I am so ignoring the argument because I have several dogs in that fight, and will look like a whiner no matter what I say...

Woof.

Ditto, David. Ditto.

I'm publicly and loudly disinterested in a whole bunch of things!

And we love you for it, Nick.

I really am curious why I don’t care. It seems like I oughtta.

I am so totally interested in it. I've taken to riding the bus just so I can talk to people about it. Nobody seems interested, though, so I talk about my rash instead.

Maybe you don't care, David, because you're more concerned with appearing in markets that fit your personal criteria of quality and don't care overly much whether or not SFWA considers them pro markets? Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Maybe it's because he realizes that it's just an empty show anyway, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as they say, and in the grand scheme of things how does it matter? Doom, doom, doom. And so forth.

This is one of those issues that becomes meaningless the instant you make your 3rd pro sale.

Well presumably you know enough about SFWA to realize that agitating to join is like sneaking into a mini-bus going back to the mental hospital after a day trip.

As far as the money itself, you're probably just a defeatist and think it won't tend to raise rates over the long-term more quickly than inflation and competition would, or at least not more quickly than your increasing reputation would allow you to negotiate for yourself.

All of the above, I suspect.

Jay - it seems like this is the class of argument in which it's difficult for anyone to take a strong stance on either side without appearing to be whining. Which is increasingly true for any political debate involving money, unfortunately.

I'm in the unfortunate position of swinging wildly between two poles: being worked up over how this affects Strange Horizons, and being thoroughly disinterested in the whole problem. I mean, there are a lot of interesting ideas wrapped up in the whole thing, at least for me, but... but a lot of it comes back to "Strange Horizons as a magazine won't be hurt if we lose SFWA-pro status, but some of our writers will be, and what's important to them is important to us." Mission statement and all. But that turns in to "it's important to them, because they want to be SFWA members in order to possess a dubious set of privileges, including but not limited to: watching their writerly role models behave like angry teenagers on the private SFWA newsgroups, being condescended to by the SFWA old guard at meetings, and getting extra stickers on their namebadges at conventions."

And then I just don't care about the whole thing all over again. I don't know. I've been too caught up in endless logistical arguments over whether and how we can find the extra money, and at what cost to the rest of the magazine.

The only reason I want to be an active member of SWFA is because I want to be able to nominate and vote on the Nebulas. Everything else, I can get through Tim's active status/ his job at Locus.

However, that Nebula thing is enough of a carrot to make me want it.

Anyone have any idea how sales made prior to this rate increase will count? For instance, will my SH sale still count towards my magic three pro sales, or will it no longer count and I'll have to start over?

Ok, so maybe I do care, a bit.

The sales will be counted under the rules that applied when the sale was made. Whatever SFWA's problems, they're not stupidly evil. :)

And! Nick, I didn't feel like continuing this at the Rumor Mill, because the discussion there is starting to (starting to? I think all of my vitriol on this topic comes from the Rumor Mill and not the change itself) grate on my nerves, but since you addressed the specifics of SH funding, etc. Raising the rates like this is $2000, for a magazine whose total annual budget is around $14000. The raise in the articles rate complicates the budget even further, but it's a necessary change independent of the fiction rates.

I mean, this probably isn't going to cut the amount of fiction being published, probably not noticeably. It will undoubtedly cut the number of SFWA-qualifying sales being made. That's a different question. It may very well cut the amount of new fiction published at Strange Horizons. We haven't decided yet, and we're not going to make any decisions until after the November fund drive.

And! One more comment, and then I swear to god I'm going to go work on my dissertation and leave y'all alone for a while.

I know why you don't care, David. And Greg and Heather and the rest of you. Because you're already publishing quality work in markets you like, without worrying about whether they're SFWA-pro or not. Because SFWA membership, while possibly nice to have, is generally irrelevant to you as a writer.

Susan,

The rumormill drives me nuts too. I dunno why, but the Pro-Only topic has always been very heated.

Hmm $2000 a year is $38.46 a week. If I had the books and felt like raising the rate, I would do a 50/50. 50% of that $38.46 would come from the existing budget, and $38.46 would be added to the amount needed to raise.

Obviously, this is purely none of my business, but I like SH enough to submit to it sometimes and donate books for its fund-raisers. So imagine I'm talking about some other magazine that is similar to, but not quite, SH Places where I see viable, nearly invisible cuts and expansions, include:

1. Illustrations. I would go to clip or free art, knocking out those $75 fees. The art galleries, which are more important, would carry the visual load.

2. I'd eschew running more than one non-fiction piece per week, or run more "in-house" pieces, saving $50 per unrun piece.

3. I wouldn't do the POD anthology, but hustle for an offset anthology -- Golden Gryphon or Night Shade might go for it, and even pay an advance (I don't know if this was tried already). Even if SH self-pubs, per-unit costs would drop dramatically in offset, meaning higher margins on sales that could be poured back into the magazine. Though money would be spent upfront, if there is a market for more than 500 copies in the first year, POD stops making economic sense immediately. That's true generally, btw. Yes, I don't think 3000MPH will sell more than 500 copies over the next ten months, but David should buy one anyway.

4. I would see if SH has the traffic to support Spring Streets personals (nerve.com's set-up), which brings in money.

5. Non-con fundraising events at coffeehouses, bars, etc. Mary Anne objected to that in the past citing control issues, but you ain't Mary Anne, are ya? ;)

6. I would increase the number of reprints, but not to more than ten a year.

7. I would also investigate possible positive tax incentives that may come with running small deficits.

Ol’ Mike Jasper has definitely got a point, too.

Appreciated, Nick. And I hear you, David. This SFWA fuss is exactly the type of tempest in a teapot I generally can't be bothered with, but it has a very significant impact on Strange Horizons. Jed and Susan and I have been doing a lot of brainstorming this week.

Nick-- a lot of those are good suggestions, and some of them are things already under discussion, but some of them are new to me. Just for the record, though, our current non-fiction budget assumes that 1/2 of both the reviews and the articles will be unpaid, either through donated or staff-written pieces. We hold to that pretty well without exerting any real effort, so I'd be hesitant to try and take it any lower.

And not to answer all Nick's points point-by-point, but cutting illustration payment wouldn't be very nice to the artists, would it now? Why should we give all our money to writers?

We're not really self-publishing the anthology thing either -- Lethe Press is bearing the bulk of the costs.

I can't really see us carrying personals, but I suppose I can leave that (and the coffeehouse thing) up to Susan.

OOoh, I like the coffee house idea! Sounds cool!

And not to answer all Nick's points point-by-point, but cutting illustration payment wouldn't be very nice to the artists, would it now? Why should we give all our money to writers?

The reasons that come immediately to mind are a) your readers seem more interested in your writers than in your art, b) the rates for illustrations are already below the market as compared to even the local work an illustrator can pick up in one's home town, and c) many magazines don't illustrate their stories.

We're not really self-publishing the anthology thing either -- Lethe Press is bearing the bulk of the costs.

When did I say you were self-publishing? My point is that POD leads to a high per-unit cost ($5-7) that doesn't scale. Offset printing has a low per-unit cost ($1-3). The sales price of a book, however, is generally fixed by the market. The difference between POD and offset is that with the former, the profit margins are by definition much slimmer.

Nick, you seem to be missing the fact that much of what we choose to pay out has little to do with what the readers want. We pay artists because we think it's good to pay artists. We pay writers more because we think it's good to pay writers more. Not because it significantly affects the quality of what we can publish (it might if we paid a hell of a lot more, but it mostly doesn't at the levels we're working at), and not because the readers care in the slightest.

As for the illustration rates, we set them in consultation with the artists' association (can't remember the name right now? ASJA?), and they seemed content to call this sufficient pro rates for the rights we needed.

As for the POD/offset thing, that decision is basically up to the printer. I'm actually not sure what process Lethe is using; I'm just glad they're dealing with it. The SH book was designed as a promotional tool, not a money-making venture; we'd have done things very differently with it if we were trying to make money off it. Not included all those articles, for example.