How Aurealis Selects Short Stories

Welcome to the final post in my series on short story editors. Thank you for all of your encouraging comments on Twitter and Facebook – I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed this series! Thanks too for all the nice comments you’ve made about this blog. Your compliments make it all worthwhile!

Now, back to the series… As you know, an editor-friend of mine recently shared his editorial selection process on Facebook. Watching it was difficult at first because I hadn’t realised how emotionally draining the process of putting together a short story collection can be for editors – whether for an anthology or magazine edition. So, over the last few posts, I’ve been interviewing the editors of Fablecroft, Ticonderoga, CSFG, Aurealis and Midnight Echo to find out more.

Here’s what Aurealis editor-extraordinaire Dirk Strasser told me about his process…

Firstly, some stats:

Aurealis #60

The title of your latest project: Aurealis #60.

Its release date: May 2013

Published: ebook.

One-sentence description: Aurealis is Australia’s longest running and most prestigious fantasy & science fiction magazine.

Great! Now let’s get stuck in…

1. What’s the hardest part of putting together a short story collection, be it for a magazine edition or an anthology?

Putting together a magazine like Aurealis is quite different in some ways to putting together an anthology. Making sure we have enough subscribers to remain viable and keeping them all happy is probably the hardest task. Having subscribers means you have an ongoing relationship with them, so we always try to make sure everything we do is in the best interests of the people who have given us their hard-earned money in advance of up to a year.

2. What’s the easiest part of that process?

Unlike an anthology, we don’t have the issue of “not having enough room”. If we really like a story, we can always accept it for a future issue. So, in a sense, fitting in stories we like is the easy part.

3. What’s the most emotional part (and which emotion)?

The most emotional part is publishing each issue every month. The emotion is excitement. The fact that it happens ten times a year is great.

4. Often editors have a vision for their collection, so select stories that support that vision. Do you ever worry that readers won’t ‘get’ your vision once it’s presented to them and, if so, how do you cope with that worry?

The Aurealis vision is to showcase Australia’s best science fiction, fantasy and horror writers, to give them a reliable steady market to aim for, and to publish the widest range possible within the SF genre. If readers only read a couple of issues, our worry is that they may think we don’t publish their type of SF. If they keep reading, they would discover that we do.

5. Do you read stories blind, or know which author wrote each story as you read? Why do you prefer that method?

We have tried a number of methods over the 23 years we’ve been publishing. The current method involves a submissions manager and a team of readers making the initial decision regarding which stories should go onto the three editors. The initial reading by the readers is blind. A successful story for Aurealis will have been read by up to 6 people by the end of the process.

6. Once you’ve selected your favourite stories, how do you put them in order – by theme, by author, to develop a given theme…?

We try to balance an issue in terms of genre type and length (as much as you can when you only publish 2 stories per issue). So we would have, say, one science fiction story and one fantasy story per issue, not two science fiction stories. We don’t usually put two long stories or two short stories within the same issue.

Dirk Strasser
Speculative Fiction Festival 2013

7. Have you ever rejected a story that then went on to achieve greatness elsewhere? If so, what did you think about that, and did you alter your processes to avoid it happening again?

No, but that would be your greatest fear.

8. How often do you second-guess your judgment?

We don’t “second guess”, but the three editors usually have a vigorous debate about whether to reject or accept various stories. One of us could hate something while one of the others loves it. We wanted to initially only publish stories that all three of us agreed were strong enough, but we soon came to the conclusion that having 3 out of 3 “yes’s” was going to mean we simply wouldn’t accept enough stories to fill the ten issues each year, so we’ve settled for 2 out of 3.

9. If you had just one piece of advice for writers submitting to you, what would it be (apart from to follow your guidelines)?

Write the sort of story you like to read. Don’t think, “Oh they’ll never go for that type of story.”

10. If you had just one piece of advice for editors thinking about putting together a short story collection, what would it be?

Try to keep an open mind and don’t be too narrow in your requirements.

Thank you Dirk! I think it’s fascinating to read about the different priorities magazine and anthology editors have – especially the ongoing relationship magazine editors need to have with subscribers. So thank you for sharing with us

Whether you’re a writer interested in submitting a story to one of the editors I’ve featured, or a reader intrigued to know what happens behind the scenes of a short story collection – I think this has been a fantastic series to organise, and I thank each of my guests for taking part. Thank you, guests! And thank you readers – for stopping by 🙂

If you’ve missed one of the previous posts, you can review them here: Fablecroft, Ticonderoga, CSFG & Midnight Echo). I wonder which interview was your favourite?