What do you think of publishing on the internet? I'm not talking about e-books persé, but rather publishing on on-line 'zines?

Anyone done it?

Anyone have any favorite sites they like to read?

Any faborite sites you've submitted to (regardless of publication)?

I've seen talk on various posts, but want to try and consolidate them here, if anyone has any suggestions. Thanks.

There are good ones and there are bad ones. What to look for--- the big one is to look for a site where you will get professional editors whether paying or not. Do not go with a post it and leave it. Read the sub page carefully to see what rights you retain and what protection the zine offers to protect copyright. For example, any of the Yahoo ones have a clause stating that anything you post becomes the property of Yahoo--oopps. Read the back issues to see if the subs are professional, many have a BB--- check it out. E-mail the editor, are they prompt?, professional?, will they tell you how many hits the zine gets? Also check to see how the posting of the magazine is handled—is it up on time? Are all the stories posted on the publication date? (this is not always a good thing.) You want people to keep coming back, so spacing out some things under the coming soon is a good thing, but not if some things never come by the last day of the month.

I was hired by Wild Child Magazine a year ago--at the time the zine was getting 900 hits a month (not bad) last month we got 90,000 hits. We are not paying yet, but hope to fall into the semi-pro category soon. (paying less than 3 cents a word)(pro-zines pay 3 cents a word and above)

Advantages---you can use it as a clip and a credit. The good zines have real editors who are willing to work with new writers to help you gain experience working with an editor and to improve your writing skills. They offer an author’s page and you retain all rights to your story. On the author’s page you should be able to post a blurb about you and keep links to everything you have published by them indefinitely (or have them removed quickly if you request), you should also be able to post links to other work you have on-line and your Web page.

Wild Child requests that serials should be complete at the time of submission though this can be waved once you prove you are going to continue to write the thing once it is started. A good situation all the way around. We also publish any genre and non-fiction, except porn and excessive unneeded violence. About the level of violence we tolerate is demonstrated by my story “Forge of the Night Bird”, it was at the outer edges, same with the sex allowed. You can get to it from my author’s page there.

Sorry, didn’t mean to make this an ad. You can read it at www.wildchildpublishing.com I write under the name SRHowen and have a column there aimed at beginning writers—I did one on internet publishing that you may be interested in, several months back. The current column is about rejection.

There is a web site called spicy green iguana, can’t recall the url at the moment, but it lists many many e-zines that pay and don’t pay. I believe that it is www.spicygreeniguana.com (lost it when my computer crashed and haven’t been there in a few weeks)

I better stop here—I could go on and on. If you want to e-mail me with any questions about e-zines and Internet publishing in general, feel free to do so. I do paid lectures and presentations on Internet publishing and Writing for the Web, so have more info than they would allow me to post here.

Shawn
srhowen@hotmail.com