Beneath Ceaseless Skies hereby recuses the magazine from further nominations or finalist appearances for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

It has been a wonderful honor for BCS to have been a finalist for Best Semiprozine ten times. We are deeply touched by the respect and appreciation voters showed in nominating us or voting for us. During those years, BCS‘s readership doubled, our submissions expanded, our stories received greater acclaim, and our subscriber and supporter base grew enough to fund increases in our word-count limit for submissions, our author pay rate, and the honorarium we pay our First Readers.

There are many other indie zines, run by dedicated staff and publishing great and important stories, whose work in our opinion deserves a Best Semiprozine finalist and the boost in reach and support it can provide. We want to see them get it.

(BCS has not exceeded the eligibility requirements for Best Semiprozine about revenue. This recusal does not mean our financial situation is any less precarious than it’s always been! We still need the support of our donors and ebook subscribers to fund the magazine and our patrons on the BCS Patreon to fund the author pay rate increase and the honoraria for our First Readers. If you’re already supporting us, THANK YOU. If you’re not and would like to, please consider donating, subscribing, or becoming a Patron.)

Please still consider BCS stories for Hugo nomination when you find them worthy. It’s a great honor for authors and a magazine to have stories voted finalist for the Hugo or any award. Here’s our list of award-eligible BCS stories from 2022 and their award category (Short Story, Novelette, Novella).

(If you still want to nominate part of BCS for a Hugo, Scott (me) is eligible for Best Editor Short Form. In 2022 he was six votes short of making the final ballot. But there are many great editors of pro zines or anthologies who deserve your consideration in that category first.)

For other worthy indie zines to consider for Best Semiprozine, the 2022 Hugo longlist included Mermaids Monthly, Khōréō, Fireside, Diabolical Plots, The Deadlands, GigaNotoSaurus–all unique, important, and worthy.

Since our launch in 2008, BCS has always paid our authors the pay rate that Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) sets as their qualifying “pro” pay rate for short fiction (currently 6 cents/word).

We believe that all writers deserve a professional rate for their work. We publish many new and emerging writers, and we are proud that their stories sold to BCS enable them to join SFWA.

SFWA’s pro pay rate for short stories is increasing by 33% this September, to 8 cents/word. All writers deserve this higher pay, but our budget can’t absorb a 33% increase.

We don’t want to cut the number of stories we publish by 33% (4 per month down to 3) or lower the word length (15,000-word limit on submissions down to 10,000 words). So we need a 33% increase in support from our readers and donors by Sept. 1 in order to pay this new higher pro pay rate.

To reach that goal of paying the new SFWA rate, we’re making some changes, including new ways you can support BCS and help us pay authors this new higher pro rate:

1. BCS is now on Patreon. Patreon.com is a simple way for you to support BCS and many other magazines, writers, and creators. The BCS Patreon has pledge tiers from $2 to $25 per month. Our parent company, Firkin Press, is a 501(c)3 non-profit approved by the IRS, so your donations through Patreon are tax deductible.

(Update: we’re already 30% of the way to our goal on Patreon! Thank you! When we reach 50% we will raise our pay rate to 7c/word. You can help us the rest of the way.)

2. New donation tiers through Paypal, including for recurring donations. We’ve always offered donation by Paypal, with tiers of recognition for our donors (become a Knight of BCS!). Some of our Paypal donors have been donating monthly for seven and eight years (we love you!).

One-time donations are great, but recurring subscription-style donations are better for us because they let us budget on that steady small stream of revenue rather than waiting for occasional larger ones. Our parent company is a 501(c)3 non-profit, so your donations through Paypal are tax deductible.

$3 Monthly

$5 Monthly

$10 Monthly

3. Raising the price on BCS ebook subscriptions. The BCS Ebook Subscription, through our exclusive partner Weightless Books, will be going up on June 1 to $19.99 per year, for 26 issues/55 stories. That’s still only 37 cents per story, far lower than most magazines, and you can get issues delivered directly to your reader device.

4. Raising the price on BCS ebook single issues. We’ve always sold our single issues for the lowest price that Kindle Store allows, but on June 1 we will be raising that to $1.49; $2.99 for double issues. Our single-issue ebook sales don’t bring in much revenue, but in order to pay this new higher SFWA rate, we need every bit of help.

We are excited about these new ways readers and donors can support BCS and help us pay authors this new higher pro rate, and at the success these new ways have shown so far.

We hope this explanation of our situation will spark discussion in the F/SF short fiction field: that free fiction is not actually free if writers get the pro pay they deserve, and that the financial viability of indie magazines and of writers receiving pro pay depends on the combined efforts of magazines and the readership. We can’t do it without your help, but we will offer as many ways for you to help us as we can, and with your help we will reach the goal that we believe is best for us and our authors and the field.

Thank you!!

Scott H. Andrews

Editor-in-Chief, Publisher

SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has raised their qualifying pay rate for short fiction to 6 cents/word. Beneath Ceaseless Skies has raised our pay rate to meet this standard; it is important to us that writers be paid a pro rate and qualify to join their professional organization.

Yet in this era of difficult financial straits for magazines, with many turning to uncertain revenue sources such as crowd-funding, and with the most successful known revenue stream (Amazon Subscriptions) closed to new vendors, we are mindful that higher pay rates may compound existing financial challenges.

We agree with the current increase to 6 cents/word, as this accounts for inflation since the last increase in 2004.

However, we would be concerned that any further increase in the near future could leave markets struggling to meet such higher rates, and would lead to them either reducing the amount of original fiction they publish, or not raising their rates and thus losing SFWA-qualifying status, or raising their rates and later ceasing publication when unable to secure additional revenues.

All of these outcomes would result in fewer opportunities for writers:  for veteran authors to earn their trade; for neo-pros to develop their craft or showcase their work to readers, agents, and novel publishers; for new writers to establish their writing and their membership in the field.  Neo-pros and new writers would likely bear the brunt of these effects.

Some advocates of additional or larger increases cite the goal of making short fiction rates produce a livable wage. This is a noble cause but a grossly unrealistic one. The Editorial Freelancers Association estimates pro rates for the writing of fiction at 20–25 cents/word. To meet such a standard, SFWA would have to quadruple their new rate, which would strain markets throughout the field (to our knowledge, only one of the thirty SFWA-qualified short fiction markets currently meets that rate). Lesser raises would be inconsequential in achieving a living wage, and would risk the outcomes above in order to make a purely symbolic gesture.

We urge SFWA and the short fiction field overall–authors, publishers, veteran writers and new ones–to undertake a thorough dialog on these factors before consideration of raising short fiction rates again. This current era of ebooks, free online magazines, and free fiction podcasts has expanded the short fiction audience across the planet, fostered the emergence of diverse markets, and increased opportunities for established and new writers alike.

But meeting the financial challenges of publishing in such a landscape remains a work in progress. Further or larger or unrealistically motivated raises in the SFWA short fiction rate would exacerbate these challenges and could stunt the field’s growth, if not halt or even reverse it.

Scott H. Andrews

Editor-in-Chief, Publisher

Effective May 31, 2014, Beneath Ceaseless Skies has raised our pay rate to 6 cents/word.

This higher pay rate will meet the new qualifying pay rate for short fiction set by SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which goes into effect July 1, 2014.

From our debut in 2008, BCS has taken great pride in being a ‘pro rate’ market, and a pro-rate market that is accessible to new writers. All writers deserve professional pay for their work. New writers deserve markets that will help them to establish themselves as short fiction authors and as members of the F/SF field.

Over our six years of publishing, we have heard from many of our newer authors that their sale to BCS was their first ‘pro’ SFWA-qualifying sale, allowing them to join SFWA as an associate member, or was their third ‘pro’ sale, allowing them to join as a full member. We are delighted that our dedication to earning and maintaining SFWA pro status has facilitated those opportunities for them and their work.

Our Submission Guidelines have been updated to reflect this new pay rate. We look forward to continuing to support new writers and continuing to showcase great fiction from writers both new and established.

03-07-2012, 01:53 PM

Why science-fantasy? Or, why are there spaceships in my BCS this month? :)

Beneath Ceaseless Skies has always been about character-driven stories set in awe-inspiring worlds. Up till now, those worlds have all been pre-modern. But that’s a personal preference, one that many fantasy readers and our editor share. Couldn’t that awe come equally well from settings that are more advanced than our world, rather than less?

Science-fantasy has fallen out of favor in recent decades, but it has as rich a tradition as fantasy, from seminal early works like the 1930s space opera of E.E. “Doc” Smith (writing in the same decades as Robert E. Howard) to best-selling sagas like Frank Herbert’s Dune (breaking out in the same decade as The Lord of the Rings).

Their futuristic settings are just as awe-inspiring as fantasy worlds. Arrakis exudes vividness and majesty just as rich as Middle Earth. Character-driven stories set in such worlds can be just as fun as literary adventure fantasy and can comment just as profoundly on what it means to be human.

So we at BCS decided to take one month and showcase great literary adventure science-fantasy; stories taking place in secondary-world settings that are futuristic. Three of them are by authors whose fantasy we’ve featured multiple times before. (That suggests that they too feel a commonality between secondary-world fantasy and science-fantasy; read our Author Interviews with them to find out.) These issues will be accompanied by special science-fantasy cover art, the Author Interviews, and giveaways for signed copies of George R.R. Martin’s Jack Vance tribute anthology.

We hope you enjoy BCS Science-Fantasy Month! And if you prefer your fantasy worlds not so futuristic, rest assured that literary adventure fantasy will return to BCS next month.

04-13-2009, 08:48 AM

For the purposes of Hugo Award category eligibility, Beneath Ceaseless Skies is announcing itself to be a “semiprozine.”

We have always met one of the criteria, that we pay our authors in more than just contributors’ copies. With this announcement, we now meet a second, and therefore by Hugo rules we are a “semiprozine.”

We are making this announcement now to show support for the campaign to Save the Semipro Zine Hugo Award. There is a resolution up for vote at this year’s WorldCon to abolish that Hugo category. We feel that abolishing this award would eliminate a key way to recognize the many vibrant magazines operating at this vital level of short fiction publishing.

For more on why we think passing this resolution would be a grave mistake, see this discussion on the BCS Forums. If you agree, please visit Save the Semipro Zine Hugo and learn how you can show your support.