Things Overlooked
May. 2nd, 2021 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitIn all the chaos of the continuing drama about the Best Related Work Hugo ballot (what can there possibly be to continue to argue about? Surely we have established at this point that no one's convincing each other of anything!), the community has missed another story that I think would be rather bigger under other circumstances: Jason Sanford has an article up which includes the tidbit that to submit to the open submissions for Last Dangerous Visions, writers have to sign a constrictive agreement that resembles nothing standard in short story publishing and which you really, really shouldn't sign. It requires you to stipulate that Straczynski can write things materially similar to your story without having to compensate you.
Now, being a bit more aware of Straczynski's history than I think Sanford is, specifically the kerfuffle during Babylon 5 surrounding how the episode Passing Through Gesthemane almost didn't happen--and happened much later in the series than they'd originally meant to put it, to account for getting releases signed--because someone proposed on the show's forums a vague concept that was similar to the already-planned plot for Gesthemane, I get why he might want to put these things in the releases.
But that's Hollywood; it's not how short story publishing works. It's a violation of about a hundred norms and anyone else doing this would land themselves on Writer Beware with a big flashing "THESE PEOPLE ARE PROBABLY A SCAM" sign. You're not supposed to have to agree to anything beyond that the rights you'd be selling are in fact yours to sell and that it's not a simultaneous submission just to submit. Or occasionally that you've removed all identifying information from the manuscript itself, if they do initial reads anonymously. But that's the most you should be requiring just to submit.
Lest anyone say "Yeah, but editors don't have to worry about writing a similar thing," I will point out that a lot of editors are also writers, especially at the story magazines.
As I said elsewhere, Last Dangerous Visions continues to be cursed.
(Incidentally, the submission criteria itself is also a little odd. They're using completely unpublished rather than pro sales, which is out of step with most things like this and shuts out even people who've had one thing in one of the little anthologies or magazines that only pay a token amount-- and also puts you in weird spots at the margins, with things like handmade zines or self-publishing. I wouldn't qualify for a thing targeting unpublished under any criteria, but the thing that disqualifies me should be the Derelict sale or a total amount of money made from fiction writing, not that one story in the small-press anthology from 2015 after which I didn't submit anything for five years.)
Now, being a bit more aware of Straczynski's history than I think Sanford is, specifically the kerfuffle during Babylon 5 surrounding how the episode Passing Through Gesthemane almost didn't happen--and happened much later in the series than they'd originally meant to put it, to account for getting releases signed--because someone proposed on the show's forums a vague concept that was similar to the already-planned plot for Gesthemane, I get why he might want to put these things in the releases.
But that's Hollywood; it's not how short story publishing works. It's a violation of about a hundred norms and anyone else doing this would land themselves on Writer Beware with a big flashing "THESE PEOPLE ARE PROBABLY A SCAM" sign. You're not supposed to have to agree to anything beyond that the rights you'd be selling are in fact yours to sell and that it's not a simultaneous submission just to submit. Or occasionally that you've removed all identifying information from the manuscript itself, if they do initial reads anonymously. But that's the most you should be requiring just to submit.
Lest anyone say "Yeah, but editors don't have to worry about writing a similar thing," I will point out that a lot of editors are also writers, especially at the story magazines.
As I said elsewhere, Last Dangerous Visions continues to be cursed.
(Incidentally, the submission criteria itself is also a little odd. They're using completely unpublished rather than pro sales, which is out of step with most things like this and shuts out even people who've had one thing in one of the little anthologies or magazines that only pay a token amount-- and also puts you in weird spots at the margins, with things like handmade zines or self-publishing. I wouldn't qualify for a thing targeting unpublished under any criteria, but the thing that disqualifies me should be the Derelict sale or a total amount of money made from fiction writing, not that one story in the small-press anthology from 2015 after which I didn't submit anything for five years.)
