So if you have a good argument as to why we should accept attachments, go ahead and post it here as a comment or send it our way at editors at bullspec dot com.

Thanks again for the feedback and continued submissions. We’re honored beyond words that so many excellent stories from so many excellent writers are coming our way. When we launched on Friday morning, there was a frightening moment of question: what if nobody ever submits? Thanks for coming through, well beyond our expectations.

Stats:

Friday 11/6:

• 2 submissions received

• 20 submissions received
• 15 acknowledgements written
• 1 rejection sent

Posted in meta

Updated guidelines: open for works in Spanish and Chinese; longer form reprints.

Posted on 2009-11-07 at 18:14 by montsamu

We’ve made a few minor updates to our guidelines, clarifying some language around our publishing schedule and rights, and adding two fairly (we feel) important bits of information:

1. We are open to Spanish and Chinese (Mandarin) language submissions.
2. We are open to longer works of reprint fiction.

Posted in meta

First two submissions and updated guidelines.

Posted on 2009-11-07 at 11:35 by montsamu

Thanks SO much to the first two submissions we received last night. One we’re still holding for consideration a little while longer, the other involved the hardest thing to do so far: reject a very, very good and fun story which just wasn’t right for one of our first two selections.

On that note we updated our guidelines with a little extra direction on content and we apologize for not being more clear from the beginning—it wasn’t until we were sitting with a good story at the edge of content we hope to publish if we ever get going, though perhaps it is not posting such stories that will prevent it, that a harder line started to form.

Again, we’re honored that two such fine stories made it our way last night, thanks very much to the two writers who noticed our “We’re Here!” sign and trusted us with their submissions.

And “looky here,” another submission rolled in this morning… thanks so much, folks!

Posted in meta

How it works.

Posted on 2009-11-06 at 07:00 by montsamu

The following is a work of fiction depicting how we imagine this is going to work, in our folly of imperfect wisdom, clouded by ignorance:

1. A writer sends an awesome story to us.
2. We skim it, hopefully within 5-10 days, and either reject it for content, using unreadable attachments, etc., accept it immediately (skip to 4), or acknowledge the submission with a personal letter.
3. We fully read the available submissions and evaluate how many we’d like to and can accept at this time.  We grudgingly reject some of the submissions, wishing we had room for all of them, and for those we are able to select:
4. We reply to the submission e-mail with an acceptance e-mail asking for particulars: (1) Legal name for the contract; (2) How they’d like to be paid (check, Paypal, etc.); (3) What license they’d like to use for the text of their story; (4) to formally accept our acceptance. We also specify what rights we’d like to acquire of those offered of the various language electronic, print, and audio rights if we already know which ones we’d like to accept.
5. The writer sends these particulars. At this point we’ll mark our submissions “tentatively closed” and would be a bit put off if you withdrew the submission, but if Clarkesworld or Tor.com or other great markets came calling (but what were you doing simultaneously submitting to them, eh?) we’d understand.
6. We send the writer a PDF contract (no, we don’t like it, either) which the writer prints, READS, initials, signs, scans, and sends back to us. We’ll do it via snail mail if we have to and meet for coffee and a handshake if you’re local if you like.
7. We look over the contract, do a rain dance, and file it, hopefully never to be seen again, send the first half of the writer’s advance (for original stories), and get to WORK.
8. We: (1) perform any copy-editing which remains, if any, to prepare for the online version; (2) set up the PLEDGIE donation streams for the initial online, e-book, and audiobook versions; (3) assemble the story into a pile of beautiful e-books to be ready for SMASHWORDS publishing with original or commons-sourced art; (4) record an audiobook of the story and prepare it for (audiobook hosting partner: TBD) publishing with original, contributed, or commons-sourced music; (5) tell the world we’ve got a new story and we couldn’t be happier about it. If applicable, we (6) translate into our other supported languages and do it all again.
9. We send these various bits to the author for final review. No contracts this time! Yay!
10. Release day for the story! Online, e-book, and audiobooks go live. We send the author the remaining half of their advance (for original stories), count our negative pennies which remain, and hope for the best.
11. Readers flock to the site to read the story and donations flow from them in all directions in their delirium. They download e-books and audiobooks and read them and listen to them and share them with their friends. These donations are split 50-50 between BULL SPEC and the author for all works and all versions. The author gets filthy rich enough to buy pizza, and BULL SPEC can send a few bits on to Durham literacy and ESL programs (minimum 10% of the BULL SPEC share, more for certain works as negotiated) and can pay it forward to PLEDGIE, DUOTROPE, the commons, and everybody else on whose backs we’re building. And somehow scratch together enough scratch for another story advance.
12. About one month after release day, the current list of donors (we reserve the right to limit this in size, for example the first 10, random 10, the N donors whose total donations eclipsed the author’s advance as the story’s official ‘patrons,’ etc.) are compiled into the story’s official sponsors and the online story, e-book, and audiobook are updated with their names and dedications. The month’s batch of typos (yeah, right!) are also credited in all versions. If applicable, the licenses for the files are updated to give more explicit rights to the commons. (Which is our way of formally asking nicely what we would and wouldn’t like done with them, given our choice. Nobody will ever get a threat of lawsuit from us over copyright or contract issues.)
13. Everybody is happy and ready to do it all again!

Posted in meta

BULL SPEC submissions guidelines

Posted on 2009-11-06 at 05:05 by montsamu

UPDATED: 2010-10-15 at 09:00 EST:

Note: These are old, out-of-date guidelines and rantings here for “historical” purposes. Please visit this link for up-to-date guidelines and status.

In short: send a story or poem (text, attachment, whatever) to: submissions at bullspec dot com and let me know: (1) where you are writing from as I try to keep some balance between local and global content; and (2) if it has been previously published and if so, where. I prefer to receive submissions in a standard manuscript format such as William Shunn’s Proper Manuscript Format but I’m not terrifically picky. A word count is quite helpful as well.

In more length: See this post for more up to date details on what BULL SPEC is looking for. Note: these guidelines are a tiny bit outdated, but will do in a pinch. The main difference is that print rights are also needed as, well, BULL SPEC is also a printed magazine.

[Click “Read more” to get more, much more, of the not so “in short” version.]


What we want: Well-written original (and reprints: see below) fantasy and science fiction in English, Spanish, or Chinese (Mandarin), of just about any subgenre and of about 1000 to 7500 words in length, soft edges. As we get started, preference will be given to shorter works as we work out any kinks in our translation and production processes. Nothing (likely ever) R-rated and we won’t have much interest in explicit erotica or disturbing violence or imagery. And though we hate to be this conservative, at first we can’t afford to take risks on content (thought perhaps we can’t afford NOT to take those risks, and that’s why we’ll fail?) and we’ll be leaning more towards PG than PG-13, particularly on sex-related content and other potentially disturbing themes. We’re looking for a wide variety of excellent storytelling, from high fantasy adventures to hard science fiction thriller-mysteries and things in between and even in the dark. Steampunk, alternative history, urban fantasy, space westerns, it’s all welcome here. We welcome unpublished writers, whom we hope to promote as BULL SPEC DISCOVERY authors, and diverse viewpoints and characters. We are definitely interested in fostering the careers of writers in or who have spent time in the greater Durham, NC, US area (from Asheville to Wilmington, almost to DC and almost to Atlanta, say about 250 miles as the crow flies give or take, so welcome, Baltimore!) so let us know where you’re writing from. We’re also interested in reading stories which take place in that area but not exclusively and not to a fault or as a gimmick in the story. What’s really tickling our fancy right now: Durham area steampunk and historical fantastic stories, augmented reality, seasteading, anarchism, mutualism, syndicalism, diversity, equality, sustainability, friendship, realistic near-earth space exploration, The Long Now, and utopias on the theme “utopias are hard, and important, because we need to imagine what it might be like if we did things well enough to say to our kids, we did our best, this is about as good as it was when it was handed to us, take care of it and do better. Some kind of narrative vision of what we’re trying for as a civilization.” (Kim Stanley Robinson, “Galileo’s Dream” interview by Terry Bisson.)

Length: For original fiction (for reprints see below), currently only short stories, of about 1000 to 7500 words in length, soft edges. At first we’re most interested in a “sweet spot” of about 2000-4000 words but will consider all short story length works. In the future we hope to accept novelettes and novellas, but we’re not ready to pay professional rates for these yet. If you have a work of novelette or novella length fiction, might we suggest PANVERSE as a market.

Payment: $0.05/word advance, $50 minimum, $2000 maximum, with half at acceptance (update: max $50 at acceptance) and half (or the remaining) at publication, along with 50-50 royalty split for e-book and audiobook donations beyond advance. If included in a future anthology, weighted share of overall 50-50 split by logarithmic word count. (A word on logarithmic word count: this means that a 2,000 word story, instead of being 20% of a 10,000 word story, is weighted to about 80%. This gives each story a strong share of its place in the anthology regardless of size, while still rewarding longer works.)

Formatting: Plain text in the body of the e-mail, or attachments, we’re flexible. For text in the body of the e-mail: this or this or tell us how you’re specifying emphasis if it won’t be obvious; no indent necessary; a line break between paragraphs; a ”#” on a line or some other designation for scene breaks; and if you like ”###” or “THE END” or similar to denote that the full e-mail has been received. For attachments, we strongly prefer TXT, PDF, ODC, or even RTF, but DOC is fine, too. If we can read it—we will.

Don’t forget: To use the something like the subject “LANGUAGE (e.g. English, Spanish, Chinese) submission: “MY TITLE” (N words) by MY BYLINE” and send from the e-mail to which you want us to respond. If you have connections to Durham or North Carolina, let us know, and if you’d like to let us know about your relevant previous work, or if you’re yet unpublished, feel free, but this isn’t necessary. Let us know if this is a simultaneous (see below) or reprint (see below) submission. Please include a self-guess as to the rating (G, PG, PG-13, etc.) and what genre(s)/subgenre(s) the story might be pigeonholed into if it had to be so pigeonholed, and if you think your story takes a stab at one of our fancies or themes. Please: don’t summarize the story! We want to read it and find out as we go along how it builds and ends! And please, if possible, specify at least the title and preferably also the introductory information in English. It makes it easier on our primary readers. Important: for original works, do not specify your choice of end-user license or any intention to donate or forego royalties or advances. This would immediately disqualify our ability to select your work as this could be seen as requiring a form of “consideration,” which could disqualify us as an SFWA market. Nobody wants that. So please, don’t do it. We will never, ever, ever ask an author of original fiction to forego royalties or advances for that work, and will refuse unsolicited offers of doing so. For original works please don’t make offers of promotional work, of translating the story text yourself, etc. We’re here to produce your stories and promote you!

Simultaneous submissions: Yes, but please don’t make us change this. Let us know upon submission whether you have or plan to submit to additional markets, and please, please let us know the instant you withdraw your submission. Please don’t submit unless you are willing to accept our acceptance within 10 days, regardless of other outstanding submissions you may have, and pretty please, once we’ve exchanged acceptance and acceptance of acceptance e-mails, please don’t leave us hanging. We will grudgingly understand though, particularly as we get going, if a better, more established market comes calling. Don’t worry: we understand, particularly for writers getting started. At least one of our editors, who shall for now remain nameless, once simultaneously submitted a story to a market which did not accept them. He is still sorry. When in doubt, just communicate and be honest with us and yourself.

Multiple submissions: UPDATED 6 May 2010: Please only one story at a time. Current multiple submissions will be evaluated. Please only send us at most two stories at a time. If rejected and a rewrite or resubmission was not explicitly requested, please, no resubmission, but you may submit another story at your convenience, but please wait at least 24 hours. If accepted, please wait until publication or three months have passed before submitting another story, whichever is later. As we continue to launch we are trying to reach SFWA market approval as soon as possible, and each author we re-sign in a slot we could have used for a new author pushes that time frame further into the future.

Reprints: We welcome and will accept submissions for reprints of exceptional stories in our accepted languages—but generally without any advance payment. There is no maximum length limitation for reprints (we’ll look at short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels), and we’ll happily consider serial works, but for longer works please only send the first 10,000 words unless this is near the end of your story. (If you are at this border, or a border between other length-based definitions, please specify which of short story, novelette, novella, or novel you wish to publish your story as.) The 50-50 royalty split for e-book and audiobook or potential anthology inclusion remains in place. Stories which are “reprints” will be marked as such in contrast to “original” stories, for example “BULL SPEC SHORT #1” as compared to original works released as “BULL SPEC ORIGINAL SHORT #1” and similar. It is our strong preference to select original fiction as our budget and our submissions queue allows, and reprints are intended to be issued “off issue.” For example, on our current quarterly original schedule, we would hope to include one benefit or reprint or commons (see below) for each of the two months between original fiction releases.

Commons: We welcome and will accept suggestions (and solicit those of our own) for reprints of exceptional stories available from the commons, whether public domain or in an appropriate license for some manner of inclusion in BULL SPEC. The 50-50 royalty split for e-book and audiobook or potential anthology inclusion remains in place for works with authors, otherwise the “royalty share” reverts to the site; for certain works directed specifically to selected charities. Stories which are sourced from the commons will be marked as such in contrast to “original” stories, for example “BULL SPEC COMMONS SHORT #1.” It is our strong preference to select original and then reprint fiction as our budget and our submissions queue allows, and commons will be issued “off issue,” similar to reprints, as long as we have acceptable original stories. As with reprints, there are no maximum length limitations for stories from the commons.

Rights: (1) For original stories, first worldwide electronic and audio rights in at least one language (preferably all those we support), non-exclusive one month after publication. First rights expire at the author’s option if we have not published the story within two years of acceptance or earlier upon request and refund of advance—we reserve the right to hold the story for the full two years if we have already begun production processes on translations, e-books, or audiobooks. For reprints or commons, some acceptable minimum electronic reprint rights. (2) Non-exclusive electronic and audio re-print rights so that we can continue to offer the story online and in e-book and audiobook. Expires at the author’s option two years after publication, which if exercised causes the e-book to be withdrawn from active publishing and the text of versions of our hosted versions of the story to be replaced by “Text withdrawn by author.” (3) Non-exclusive anthology electronic and print and audiobook rights which expire at the author’s option if we have not published the story in such an anthology within two years of publication, or upon request if we have a lapse in publishing after initial publication of such an anthology. We are not currently seeking first print rights in any geography for any work. A word about rights: we’re mainly asking this as an explicit courtesy. We will never, ever sue an author for rights issues or even contract issues. We’ll just be sad, and wish you’d made different choices. On the other side of the coin, we will respect your wishes on rights to the best of our abilities, and fulfill our contracts, promises, and obligations.

Errata: We are not a market for fan fiction. To start, with our less frequent original fiction publishing schedule, we will favor stories which are not serials. To be clear: there are no submission or reading fees of any kind, and direct, unagented submissions are welcome. We hope to continue to meet all DUOTROPE requirements for market listing, ours is: HERE, as well as all RALAN requirements for market listing, ours is: HERE. A word on authors under 18: contracts and such will be sticky but we’ll find a way to make it work for stories that make the grade. So please consider us. We’d love to have a good reason to put together some BULL SPEC YOUNG AUTHOR art and sound. Also, we don’t have a preference to American vs. British vs. Other English spellings. Just please be internally consistent within a single story.

Response time: We aim to acknowledge (by a human, not a script) within 10 days and respond yes/no/hold/resubmit within 30 days. If longer for either step, please query at queries at bullspec dot com. When we are full up for 6 months and submissions are temporarily closed, we will still evaluate stories in our queue; we will let you know if we’re on to something but understand if you wish to withdraw the submission after 30 days, and welcome resubmissions of stories withdrawn or rejected due to our temporarily closing our submissions. We recommend that you report your response times at Duotrope’s Digest. It keeps us honest, and might just help you—they flag potentially erroneous simultaneous, multiple, or closed submissions.

Send to: submissions at bullspec dot com with the understanding that by doing so, you are genuinely offering your story to us and have the legal rights to submit it.

Posted in guidelines, meta

Welcome to BULL SPEC

Posted on 2009-11-06 at 05:00 by montsamu

Welcome to a new speculative fiction market, BULL SPEC, based in Durham, North Carolina, United States.

We’re going to start slow and small and make sure we have things right and that we grow the right way if we’re lucky enough to need it. We’ll aim to start with quarterly stories, move to bimonthly, monthly, etc. when we can, with a yearly e-book and print anthology of the best of the best. But to be realistic that is months, maybe years, maybe never, away.

But we’re going to start some things the right way from the very beginning:
For writers:

1. Professional advance payment for original fiction of $0.05/word, minimum $50, maximum $2000, 50% upon acceptance, 50% upon publication, plus royalties (see #2). This means that we should in time qualify as an SFWA market once we can demonstrate regular publishing of multiple writers, and it is the mission of BULL SPEC to stick this out as long as it takes to see that happen for those authors who do entrust us with their work. (At the goal of one original story every 3 months, we hope to achieve this in at most 30 months, as the SFWA guidelines suggest publishing works from 10 different authors. The SFWA market approval should be retroactive meaning the first story we publish should qualify when we achieve SFWA approved market status. We do hope to speed this up, but there’s a limit to how deep we can go and we want to carefully craft the works we do produce. 1 story every 30 months is our minimum commitment.)
2. 50-50 royalty split of all story-specific donations. Royalties above advance are available monthly, withdrawn on demand. Paypal or check only at this time.
3. Solidly produced SMASHWORDS e-books and (audiobook hosting partner TBD) audiobooks, under the BULL SPEC label, produced in the source language and at our option one or more of English, Spanish, or Chinese (Mandarin), or other languages and formats. (We will consider adding additional languages but focus on the most prominently spoken or used as first languages in Durham, NC, US.)
4. Pick the end-user license for your copyrighted content, either “All Rights Reserved” of any of the CREATIVE COMMONS typical licenses. (No license choice receives preferential treatment, and please do not include this choice in your submission information to avoid any gray areas about “consideration.“) Our default overall produced e-book and audiobook license is Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License with the text of the story having all rights reserved. This just means that we understand that the PDF files and MP3 files themselves can and will be shared and we’re OK with that: after all, it’s “donate what you like” to begin with. But if you choose to, we’ll publish the text of your story itself under its own license and/or grant more rights to the commons for the overall PDF and MP3 files.
5. If we ever do make it to an e-book and/or print anthology your story will be up for inclusion, with a 50-50 royalty split of anthology-specific donations (e-book and audiobook) or print sale net profits (gross, less printing), weighted by logarithmic word count. Our goal is to not only produce our own anthologies, but to allow readers to “pick their own anthology” for e-books and audiobooks.
6. Easy e-mail submissions with fast (under 30 days) response and (hopefully) clear, simple guidelines.

1. “Clip” music, art, and sound contributed to the commons under simple attribution and/or share-alike licenses.
2. Short (and long) works of speculative fiction in multiple languages to encourage literacy and language development.
3. Minimum 10% of BULL SPEC net proceeds to relevant organizations who do the real ground work in literacy, language, and young writer development, with certain works (particularly solicited reprints and commons) at a full 100%.

Posted in meta