{"id":6193,"date":"2013-04-26T18:15:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T08:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=6193"},"modified":"2013-04-26T18:15:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T08:15:36","slug":"how-aurealis-selects-short-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/how-aurealis-selects-short-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"How Aurealis Selects Short Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Welcome to the final post in my series on short story editors. Thank you for all of your encouraging comments on Twitter and Facebook \u2013 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!<\/p>\n

Now, back to the series… As you know, an editor-friend of mine recently shared his editorial selection process on Facebook<\/a>. Watching it was difficult at first because I hadn\u2019t realised how emotionally draining the process of putting together a short story collection can be for editors \u2013 whether for an anthology or magazine edition. So, over the last few posts, I\u2019ve been interviewing the editors of Fablecroft<\/a>, Ticonderoga<\/a>, CSFG<\/a>, Aurealis and Midnight Echo<\/a> to find out more.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what Aurealis<\/a> editor-extraordinaire Dirk\u00a0Strasser told me about his process\u2026<\/p>\n

Firstly, some stats:<\/p>\n

\n
\"Aurealis<\/a>

Aurealis #60<\/p><\/div>\n

The title of your latest project: Aurealis #60.<\/i><\/i><\/i>
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

Its release date: May 2013<\/p>\n

Published: ebook.<\/p>\n

One-sentence description: Aurealis is Australia\u2019s longest running and most prestigious fantasy & science fiction magazine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Great! Now let\u2019s get stuck in\u2026<\/p>\n

1. What\u2019s the hardest part of putting together a short story collection, be it for a magazine edition or an anthology?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

2. What\u2019s the easiest part of that process?<\/p>\n

Unlike an anthology, we don\u2019t have the issue of \u201cnot having enough room\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

3. What\u2019s the most emotional part (and which emotion)?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

4. Often editors have a vision for their collection, so select stories that support that vision. Do you ever worry that readers won\u2019t \u2018get\u2019 your vision once it\u2019s presented to them and, if so, how do you cope with that worry?<\/p>\n

The Aurealis vision is to showcase Australia\u2019s 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\u2019t publish their<\/i> type of SF. If they keep reading, they would discover that we do.<\/p>\n

5. Do you read stories blind, or know which author wrote each story as you read? Why do you prefer that method?<\/p>\n

We have tried a number of methods over the 23 years we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

6. Once you\u2019ve selected your favourite stories, how do you put them in order \u2013 by theme, by author, to develop a given theme\u2026?<\/p>\n

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\u2019t usually put two long stories or two short stories within the same issue.<\/p>\n

\"Dirk<\/a>

Dirk Strasser
Speculative Fiction Festival 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

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?<\/p>\n

No, but that would be your greatest fear.<\/p>\n

8. How often do you second-guess your judgment?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t \u201csecond guess\u201d, 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 \u201cyes\u2019s\u201d was going to mean we simply wouldn\u2019t accept enough stories to fill the ten issues each year, so we\u2019ve settled for 2 out of 3.<\/p>\n

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

Write the sort of story you like to read. Don\u2019t think, \u201cOh they\u2019ll never go for that<\/i> type of story.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Try to keep an open mind and don\u2019t be too narrow in your requirements.<\/p>\n

Thank you Dirk! I think it’s fascinating to read about the different priorities magazine and anthology editors have \u2013 especially the ongoing relationship magazine editors need to have with subscribers. So thank you for sharing with us \":)\"<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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 \u2013 for stopping by \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

If you’ve missed one of the previous posts, you can review them here: Fablecroft<\/a>, Ticonderoga<\/a>, CSFG<\/a> & Midnight Echo<\/a>). I wonder which interview was your favourite?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the final post in my series on short story editors. Thank you for all of your encouraging comments on Twitter and Facebook \u2013 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!\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[55,179,566,567,568,569],"class_list":["post-6193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writer-advice","tag-aurealis","tag-dirk-strasser","tag-short-stories","tag-short-story","tag-short-story-anthology","tag-short-story-collections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}