Magazines come and go. I understand that. No, truly, having run Niteblade for five years now, I really DO understand. However, there is a huge difference between a publisher closing up shop, and a publisher closing up shop and not telling anyone.
Once you realise your publication is going to be closing its doors it is time to, at the very least, drop an email to the people whose work you’ve accepted for future issues (not that I’m referring to myself here, no, no, of course not LOL). Really, you ought to make a public announcement of some sort and let everyone who has submitted work to you know as well, so their stuff isn’t hanging about in limbo, but to not even tell the people whose stuff is meant to be in your next issue? *sigh*
For what it’s worth, if Niteblade ever has to close its doors, I promise to do it right, not just vanish into the ether in silence.
Also, somewhat randomly and completely unrelated to the first half of this blog, I put up a writing prompt on NaNoLJers this week that I thought was pretty good. Check it out –> What would make your character go out in the cold?
What magazine was it? Do tell, do tell!
Sadly this has happened to me more than once, so it feels somewhat unfair to single out the most recent e-zine.
I was supposed to have had a number of items in the Summer 2011 print issue of Abandoned Towers, but the Summer 2011 issue was never published. I found out by chance that the publisher was closing the zine and putting it up for sale, when I happened across a notice on the Abandoned Towers web site stating that the zine was closing and any accepted material was released back to the authors and artists. The publisher couldn’t be bothered to tell me this in a personal correspondence, even though I had been a regular contributor to the zine, and had done quite a bit of illustrative work for this very same publisher.
Abandoned Towers is now up-and-running again, under new editorship. Of course, the stuff I was supposed to have had in the never-published Summer 2011 print issue has been sent to various other venues. The new editor has accepted an article of mine for publication in their forthcoming 2012 print issue, but not the article that was to have appeared (along with more of my stuff) in the never-published Summer 2012 issue.
Anyway, it happens. Even publishers with whom you may have had a good working relationship may neglect to let you know in an e-mail that their publication is folding. At least the Abandoned Towers publisher did post the news of the zine’s closing on the zine’s web site. I learned a valuable lesson from all this – always keep on top of the news from the various venues that have accepted your work.