Scalzi on Dragon

[humble minion]

From a little while ago, but did a search and couldn't see any threads where it'd been discussed.

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=159

Respected sci-fi writer gets angry about Dragon's submission guidelines. Has very big problems with a tight-fisted per-word rate as compared to the rest of the fantasy industry, and rather draconian copyright policy.

Any writers/Dragon staff care to comment? I suppose this isn't really comparing like with like since Scalzi talks about fiction and the Dragon submission page is all about adventures and articles (something I'm not sure he realises), but it's still interesting. Are Dragon's terms relatively standard throughout the industry? Why does fiction pay so much better than RPG material?

 

[Fifth Element]

From a little while ago, but did a search and couldn't see any threads where it'd been discussed.

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=159

Respected sci-fi writer gets angry about Dragon's submission guidelines. Has very big problems with a tight-fisted per-word rate as compared to the rest of the fantasy industry, and rather draconian copyright policy.

Any writers/Dragon staff care to comment? I suppose this isn't really comparing like with like since Scalzi talks about fiction and the Dragon submission page is all about adventures and articles (something I'm not sure he realises), but it's still interesting. Are Dragon's terms relatively standard throughout the industry? Why does fiction pay so much better than RPG material?

I suspect it pays better because the market is so much bigger. Never forget this: RPGs are a tiny niche market. Compared to something like the fantasy fiction market, it's small potatoes.

Going off on an RPG magazine for not having the best terms for fiction is strange, and it appears a bit ignorant.

 

[Glyfair]

Any writers/Dragon staff care to comment? I suppose this isn't really comparing like with like since Scalzi talks about fiction and the Dragon submission page is all about adventures and articles (something I'm not sure he realises), but it's still interesting. Are Dragon's terms relatively standard throughout the industry? Why does fiction pay so much better than RPG material?

Well, WotC is publishing fiction in Dragon. However, the real comparison would be with how Paizo treated fiction. Clearly there are special cases (such as George R. R. Martin's preview they published).

 

[frankthedm]

Going off on an RPG magazine for not having the best terms for fiction is strange, and it appears a bit ignorant.

No ignorance involved. Dragon is offering a rate, that is bad because not for the amount specifically, but because the author has to give up the rights to the work to dragon entirely for that amount. Normally, in publishing the author get paid for the magazine to publish the work once, and thats it unless both sides make agreements.

Dragon wants to pay that single amount and then own everything. That means Wotc

Publishes the story as much as they want
Owns the characters
Owns the setting

That is a chump deal IMHO.

 

[DarkKestral]

I suspect it pays better because the market is so much bigger. Never forget this: RPGs are a tiny niche market. Compared to something like the fantasy fiction market, it's small potatoes.

Going off on an RPG magazine for not having the best terms for fiction is strange, and it appears a bit ignorant.

Fifth: He's not flaming them for having a rate of 3-6 cents a word, specifically.. he's flaming them for having that rate for "work-for-hire" submissions. Most of the mags probably had about as much circulation as Dragon. However, the genre-specific lit mags (Asimov's and the like) pay the same as what is being offered by Dragon for the first printing alone, with more payments down the line should the mags wish to reprint them, which is quite possible should they be well-received. That, and they have a better rights structure, and the stories themselves are more likely to get noticed by the awards group nominators who read the lit mags but are not probably as likely to read Dragon.

In such a case, it's hard to see why submitting to Dragon has any benefit for the professional writer, or even the "amateur" who's been professionally published once or twice in a major genre lit mag.

So if the Dragon editors want submissions from the more notable names in fantasy and sci-fi, (and Scalzi is relatively well known, so I think he'd qualify) he's arguing they need to up their rates to be comparable, or at least ease up on their terms to be closer to "industry standard." The other consideration is that if they don't get big names every once in a while, the fiction section will probably bite the big one sooner rather than later, because it will cost money but won't draw in new readers easily.

EDIT: And believe me, an awesome fiction section for cheap enough would draw me into the DI even if I didn't plan on using the other material. Some fairly classic SF&F stories were first printed in Dragon. I see a few famous names in SF&F have done stories for the mag in an earlier incarnation. Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Ben Bova, Terry Brooks... if they wanted authors like those bad enough to make the new version of the fiction section as successful at getting major authors to come in, as they did for the last time they did original fiction, then they'd pay approximately industry standard, or even a little more. (I am not counting Gygax, Margaret Weis, Sue Cook, and Ed Greenwood here, because most of them were D&D designers first and only started doing the fantasy series/stories they've been known for because of D&D. I'm really more focused on those major authors who don't already work for Hasbro/WotC in some major fashion or otherwise involved in the RPG industry in such a way that their stories come out of the RPG and not the other way around.)

 

[humble minion]

EDIT: And believe me, an awesome fiction section for cheap enough would draw me into the DI even if I didn't plan on using the other material. Some fairly classic SF&F stories were first printed in Dragon. I see a few famous names in SF&F have done stories for the mag in an earlier incarnation. Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Ben Bova, Terry Brooks... if they wanted authors like those bad enough to make the new version of the fiction section as successful at getting major authors to come in, as they did for the last time they did original fiction, then they'd pay approximately industry standard, or even a little more. (I am not counting Gygax, Margaret Weis, Sue Cook, and Ed Greenwood here, because most of them were D&D designers first and only started doing the fantasy series/stories they've been known for because of D&D. I'm really more focused on those major authors who don't already work for Hasbro/WotC in some major fashion or otherwise involved in the RPG industry in such a way that their stories come out of the RPG and not the other way around.)

Agree.

And more to the point, it might bring other people in too, non-D&D players who are fans of a featured author. I wonder how many George R R Martin fans bought the Westeros issue of Dragon for the preview excerpt, for instance.

Despite the explosion of fantasy and related literature over the past decade or so, D&D remains very much a niche and reliant largely on the same gamers who've been buying PHBs since TSR. It'd be great to have the sort of fiction content in Dragon that might serve to lure new blood into the hobby (assuming it's accompanied by a thoughtful interpretation of the game mechanics to suit the source material, of course.) But as you've said, any professional author is going to sneer at the terms Dragon is offering right now, and even if offered a better rate due to their stature in the field, I've got a hunch many would refuse out of solidarity. Most professional authors have been struggling authors at some stage and with the screenwriters guild strike on in the US right now, ownership rights are a sensitive issue - offering this sort of contract to beginning authors is not going to make a good impression regarding how WotC treats their talent.

 

[WayneLigon]

The other magazines he mentions have circulations many, many times the size of Dragon's at it's height and Dragon still offers a comparable rate compared to those other magazines. There are still plenty of markets that want to pay you in copies, or offer rates like 1/2 a cent a word.

The rights issue is the heart of it, though. http://www.asja.org/pubtips/wmfh01.php has an excellent discussion on the various types of rights and what they mean to the author.

 

[DarkKestral]

The other magazines he mentions have circulations many, many times the size of Dragon's at it's height and Dragon still offers a comparable rate compared to those other magazines. There are still plenty of markets that want to pay you in copies, or offer rates like 1/2 a cent a word.

The rights issue is the heart of it, though. http://www.asja.org/pubtips/wmfh01.php has an excellent discussion on the various types of rights and what they mean to the author.

Wayne: I don't think Dragon does. The other magazines pay for "First North American Serial Rights" aka FNASR (Basically, first chance to publish the material, and where the author keeps all other rights, including royalty rights, reprint rights, anthology rights, etc.) what Dragon is paying for "Work-Made-For-Hire" aka WMFH (where the author signs all rights away) so no, they aren't really paying equally. Paying "equally" would likely mean they need to pay say 3-5 times the per-word cost that they're paying now, if the writer is willing to let the rights go for even that cheap. Oh, and those stories from when TSR did Dragon? They only took the FNASR rights... and they paid twice the rate that WotC/Hasbro is supposedly paying. In fact, quite likely the fact that they only took the FNASR rights came back to bite WotC on the rear end.

Comparing Dragon and the lit mags, one of the two groups is more prestigious, will earn an aspiring writer SWFA credits upon sale, offers the closest thing they'll get to full rights, and can get you the awards for your field that will help out with bypassing the slush pile or in getting a good-paying book contract. The other is Dragon.

Honestly, the choice is fairly simple, and I know that if I checked the submissions guidelines for the various magazines, I'd probably avoid Dragon too, if what I'm hearing is true. And I'm not published. I could even consider letting WotC publish stats (w/ my approval) for the characters in the story for cheap, (though probably under a fairly tight restriction) knowing what Dragon is in essence, as long as the core IP was mine and mine alone.

Even some of the smaller pubs like KQ have a better rights structure; Baur mentioned in the linked blog that the only reason he managed to get some of the people he did to work for it was that he offered a significantly better rights package. So if a smaller pub can be better overall than Dragon, it'll not bode well for the success of the fiction initiative.

So yeah, I'd be willing to bet the stories won't be as impressive as they'd hope. They might get a few gems from unknown authors who may curse themselves afterwards, but I'm not sure that outside of work like GRR Martin's which is done for a specific reason that might balance out the rights issue (advertising a new book with material which is expected to be rarely reprinted, for timeliness or other reasons, in front of a lot of likely fans for example) major authors that aren't already under contract with WotC will be seen much. Which is a shame, because several major authors today have been published in Dragon, or even got their start there and it would be the best sort of return to tradition to establish a new-old tradition of famous authors occasionally appearing in it's "pages."

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Comparing Dragon and the lit mags, one of the two groups is more prestigious, will earn an aspiring writer SWFA credits upon sale, offers the closest thing they'll get to full rights, and can get you the awards for your field that will help out with bypassing the slush pile or in getting a good-paying book contract. The other is Dragon.

Add to that, Dragon is (at this point) an online only magazine with no demonstrated track record for circulation rate, nor frankly, even anything resembling a publishing standard (the sole "issue" they've had going forward from this point is very little to judge by).

This, compared to print publications with wide circulations.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

One thing to note, though- I don't believe Dragon is soliciting for Fiction at all, which would be standard (they haven't solicited for original fiction in a long time, only having fiction pieces from authors they selected- and presumably worked out terms with). I don't see anything on the submission page regarding fiction- just game-related articles, which wouldn't be easily resold outside of Dragon (and certainly not outside of the RPG market- I don't know offhand of any other RPG game magazines that publish d20 material, though there certainly may be some).

That said, if they were to accept fiction submissions, personally I'd probably avoid using any original settings. Just use some WotC owned settings (Eberron, Realms, etc.) and some original characters. Not that that would completely mitigate things.