Hey guys,
Sorry it’s been so quiet around here, but I’ve been working on my SUPER SECRET project, which, as you can guess from the title of this post, has already been revealed!
That’s right, together with Camille Gooderham Campbell and Steven Smethurst, I’ve started a flash fiction magazine with the lofty goal of publishing a work of fiction of less than 1000 words in length every day.
We intend for Every Day Fiction dot com to fill a few niches. First, we intended to create a magazine that can be read with a minimum commitment of time. Web surfers spend a depressingly short amount of time on a site and attention spans are getting shorter. Here’s where Every Day Fiction steps in. Our goal is to provide a story that can be read in 20 minutes or less. We’re targetting office workers on their lunch, students on transit, teachers looking for examples for their classes, and even home surfers looking for some brain candy.
Our second goal was to help other authors. Our intention was to provide a venue where talented authors can advertise their work. Since we link to wherever the author would like us to, their story with us becomes an ad for them. We can drive traffic to their work on Amazon, their personal sites, or even a favorite forum. In addition to our token payment, they get a lot of free advertising.
The response so far has been outstanding. With a month to go before our launch in September we have over 100 subscribers, so your work will get read. We’ve got some truly incredible submissions that we can’t wait to publish, but with such an aggressive publication schedule, we will need more. Keep ‘em coming!
21 Comments(+Add)
Best of luck!
Thanks, Michael, and thanks for the plug too!
I submitted a piece! I’ll plug this to my writing group and on my page. I think it’s a good endeavor, and wish you luck!
Jens,
Thanks for much for plugging us! We love the support. I’ll keep an eye out for your stuff. Can’t wait for my contributor’s copy of Sails!
Great idea! I keep bringing my book in to read at lunch but I always get interrupted in the middle of good scenes.
I submitted a piece - it’s weird, but maybe you’ll like it.
Good luck!
Thanks Shelle!
I’m the same way. I want to read great fiction on my lunch, but I hate having to read half a short story one day and half the next. EDF will allow picture to get a complete dose of fiction every day.
I’ll keep an eye out for your piece in the slush!
Thanks!
By the way, in about half an hour my boyfriend (Jeff Houser) will be signing copies of Sails and Sorcery at Gencon. Small world.
Nice!
I can’t wait for my contributor’s copy of Black Sails so I can read your piece therein. Have you gotten yours yet? It’s been over 3 months.
I haven’t gotten mine yet either … I wonder when Sam is going to ship them out.
Jordan,
I spotted your love of Robert Heinlein, and I wanted to share that in 1975, I sent him a fan letter / request for interview. It amused him to the point that he turned over the form letter he used to answer such mail and wrote me several personal paragraphs. Even his wife, Virginia added comments.
One of my treasured possessions…
Best of luck with EDF.
mike
Congratulations on the launch of your collaborative effort http://everydayfiction.com !
Quick question for you - what is the difference between “short fiction” and “short stories”?
Once again best of luck with your new venture!
Lexen,
I suppose that short fiction includes satirical essays, fictional biographies etc.. But for now, we’re concentrating on stories.
Mike,
I loved Starship Troopers. Let’s hope we succeed as well as he did!
I think its a great idea Jordon.
Read quite a few of the stories, some good, some not so good.
I was just wondering about your background. Have you edited a magazine before or had anything published?
Or is this just a passion for you?
Amanda,
We’re just starting out, so we’re bound not to have a 100% hit ratio. In fact, can any magazine make that claim?
I believe in every story we’ve published, but at first, we worried that we weren’t going to get enough submissions to fill our very aggressive quota, so we accepted stories that we wouldn’t have accepted now. Hopefully, in the next couple of months, you’ll start to be more and more blown away by our selections.
If you’re interested in reading me, I have a story in the pro-paying anthology Sails&Sorcery (http://www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/SAILS.php). I have several other stories in various magazines right now, ranging from The Sword Review to Anotherrealm. I’ve also written back-to-back Semi-Finalist stories in the Writers of the Future contest, and been a winner in the Vancouver Courier Short Fiction contest (circulation ~300,000).
Camille, my co-editor, has her honours English degree, and I’m working on mine.
Though this is the first magazine we’ve edited, I’m not sure what you mean by “just a passion”. Seems like a contradiction in terms to me
Thanks for your response Jordon.
Congrats on your stories being published. You seem to be very much into genre fiction, what prompted you to launch a more generic fiction website?
Does Camille not write herself? Or is she just yet to make a sale?
Amanda,
I write mostly genre fiction, but my education is in English Literature in general. We believe that the genre short fiction market is not big enough to support an ambitious project like EDF on its own. For instance, there are only 15K searches for “short story” in Google per day. That’s readers, writers, everyone–worldwide. The idea behind EDF works best with massive exposure, and to get that, we needed to provide something for everyone.
Camille does write herself, but she is a “natural novelist”. People find it easier to write at certain lengths, and for Camille, that’s novel sized works. It is also tougher for her to find the time to write between starting a new family and caring for EDF.
I would love to continue answering your questions, but the comments of this blog aren’t the best medium. Perhaps we could continue this conversation in the forums at EDF? The address is http://www.everydayfiction.com/forums/
New family and EDF? Man, how do you find the time? I’m lucky to squeeze in a few hours to write for Jennings Grove.
you ever coming back here, Jordan?!
Jeff, A few hours to write Jennings Grove? Is that per week or per day, cause if it’s the later, I’m impressed!
H von D, I’m wrapping up Without Really Trying for now… unless I have something to say that’s too controversial for the EDF forums.
Right now, I have two options–I can generate content for this site that gets read by like 20 people these days (maybe), or I can generate content for EDF which is read by 800 people. My options seem clear.
This’ll probably be my “Rant blog”, but I’ve been too busy latetly to be pissed off!
Jordan: That’s per week. Right now, I can’t even manage that. *grumble*work*grumble*