'Free press'- what do you think of it?

[Kyriakos]

I have two stories in two free press media. While a clear minority in my published work, i am quite fond of them. I am wondering though what people think of free press.

By free press i mean those magazines (or papers) which circulate without any payment for their collection. Most of the time they have a web-based edition as well, but the main edition is printed.

Personally i am of the view that they have a reason for existing. Usually they accept works of less known writers more easily, so they give opportunities to more people to be read. That said, although two of them accepted my works, another denied me twice (maybe it was for the better though), so it is not like they will accept anything either (that said i think i sent the latter magazine my best work when compared to that published in the two other free-press editions)...

Also one of those two is currently running a request for psychological horror stories, so, naturally, i sent them one

Again the old question for me rises, if it is a good idea to send the absolutely best work to anything you send work to, or keep it for the supposedly more esteemed outlets. I am still perplexed by this, since i reserve my better work for a book, but i know by now that it is suicidal to have lesser work published (people will obviously read that and form a view of how you write, they won't judge you from a hypothetical work).

Ideally i would like to enrich my regular outlets with some free press, so that i can have smaller work (they typically accept only a few pages from each author) accepted and printed, alongside the bigger volume of creation i am hopefully regularly producing.

 

[Cutlass]

I think it's an opportunity a writer who has not yet made it to a career level of income probably needs to take advantage of. It gives you a chance to try to find an audience that you otherwise may not get to.

 

[Mouthwash]

It's the 21st century; literary magazines have died.

 

[downtown]

You have to be very strategic about it.

It's okay to send your very best work to a "free" magazine as long as you can retain some republishing rights. It isn't uncommon in publishing to maintain the ability to resell an article after a certain time period, and if you anticipate that your piece could take off, make sure you don't send your work to a free press that owns all of the rights.

I think you have to do some market research and ask yourself how many eyeballs, realistically, will see your work, and is that worth working for free? Is that time not better spend researching and pitching paying outlets?

When I first started writing, I stupidly took every publishing chance I took, even if they didn't pay anything. That's okay for maybe your first two pieces, but I realized I lost the rights to some good work that could have been reprinted elsewhere because I wasn't smart. I only take free work now if I know that website/magazine can deliver a LOT more eyes than my regular website. I know that one of my articles for my regular job will be seen by 10,000-50,000 people over the course of it's news cycle. If another publishing opportunity isn't much more than that, it isn't worth spending the time on.

Sometimes you have to do it, but better to not write at all then give your work away stupidly.

 

[Kyriakos]

I agree. The free-press has some semblance of advantage if it circulates in a lot of copies, but here in Soviet Greece the free-press magazines most of the time do not print more than 5K copies. So next to one of the regular magazines i have co-operated with, they have by default only (at best) 20% the audience.
And even if virtually all of their audience was new (something which is arguable obviously) again it has less to offer even than a regular magazine.

However i noticed in these past 14 months that most regular/big magazines only print works of some size. Whereas the free-press ones particularly are after smaller work (up to 1000 words/4 pages). Both of my stories in the two free-press magazines could have faced some difficulty to be printed elsewhere, due to their small size.

I am also lately (while expecting again replies about the dreaded book deal) thinking of having a very small e-book published (6 stories at most; around 50 pages). This could help, but i am not sure. I know some people who are well-placed in the local e-book publication circle, so they could help, but again the question is what to collect in that volume. Again i do not want my best work in it, but then again what is the point of having less valuable work if one retains some hope that the deal will be helpful in some way?

Problem with being a writer of fiction in Greece is that you have to take some steps in the massive ladder that leads to future recognition, which in most other western countries you would not have to make, since they would have in effect been already taken out of that ladder. By which i mean that the publishing climate/world in such countries as the UK for example allows for a faster rise in the book world.

However i still think that the current crisis will in fact help - in the long run - serious literature.

 

[downtown]

Problem with being a writer of fiction in Greece is that you have to take some steps in the massive ladder that leads to future recognition, which in most other western countries you would not have to make, .

I'm not sure that's true, especially for a niche fiction writer.

 

[Kyriakos]

I'm not sure that's true, especially for a niche fiction writer.

I would not really consider my work to be 'niche' fiction, since by now it is very much not horror-centered. It is general literature, with dark undertones, but still general fiction.

If i was writing purely horror indeed it would have been even harder to get published. Up to now, at least magazine-wise, it was pretty easy. But the book seems to be very hard to get...