We’re exploring Patreon and Kickstarter as income sources that will enable us to pay the writers and artists whose great works make The Fabulist come alive. (We’d also like to cover some of our own expenses.)
Will you help us plan for success by filling out our anonymous, seven-question reader survey?
• Fabulist Magazine Reader Survey: https://forms.gle/kGC7QHWgkcAK7dcF9
Your feedback will help us make the best use of these platforms.
Background
Since 2007, The Fabulist Words & Art has provided a home for new works of fantastical fiction and art across genres. It has been a wonderful, albeit enormously challenging, experience.
We are an all-volunteer operation, and are constantly floored by the number of submissions we get when we release an open call for short fiction and art. Typically, The Fabulist accepts just 3 percent of all submitted works. These include stories by first-time writers, represented authors, MFA graduates, and even professors and department chairs in fine arts and creative-writing programs.
It’s all the more humbling because The Fabulist is what’s known as a “non-paying market.” Everyone here is doing it for love and Art first and foremost.
To honor our contributors, we work constantly to improve our website as a forever-free venue for their fantastical creations.
Now it’s time to do even better.
Giant steps
Last fall, we at The Fabulist made the determination and declaration that our 2021 publishing season (which runs through the end of the year with new fiction, poetry and art every Friday) will be our last as “nonpaying market.”
To this end, we will shortly be launching a Patreon campaign, offering a variety of monthly subscription levels offering digital incentives and products, including ebooks, and, ultimately (but not anytime soon), regular print publications.
We aspire to pay $0.08/word, which would help The Fabulist advance its goal of becoming a qualifying market for the SFWA, but recognize that it may take some time to get there.
Nevertheless, starting in 2022, we are determined to offer some form of monetary compensation to honor the work of our contributors.
To plan for success, we’ve put together a short, 7-question survey about what fans of The Fabulist would like to see in any crowdfunding and subscription campaigns (such as Patreon, Kickstarter and Substack) that we use.
Our goal is to not only pay our contributors, but also cover our own expenses in maintaining a beautiful online home for fantastical prose, poetry and visual art, as well as reviews and related nonfiction.
Thank you for your support, and for filling out our survey!
A note on paywalls and reading fees
• No matter how we implement any subscription programs — including for print publications, ebooks and Substack-style newsletters — The Fabulist’s current online fiction and art publishing program will never go behind a paywall.
• The Fabulist has NEVER charged reading fees, and never will.
