My 5 ½ hour flight from San Francisco to Atlanta was short enough, but oh so dull. What to do with my spare time?
The seat pocket Sky Magazine focused mainly on travel to expensive places and visits to expensive restaurants, and I certainly couldn’t relate to the piece on pregnancy fashions. Airline crosswords are always a good word skill source especially for writers, but some wag had already filled it in.
The movie sucked; a twenty something up and down romance based on a Shakespearean misunderstanding. Passengers kept falling asleep with their headsets on. (Yawn.) Why do they put such drivel on planes with so many action movies available?
Then it occurred to me. What’s needed is a great short story magazine designed for air travel, something simple enough to roll up and stuff in a pocket or purse. A traveler’s companion printed on inexpensive pulp with a classy gloss cover. And best of all – stories written by us, the great unwashed, untapped and often unappreciated recreational writers. Why not?
So brush up on your best stuff hatrackers and stand by. As soon as my lottery ticket scores, we’re all getting published.
Posted by luapc (Member # 2878) on :
Coming from someone who has experienced many long and dull flights in my life, I think this is a great idea, Antinomy. I hope you follow through with it. And you don't have to win the lottery to do it either. Just become a famously successful author making tons of money, and that would be all it would take.
BTW, if you do manage to make it work, I doubt we'll all be getting published in it. If we did, the airplane probably wouldn't be able to lift off at all!
Posted by Rick Norwood (Member # 5604) on :
Great idea! (I've submitted to Sky Magazine -- form rejection.)
Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :
Interestingly, tucked into the front of my Asimov-edited anthology of short stories (from his mag, published a while ago) is a torn-out short story from one of the airline mags. My husband found it on a cross-country trip and brought it home for me. It was a really interesting and well-done piece (I need to read it again to undrestand better WHY it was so moving and well-done) about what we have to assume is an autistic boy, but told from HIS point of view complete with his limited understanding of/ability to explain what happens around him. I don't think it sticks rigidly to his POV, but it's a really interesting story. At any rate, it got me thinking that the airline mags are perhaps a reasonable market for our work, which it appears Rick has already discovered though they weren't interested.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I don't fly---I never have to be anywhere at a speed that would make a plane trip a necessity---but it seems a great niche to fill.
As I recall, most of those are, or used to be, "in-house" magazines---the airlines put them together themselves. Who would you have to hit up to get them to publish that kind of magazine, or maybe just to get them to publish some fiction in the magazines they do publish?
(As I recall, Asimov was forbidden from mentioning in his airline-mag column that he, too, didn't fly. I suppose fiction would have to be similarly tailored.)
Posted by JamieFord (Member # 3112) on :
That's why the bookstores in airports do so well.
You could create a magazine distributed in airports strictly for reading en route.
Posted by sakubun (Member # 5719) on :
Perhaps the bookstores in airports would object to having something worth reading freely available on the plane.
Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :
What a great idea! All it really needs to get going is a little capital and someone to pitch it to the airlines . . .
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
sakubun, not if there were also fair dinkum book reviews, surely?
Posted by Rommel Fenrir Wolf II (Member # 4199) on :
Good Idea. Will it come with cheep drinks and Cigars? that will make the whole flight worth it. now where are all my disks with my unpublished/unfinshed stories at? Rommel Fenrir Wolf II