Galaktika Magazine

They stole my story from Strange Horizons ("Never the Same"). I knew about it because the person who translated it told me. The issue here is not that people are submitting stories to them. They're taking them from popular published sources, so the only way to prevent it would be to never get published. There was nothing I could do when it happened to me, as I can't afford to take anyone to court.

The market simply doesn't care. They know they're stealing, and they've shown no signs of wanting to change their ways. The only thing that will stop it would be if they steal from someone who can afford the court case.

So, if anyone is curious about whether their work was stolen by this magazine: http://galaktika.hu/bibliografia/

You have to scroll through the TOC by year (it's split up by month, but you can only look at one year at a time). I've poked some folks on Twitter to try and see if I can confirm whether the bigger names gave permission for the translation and reprint rights or if they've been stealing work from everyone. If the latter is the case I don't know if SFWA might want to try and take action or not.

Among those who have been translated I spotted Scalzi, Ann Leckie, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, Frederik Pohl, Asimov, Timothy Zahn, Tanith Lee, Patricia McKillip, Andre Norton, and Robert Silverberg. If they haven't given permission, I would think they might want to see what action could be taken. There are dozens and dozens of other authors with less name recognition and therefore more to lose.

I did a little more digging. It appears the bad behavior is not limited to stealing stories for translation: http://agcarpenter.blogspot.com/2016/04/galaktika-magazine-more-bad-behavior.html

I've now been paid. It looks like it went public enough this time for them to want to clear it up. Whether they'll change in the future remains to be seen.

I was initially offered copies of the magazine as payment. I said no and set a price, which they agree to pay. I asked for $50, based on the rate they previously said they paid foreign authors. I was told their current rate is either free copies or up to $20, though like I said, they agreed to the $50 in my case. Hopefully those figures will help others to negotiate their payments.

Pinter Bence has published another (very thorough) article on Galaktika here: http://sci-fi.mandiner.hu/cikk/20160714_piracy_by_galaktika_they_are_doing_it_since_2004

The translation is a little rough in places, but well worth the read.

Serial, flagrant, and chronic plagiarism. Good work digging up this one.

SFWA posted a response about this: http://www.sfwa.org/2016/09/the-galaktika-situation/

In short, there are still outstanding payments. There's also a statement from Galaktika that it was part of an agreement to publish shorts to promote novel translations. I'm a self-published author who has never had an agent, so I can guarantee this wasn't true in my case. This couldn't have been agreed with my agent/publisher, as I don't have an agent/publisher.

Hey, does anyone have an updates/status on Galaktika magazine? Last I've been able to find, they'd come to an agreement with SFWA and the Author's Guild, and seemed to be working with them to redress infringed authors and operate differently going forward. Have they stuck to that agreement since? Have any authors here had experiences (good/bad) with publishing with Galaktika since then?

Etola, I've seen authors announce their sales to Galaktika since the settlement but not talk about payment either way. You might receive the best answers by directly contacting authors in recent issues or by emailing John E. Johnston III for SFWA's GriefCom, at [email protected].