So I'm Thinking of Starting an E-Zine...

[Phil the Drill]

Yeah, yeah. I know. "But Phil, there are already tons of those. What can you possibly add?" I don't know. But I thought it would be fun to do one. If it becomes popular, maybe I'll even invest a lot of money into it and make it a paying market. I think it takes a lot of hard work to do, but with technology the way it is now, it's become easier to create places for people to read. And that's my main goal, to set up an e-zine to publish quality short stories for people to read for free.

Just like any blog or website out there, I realize I have to do a lot of stuff. So yeah, I'm going to do what I can to promote this idea. I've always dreamed of running my own publishing company, but this way I can do it on a smaller scale and build from there. Most things in life worth doing start off as for fun and then become serious down the line, so I'm hoping this is how my project will turn out.

It will be a bit "niche" though. Meaning I don't want just any fantasy or sci-fi. Once I get things set up, I'll reveal it all here on Mythic Scribes and I'd like some of you to send in stories if you can.

Because this will be very niche, I don't expect a large quantity of submissions which may be both a blessing and a curse. But I think if I spread the word enough, I'll be able to garner interest.

I know I'm being pretty vague right now, but once I get things going, I'll update everyone about the details. Cheers!

[Steerpike]

Good luck with it, Phil.

Get people on board with you. I had to go on hiatus recently, and I'm in the process of wrapping things up this week. It wasn't a problem of keeping the site in good order, or a financial problem (I paid for submissions out of my pocket, but payments were low). Rather, it was a manpower issue. Initially, I got twenty or thirty submissions a month. I read them all, all the way through. Lately, I've been well into the hundreds. Even weeding out the really bad ones (if the first paragraph or two didn't do it for me, I stopped), I simply haven't had time to get through the submissions. Response time has backed up, which isn't fair for the writers submitting, and occasionally something will come up at work to devour my free time for a good week or two.

Doing this as one person is a huge time commitment. Not saying it can't be done, but if you can get some people in on it with you, you'll be glad you did

Best of luck with it.

[Elder the Dwarf]

Good luck Phil, can't wait to hear more!

[Phil the Drill]

You know, Steerpike, I might be willing to help you field submissions if you like for the time being. I know we have some similar tastes in books anyway. I'm still going to go forward with my own project and see what happens with it as well. I need to find out what kind of website I'm going to use. I don't know much about websites so that's my main problem, so I need to figure that out before I go forward. Any suggestions?