A few years ago I met an online acquaintance for a face-to-face lunch. He was a writer and wanted the inside scoop on playing essays with The Smart Set. A genre fiction person, he was not very familiar with querying non-fiction magazines. (Hint: it's usually the managing editor or section editor.) So I gave him a few tips and a name. Then a few weeks later we met again and the guy told me, "I wrote to the editor and asked if they took reprints. He didn't write back." I didn't say anything but I did have a thought, and a prediction:
He'll never place anything with The Smart Set.
And indeed I was correct. I don't know if leading with the question of reprints was really the reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. TSS pays real money for real essays; why would they want second-hand material? Even in the field of service journalism, where evergreen material is constantly recycled and occasionally reconceptualized, material isn't often simply reprinted. (Reblogged, for free, by the lowlifes at Huffington Post, sure.) You have to rewrite, localize, whatever.
And in fiction, reprints are generally worth less than original material.
Now, it is true that we are living in what I called a golden moment for reprint anthologies. It's fairly easy to sell a reprint these days, even for the non-famous, but the markets themselves are generally reprint markets.
What I've been noticing lately is that when I make a note about wanting to see submissions or pitches for various projects I'm working on: The Big Click, or my day job anthology Phantasm Japan, people have been asking right away, "Do you take reprints?" Bigger names have simply been sending me reprints.
Is this a bit of advice people are getting now? "Always ask if the editor wants to see reprints before offering anything new?" Because if so, it is terrible advice. As far as I am concerned, asking this question is like tripping the editor, dropping trou, squatting over him, and easing out a big snaking turd onto his face, while shouting, "This is what I think of you! THIS IS WHAT I THINK OF YOU!! YOU LIVE TO EAT MY SHIT!"
And needless to say, those authors just talked themselves out of consideration for those projects. If I wanted reprints, I'd ask for reprints. Hell, if I wanted reprints, I wouldn't need to make even semi-public calls. I'd read in the field I wanted to buy from, and contact the authors privately to solicit the reprints. My checkbook is large enough and my projects prestigious enough that I want new material, and I want excellent new material. It's even fairly easy for me to get—when I open things up, it's partially because I'm a little dissatisfied with the material I am seeing, and partially due to the same romanticism that made Haunted Legends the first Ellen Datlow project with open submissions, and that made Clarkesworld a magazine with no form rejection letter.
Now some editors may disagree with me about being asked about reprints before being offered new material. Almost surely some editor will pop up and say that they like any sort of question, professionally asked. And I'd like to say: consider the source. I note that the more mental energy editors put into some notion of fairness to writers, the less concerned they are about readers. That is, they don't have very many readers. POD anthologists with 1c a word budgets, CreateSpace publishers with convention dealer's room-only print distribution, micropresses with a 1000-book list with each title selling fifty copies...they may love being asked fancy business questions like "Do you take reprints?" Then they get to give fancy business answers like "Only if it's very good!"
And some of the poor semiliterate dears will even say, "But reprints have a place in publications!" or "What about that reprint you ran once!?" as if I said anything about reprints being unnecessary or forbidden. If you are confused, go back to the top of this entry and read it again until you hit this sentence. Repeat as necessary.
I, on the other hand, am working in a buyer's market. I don't like that kind of thing, and when I was starting out it was made very clear that absent specifics one should submit or query new material, not reprinted material. It should go without saying that of course when you have an opportunity open up before you, you grab at it with both hands! And that means having something ready to go, or making time and space in your life and schedule to produce something new. "Would you give me two weeks?" is a perfectly fine, professional initial question. "Do you take reprints?" is just a way to lose an opportunity so far as I am concerned.
He'll never place anything with The Smart Set.
And indeed I was correct. I don't know if leading with the question of reprints was really the reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. TSS pays real money for real essays; why would they want second-hand material? Even in the field of service journalism, where evergreen material is constantly recycled and occasionally reconceptualized, material isn't often simply reprinted. (Reblogged, for free, by the lowlifes at Huffington Post, sure.) You have to rewrite, localize, whatever.
And in fiction, reprints are generally worth less than original material.
Now, it is true that we are living in what I called a golden moment for reprint anthologies. It's fairly easy to sell a reprint these days, even for the non-famous, but the markets themselves are generally reprint markets.
What I've been noticing lately is that when I make a note about wanting to see submissions or pitches for various projects I'm working on: The Big Click, or my day job anthology Phantasm Japan, people have been asking right away, "Do you take reprints?" Bigger names have simply been sending me reprints.
Is this a bit of advice people are getting now? "Always ask if the editor wants to see reprints before offering anything new?" Because if so, it is terrible advice. As far as I am concerned, asking this question is like tripping the editor, dropping trou, squatting over him, and easing out a big snaking turd onto his face, while shouting, "This is what I think of you! THIS IS WHAT I THINK OF YOU!! YOU LIVE TO EAT MY SHIT!"
And needless to say, those authors just talked themselves out of consideration for those projects. If I wanted reprints, I'd ask for reprints. Hell, if I wanted reprints, I wouldn't need to make even semi-public calls. I'd read in the field I wanted to buy from, and contact the authors privately to solicit the reprints. My checkbook is large enough and my projects prestigious enough that I want new material, and I want excellent new material. It's even fairly easy for me to get—when I open things up, it's partially because I'm a little dissatisfied with the material I am seeing, and partially due to the same romanticism that made Haunted Legends the first Ellen Datlow project with open submissions, and that made Clarkesworld a magazine with no form rejection letter.
Now some editors may disagree with me about being asked about reprints before being offered new material. Almost surely some editor will pop up and say that they like any sort of question, professionally asked. And I'd like to say: consider the source. I note that the more mental energy editors put into some notion of fairness to writers, the less concerned they are about readers. That is, they don't have very many readers. POD anthologists with 1c a word budgets, CreateSpace publishers with convention dealer's room-only print distribution, micropresses with a 1000-book list with each title selling fifty copies...they may love being asked fancy business questions like "Do you take reprints?" Then they get to give fancy business answers like "Only if it's very good!"
And some of the poor semiliterate dears will even say, "But reprints have a place in publications!" or "What about that reprint you ran once!?" as if I said anything about reprints being unnecessary or forbidden. If you are confused, go back to the top of this entry and read it again until you hit this sentence. Repeat as necessary.
I, on the other hand, am working in a buyer's market. I don't like that kind of thing, and when I was starting out it was made very clear that absent specifics one should submit or query new material, not reprinted material. It should go without saying that of course when you have an opportunity open up before you, you grab at it with both hands! And that means having something ready to go, or making time and space in your life and schedule to produce something new. "Would you give me two weeks?" is a perfectly fine, professional initial question. "Do you take reprints?" is just a way to lose an opportunity so far as I am concerned.