Just thought I should drop a note here to say that there’ll be no new fiction here at Futurismic this month, and explain why that is.
The simplest and strongest reason is that I just can’t afford to buy any right now. To cut a long story short, since I took over the reins and we restarted publishing fiction after our long hiatus back in March 2008, Futurismic has had close to zero income; in other words, the fiction budget has been coming out of my pocket. Unfortunately, because of the way the cashflow of a freelancer tends to work (think “erratic”, then scale up by an order of magnitude), combined with the financial tribulations attendant on the rather unexpected change in my personal circumstances that occurred back in spring of this year, I just don’t have the money to spare this month.
“But what about those ads on the site, Paul?” I hear you ask. Yeah, what about those ads? Well, the post coming after this one might go some way to explaining that element of the equation, so stay tuned.
However, this is just a temporary measure: Chris and I have a couple of stories waiting in the wings that we’re going to buy and publish, and we’re still looking for more. Futurismic is not ceasing fiction publishing; I care too damn much about what we do here to let it drop. There’ll be a new story in November, so keep ’em peeled; this is just a rest for breathing space.
Thanks for reading. 🙂
Oh, damn. You could try a fund drive. Since this is UK based and I’m not going to be hit for currency conversion, I could chip in with a small donation. Every little helps 😉
A donate button might be well received. Plus there’s always going for grant money or some such. Strange Horizons runs on fundraising, and several new online investigative news publications here in the US are now set up as nonprofits soliciting donations instead instead of subscriptions (sort of on the Public Radio theory).
Just top of my head thoughts. I hate to see any fiction markets dry up and I hate to see publishers bankrupt themselves to keep going.
Or, hmm: Maybe you should try putting out an ebook anthology of some of the stories you’ve published. I imagine you could work out some deals with some of the writers to do that, and that money could be earmarked for paying for fiction, perhaps. Speaking from Book View Cafe experience: the nice thing about ebook publishing is that it’s cheap, if you’re tech savvy enough to do it yourself.