Doorways has kicked the bucket?

icenine said:

My little newshound tells me that Doorways magazine is on its last legs. A lingering death, won't be long now. Can anybody tell me any different?

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It seems it's been closed to subs for almost a year. The last issue I see is April of 2009. Doesn't give me good vibes. Duotrope hasn't declared it dead yet, though.

I hope it's not true. My local bookstore actually stocks it (when there are new issues).

Hey folks,

I just signed up and am new around here but I wanted to come in and shed a little light here.

I run the Doorways website. When the new covers stopped coming in and there was no news to post, I asked what was up and got an update this past January.

They're having some financial difficulties. The plan was to hopefully resurrect the mag as an online pdf or something. I have yet to hear anything different as of today.

Hope that helps,
Marcy

That explains the nearly 2-year silence on my lone ss sub. *shrug* I wrote it off a year ago. Going to use the story as a villain arc in one of my books. A shame to see another mag die, tho.

callalily61 said:

That explains the nearly 2-year silence on my lone ss sub. *shrug* I wrote it off a year ago. Going to use the story as a villain arc in one of my books. A shame to see another mag die, tho.

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Yeah, it sucks. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I guess updates are always needed when available, eh?

It is what it is.

And :Welcome: to the Horror boards. We have a noob BBQ every week or two just to show we're nice folks beneath the fangs and tentacles. Really. Pay no attention to the noises from the dungeon cells lower levels.

Yep, welcome, Marcy, and thanks for the news, bad as it is.

Look forward to eating meeting you at the barbecue.

icenine said:

Turns out it's true then. My little spies never fail me.

Things are not looking too good for anybody these days. One by one the print mags seem to be going to PDF or folding. I've seen a few new spec prints start up but if you watch them carefully it's not long before you notice they're wobbling a bit and before you know it -blam, down they go. What's going on?

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a. The economy sucks

2. The 'zines don't get the support from the general public that they should

III. The 'zines don't get the support from writers that they should

Haggis said:

a. The economy sucks

2. The 'zines don't get the support from the general public that they should

III. The 'zines don't get the support from writers that they should

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True Haggis, very true.

I hope Doorways finds a way to stay alive. I'm a writer first and I need markets!

Second, I'm a publisher/editor, and NT isn't going anywhere anytime so. At least I hope not, I just got art for the next four issues.

icenine said:

Yeah blame the writers. Lke we ain't got it hard enough already with most editors throwing us peanuts.

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I know, I know. And it's gotten worse too. But we don't help our case if the
'zines we want to sub to are out of business either.

I can't possibly afford to buy all the magazines I'd like, but I do buy some. And that's all I'm really suggesting.

People tend to forget that at the end of the day you vote with your pocketbook. All the kind words of support and camaraderie a community may give doesn't translate into paid bills or final products.

I agree with Haggis, if you like it buy it. I recently picked up Black Static and Shock Totem for that reason (and also to study them as a market).

If you list yourself as an author when you file your taxes then publications fall under "market research" and can be used as a deduction. Workshops, conventions and magazines have all gone under deductions for me as work related expenses. *please confirm this with your tax person, I'm not an accountant*

@rsmccoy - before you say anything, I know I need to pickup an issue of NT as well

Ya' know...

An entrepreneurial person could publish an e-mag through one of the epublishers easily enough. I'm thinking of Smashwords, but there are others that would do easily enough.

Whattaya' need? Ten stories for an issue. A professional editor who's willing to put in the time for free initially. A reasonable price for the mag's sales. A reasonable payment per word to the author (at least $0.06/word according to the pros).

Let's say an issue is 50k words. That's $3k for author payments. You need to sell 2500 copies at $1.50 to make your author's royalties (you actually break a little bit more than even here). You have $0 actual printing and/or publishing costs.

There's a way to win in there somewhere...

GabrielNovo said:

People tend to forget that at the end of the day you vote with your pocketbook. All the kind words of support and camaraderie a community may give doesn't translate into paid bills or final products.

I agree with Haggis, if you like it buy it. I recently picked up Black Static and Shock Totem for that reason (and also to study them as a market).

If you list yourself as an author when you file your taxes then publications fall under "market research" and can be used as a deduction. Workshops, conventions and magazines have all gone under deductions for me as work related expenses. *please confirm this with your tax person, I'm not an accountant*

@rsmccoy - before you say anything, I know I need to pickup an issue of NT as well

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Who, me?? I would love it if everyone bought a copy of NT, but the fact that you are supporting a small press market is good enough for me.

Huge markets have corporations behind them that can afford to invest in advertising and distribution deals that may or may not make a profit. Small press has none of that. It is simple math, very simple for NT. The number of subscriptions and other book sales determine how much I can pay writers. Money doesn't materialize. I know there are some successful markets that pay "Peanuts" and that isn't right, but most markets I know are working their buts off to get enough subscribers so they can pay pro rates.

Short fiction horror has few paid print magazines to begin with, and less than five that pay pro rates. Most of those tare not really open to writers that haven't already made it. Being temp closed for two years doesn't help writers either.

NT just mailed out the 4th print issue, finishing the first set of annual subscriptions. I got a lot of support, enough so that I'm not hemorrhaging as much money as I used to, but I am far from making a profit. I need to keep all my current subscribers, and take in 200 more in order to pay all of my writers pro pay. Think about that. Just 200 more people in all of the world. Yet I can't dump thousands of dollars into advertising that may or may not get me more subscribers, because then I couldn't pay writers pro pay even if I got the 200.

I'm not sure how many subscriptions or sales Doorways was hoping to make in order to consider their venture a success, but I'm guessing their model actually required making a profit. If your a horror writer that wants to get paid pro rates, then support a market. I know money is tight, but if you currently don't pick even just one, then don't complain when they fold. Even if money is so tight you can't, you could spread the word. Ask for subscriptions as gifts or just tell people on your blogs and on boards like this to pick a market and support it.

I'm a writer first and a publisher second. I don't self publish, so I need other markets and I want pro rates too. That's why I'm just as happy to hear someone's supporting a market I can submit to as having them support NT. So thank you GabrielNovo for supporting small press. Send me your addy in a PM and I'll ship you off a copy of #10 gratis.

FOTSGreg said:

Ya' know...

An entrepreneurial person could publish an e-mag through one of the epublishers easily enough. I'm thinking of Smashwords, but there are others that would do easily enough.

Whattaya' need? Ten stories for an issue. A professional editor who's willing to put in the time for free initially. A reasonable price for the mag's sales. A reasonable payment per word to the author (at least $0.06/word according to the pros).

Let's say an issue is 50k words. That's $3k for author payments. You need to sell 2500 copies at $1.50 to make your author's royalties (you actually break a little bit more than even here). You have $0 actual printing and/or publishing costs.

There's a way to win in there somewhere...

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There's a little bit more overhead to add in, but let's stick with your numbers. 2,500 sales for what I'm guessing is a PDF download? You could go HTML and grant access to a protected page after payment of course. Still, 2,500 sales. With all of the free content sites out there, I have to say I think that 2,500 is not attainable. I would love to be proved wrong.

Actually, I'm just whistling in the wind here having tried and failed the approach before (specialized genre (military SF) HTML & pdf venue), but I'm talking about getting the zine into multiple formats at the same time with a single upload (Mobi, HTML, pdf, Kindle, etc., etc.).

The major work is in the formatting (and editing, of course) and obtaining the submissions so you have enough material to wade through to find the gems. My (one and only) issue of Firepower! had a great cover and format, but virtually no readership so getting your name out there's important too and outfits like Smashwords help with that too (Amazon, B&N, and a few other Big Name distributor deals are done or in the works).

I'll admit I'm kind of a Smashwords fan because I think they have a decent marketing plan and arrangements with the Big Guys to get books into the hands of e-readers, but there are other outfits out there too. My only hesitation revolves around the rest of the dreck that gets published through Smashwords (folks, anything under 50 thousand words is not a book and stories under 10k words simply don't even qualify as novellas). Still, they wouldn't still be around and people like JA Konrath wouldn't be reporting success with them if it wasn't happening.

Now, I would urge caution. Getting into publishing is a fast way to lose your shirt, but there have been notable successes in the past (I'm thinking specifically of Wizard's of the Coast's d20 licensing arrangement that resulted in an explosion in RPG modules in the mid-90s - many of those modules were less than 20k words, had maps and images in them, were sold electronically (mainly as pdfs) for anywhere from $5-20, and made their writers some profits).

These are just idle thoughts, mind you, but I'm going to soon try out the system myself with a SF novel, a horror anthology, and some gaming manuals I wrote some time ago. I'm just thinking that if th system is working for e"books" as small as a couple thousand words, it might work for ezines as well (I don't know if Smashwords does any print issues yet, I don't think so, but there are some edistributors out there who do).

$0.06 (pro rates) x 50k words = $3,000.00 base payouts to authors.

Kick in another grand for overhead and maintenance for your website, so let's call it $4k. Let's ignore incidentals such as you having to pay bills, keep a roof over your head, eat, etc. Let's assume, for items like these, you have a day job that keeps you afloat.

Smashwords pays 85% of the price you set for the item you publish.

At $1.50/issue, Smashwords pays you $1.275 per issue purchased. $4k/1.275=3,138 purchases to break even (3,137.25, but I don't believe in partial people ).

At $1.99/issue, Smashwords pays you $1.6915/issue meaning you need 2,365 purchases to break even.

Admittedly, getting that many people to download an ezine is likely going to mean you need a freaking miracle to happen, but you get to set your own price. If you need 200 people to break even on a $3k cost, you need a return of $15/person which is likely not possible as you'd have to set your price per issue to $17.75/issue to break even.

But, there are ways to cut your costs per issue to reasonable levels - lower your per issue word count to only 5 or 6 5k word stories is the first one that comes to mind.

Again, I'm just whistling in the dark, but if you can potentially reach twice or ten times your current readership by publishing in multiple eformats, why not try? It won't cost you anything to try.

Other costs would eventually be incurred as you'll want to obtain a block of ISBNs ($275 for 10, for example). ISBNs are important to some distributors and you need to get your work into the hands of as many distributors as possible. I imagine RT already has an ISBN as you've obviously done your own research.