Search This Blog

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Effing Narrative Magazine

Thanks to a tip from a cheeky LROD Anonymous, we have this glory: A posting by Eric Rosenfield at Wet Asphalt about our beloved ex lover, Narrative Magazine, earnestly titled "F*** Narrative Magazine!"  Hold on to your hats, people.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Q for Narrative "subscribers": Got Spam?

Anonymous said...

As Woody Guthrie said, "Some men will rob you with a six gun, others with a fountain pen."

Anonymous said...

That was a lovely rant.

I hope no one -- but no one -- is foolish enough to pay the reading fee. You know they're just calling up their old washed-up pals and offering to publish their leftovers.

What a lovely business model -- give readers the magazine for free, but charge the wannabe writers. There certainly are a lot more of them.

Eric Rosenfield said...

I love you people

Anonymous said...

i mean, sure, our country's fighting a war of choice, the sea-level is rising, china's brutally suppressing Tibetan sovereignty...but let's save the true vitriol for narrative magazine. if you're stupid enough to send them your money, then you don't deserve to keep that money. come on, writers. we're supposed to be the smart ones!

Anonymous said...

if you have not read the sfc article, do so, & thx e for pointing it out, because they wonder why they are getting the boot, these newspaper types... it sounded like he wrote it for her! but wait! ... maybe they're onto something here. what if they really do have 40k submissions... at $20 a pop... that's close to 1 million slappers! but their menu is a mess... they should charge a buck for a limerick, $14 for a Shakespearean sonnet, $100 for yr standard novel, $1,000 if you think yr the next James Joyce... get the idea! brilliant... rags to riches...

Anonymous said...

i hear they do charge a lot for editing novels. i hear their editing service is for trust funders and the fees are exorbitant.

also thanks for that top link to direct-com.com that shows they are running a highly profitable spam business too. that link above is a spammer rate card and shows you can even buy narrative subscribers' names/addresses printed on mailing labels! no wonder i get so much literary type spam. same to my email.

also pay attention to the sfc article. says other journal editors are looking to them for ideas. basically us writers are being played the fool big time. soon all these journals will be selling their mailing addresses like above and making us pay to submit. "it's the only way we can deal with the high number of submissions" yeah right.

Anonymous said...

Don't pick on Narrative . At least they are getting stories out to a lot of people , there aren't many who can claim that.

Anonymous said...

Nor support the claim. Getting stories out to a lot of people is not the issue, transparency is.

Anonymous said...

What a relief to see that I am not being charged for posting this comment. If a mag wants to avoid readers' fees for all submissions they should be smart enought to to that. They could charge a proper fee for their magazine subscription with a money back guarantee for a specified period. and make all submissions from subscribers free. That would be one compromise showing good faith. I am sure there are many ways to do it if a mag is interested in taking that route. I believe that any mag that charges a flat sub fee with no compensation except a vague promise at the end of a rainbow should be taken with a huge grain of salt. I received a card in the mail from "Narrative" Mag asking me to submit to the 2009contest. I looked carefully on their website for a contact link so I could ask them if my submission would be considered solicited, thereby exempting me from a submission fee. No such link exists. I am very suspicious of any sales org that does not provide a contact e-mail address.

Writer, Rejected said...

That'll cost you a buck three eighty.