Further Violations of Yog's Law

[writerkit]

Sigh. An allegedly well-paying semiprozine--Uncharted Magazine--struck from my list for doing things that sound vaguely scam artist-y. It's too bad; a flat $200 is really good if you couldn't hit the prozines. Actually, there are lengths within their stated range where a flat $200 is well above what you'd get from someone doing standard pro rates or even the slightly above standard pro rates that some of the better magazines do.

That's kind of weird, but it's not a bad thing; I'm all for writers getting paid more. They are, after all, a brand-new magazine.

So what are they doing that makes me suggest they're a scam? The "Optional Editorial Feedback." They don't charge to submit, but you can check a box and for ~$60 you can get two pages of editorial feedback on what they thought about your story. You pay at time of submission, and while in the guidelines they mention you can ask for optional editorial feedback, they don't mention the "we charge for it part" until you're actually in the submission form. Sure, it's optional, and they don't make you pay for it to submit, but... you can't tell me that's not getting into their decision-making processes somewhere, and in any case a magazine taking money from authors for any reason is hella unethical.

Is this the new scam? Regular readers might remember my complaint about the anthology publisher who tried to sell me on their writing workshops in the rejection letter. Once is chance, twice is coincidence, so I'm now waiting for the third call for submissions that looks legit right up until they offer feedback for money that will move this into the "conspiracy" slot.

Comments

[squirrelitude]

That service seems to make sense to me on the surface -- feedback takes time and energy to write, and more detailed feedback is valuable. But Yog's Law also makes sense.

I can easily imagine that they're not aware that what they're doing is problematic, but... yeah, I can see that being part of a pattern. :-/

[writerkit]

If they were paying less per story or they weren't burying that they're charging for it, I'd buy that they just don't get it. Saying "we give feedback if you want it!" and leaving out all mention of "we charge for it" anywhere but the actual form suggests they know this is kinda sketchy and don't want it getting around.

[squirrelitude]

Yeah, fair point.