For the record, I did ask for more information:
Quote:
Dear XXXXXXXXX and YYYYYYYYYYY,
thank you for your kind email.
From what I have just seen in your website, it does sound quite intriguing. Can you give me a general idea of how it works, in terms of submission procedure (I seem to understand there is some sort of fee involved?), selection criteria and publication?
Also, I have perused the website a bit and haven't seen any examples of anything similar to what I have written so far, namely interactive fiction or parser-based text adventures. I don't know whether I'm looking under the wrong header perhaps, but all I have found is that "digital stories" are defined as "3-5 minute videos", which is... well, not interactive fiction. In my case, we would talking about an story made with Inform 7, which produces a .gblorb output file that needs to be opened with an interpreter such as Glulxe, and played by the reader via typed commands.
So I wonder if we have the same kind of thing in mind when we talk about "digital stories"?
Thank you,
I was still unsure of what kind of thing was going on there, and my impression was, frankly, that they had no clue what they were asking for, and were just looking to expand their material/readership at best (fishing for unwitting paying authors at worst).
Then I got a reply from Dr. YYYYYYYYYY themselves:
Quote:
Dear Victor,
Thanks so much for your reply. I realize from your message that the guidelines for the digital story submissions need to be revised, as we were only looking for digital stories in the sense of digital videos that told personal narratives through voiceover, video, etc. last semester. At this point, we would be able to publish interactive narratives that publish to the Web, such as those written using Inklewriter, Twine, etc. Re-publishing is possible with permission of the original publisher (if applicable). I'm working on updating the submission guidelines now in case others have the same question. Selection criteria are actually in development this semester with my graduate students, as it will be a project in one of my classes in collaboration with The Florida Review editorial team. I would welcome any advice or insight you have into this process as an artist working in this area.
Best,
I think it's the fact that they are working with *students* on this that really put me off, together with discussing this on Twitter - only to be unanimously told by every professional writer there that paying for submissions was a no-go.
This is my reply, and probably the last bit in this exchange:
Quote:
Hi YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY,
thank you for your kind reply. Let me therefore be frank with you.
As "an artist working in this area", although I normally refer to myself as a professional, I think it is very negative for the whole profession that you charge authors for publishing, a practice that is too close to vanity publishing for comfort. I am ready to assume your intentions are good and you do not actually mean to exploit the authors who, under your scheme, would be providing you with free content for your website *and* paying for that privilege.
Since you asked for my insights, as a professional working in this area, my insight would be that making a living as a professional writer is already hard enough without outlets like yours perpetuating the practice of not paying writers, which is sadly commonplace nowadays but not excusable under the pretext of "providing an opportunity to be published", since you are basically charging authors for the service of hosting a story in your website, the costs of which are basically negligible. As such, your good intentions notwithstanding, you are basically charging struggling authors for a service that is pretty much free almost anywhere else in the Internet. Again, as a professional working in this area, it is my respectful opinion that, while your operation might be appealing for an amateur/vanity scene, it actually does a disservice to the professional writing community and unwittingly helps to perpetuate business practices that are, in the long run, harmful to the wider collective of professional storytellers, digital and otherwise.
Please consider for a second, if you are still reading and can take some constructive criticism, what the long-term implications of this will be for your students. Do you want them to live in a world where they will be never paid for their art? Do please give it some thought. To reiterate, I do not doubt your intentions are good, but spare a few minutes, if you please, to consider whether you are not in fact doing a disservice to your students, in their future life as professional storytellers.
Those are my insights, as an artist, if you would call me that, or simply as someone who writes for a living, which I hope give you some pause to reflect about the impact your business model has on the wider scene.
Thank you and have a lovely evening,
-Victor
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