Well, this is the sort of announcement that makes the hard work of running a webzine worthwhile! Jason Stoddard, a regular fixture in Futurismic‘s fiction section (and a genuinely super guy to boot) has sold two novels to genre fiction small press Prime Books, an outfit that publishes novels by fine writers such as Nick Mamatas and Ekaterina Sedia and anthologies by editors including Rich Horton and John Joseph Adams.
That would be worthy of celebration as it stands, but there’s an extra angle that makes Stoddard’s deal unusual – both novels have already been released for free under Creative Commons licenses. Let’s let Jason explain:
In a phrase, completely unexpectedly. Sean contacted me to see if Winning Mars and Eternal Franchise were available. I did a quick google of Sean’s name and company, saw that he was an established small press that worked with solid authors, and sent a quick email back saying yes, the books were available, but that both had been released into the wild. I fully expected the typical publisher reaction: you killed them there books, son, when you released ’em. But no. Sean has to go and restore my faith in humanity and the publishing industry.
On behalf of Futurismic, I’d like to roundly congratulate Jason on this great news, and Sean Wallace for taking this unusual step; it’s a vindication of Creative Commons licensing, and it’s a publisher picking up a writer in whom I have great faith. I’m proud that Futurismic got to be part of Jason’s journey to publication – Chris and I have seen many writers whose stories we’ve published here go on to bigger and better things, and I hope there will be more to come in the future.
Which means the final thank-you goes to you, the readers – it’s your attention and love of good fiction that brings great writers to our door. Keep reading – together, we can find more of them. 🙂
If you’ve not read any of Jason’s work before (or if you simply feel the need to reacquaint yourself with it), all his Futurismic publications are tagged with his name. Enjoy!