The story show (old: contest, now: ConThology, or anthology or whatever) takes money to do well. And fairly. When I started, I paid most people…nothing. Or $5. But most people who weren’t the “winners” told me to keep the $5 because we were having fun.
But that ain’t cool. I want this to be a real paying market for stories because, first, people who create deserve to be paid well for their work, and, second, because frankly the more I pay, the more incentive people (even “professional” writer people) will have to submit.
I tried Patreon for awhile, but I wasn’t able to keep this afloat all year long. And, frankly, I wasn’t as interested in the non-Christmas/winter holiday stuff. Mostly I pay for the stories through donations. Paypal. Ko-Fi.com/weirdchristmas. However you do it. (If you want to Venmo me, send me an email: weirdxmas@gmail.com, and I’ll send you the info.) Anything at all is incredibly helpful.
To be transparent, I’ll show what this little endeavor actually costs.
| ITEM | COST PER YEAR |
| Domain registration | $19 |
| WordPress.com | $99 |
| Podbean (podcast host) | $129 |
| Piwigo (online image database) | $43 |
| Zencastr (podcast recording service) | $144 ($288 split w/ other podcast) |
| Paying authors (~20 stories, $35/story) | ~$700 |
| Random expenses (books, new/repair recording equipment, occasional postage) | ~$100 |
| TOTAL: | $1234 |
I feel like I’m forgetting some things, but I’m not a business person. I do this for love. Usually I end up still paying out of pocket for a lot of it (some years more, some less). But the more donations we get, the more I can pay the authors. And, to be even more transparent, I lost my job earlier this year — I have a new one, thankfully, but I did have to take a pay cut. So things are a bit more thin this year than they’ve been in the past.
And I’m also finally officially looking into publishing an anthology. I haven’t decided yet if I want to go self-publishing (and, frankly, start my own imprint) or pitch the idea to an established small press. I don’t want to lose control, so I’m wary of the latter.
But doing it myself means I need even more up front to pay the writers for reprints. I also want to ask some “name” writers if I could reprint some of their pieces. And there a few people I would LOVE to commission a weird Christmas story from (not limited to 350 words – this anthology would have a lot of extra goodies like that). Doing that requires a bit more since some of the folk I’d like to ask are well-positioned to ask for a LOT more than the $.08/word that’s the base pro rate (SFWA).
That’s my argument and explanation for why I’m being needier this year when it comes to donations. I never expect to really make money off of this thing…to my wife’s dismay, who keeps hoping that my hobbies and transient projects will one day pay off big. The fact is, once things become “profitable” I lose a lot of interest because it becomes more about maintaining some level or income or interaction rates rather than just doing what you want. As Steve Aylett says, “The best way of getting into something is to think of it as mischief.” Once it becomes something “official,” you start having to follow the rules you set up rather than make them up out of thin air. The money is means to make up and break more rules in this case. And, luckily, it comes back around.
Are there REAL causes and horrors out there that could use your money more humanely? Of course. Is there pain and suffering you could mitigate by using that money in more socially conscious ways? Absolutely. The beauty is that you can do both, and human beings don’t need to be rigidly consistent or worry about satisfying Kant’s categorical imperative at all times.* Besides, you like me! You like to throw money at things you like. So THROW THAT CASH!!!
I hope you’ll consider helping me out!
PAYPAL: use weirdxmas@gmail.com
* Wait, you never read Kant’s second Critique? I blame the American school system. You probably never even read Descartes’ Meditations (which are SO MUCH shorter and dumber). But whatever. READ MORE PHILOSOPHY! The categorical imperative is the kind of ethics that always universalizes itself, always doing what is right, never what is just expedient: “Act as if the maxims of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.” In other words, always behave in the way you want others to always behave. No exceptions. It’s hard core. It’s also wrong. Or is it? But I digress…
weirdchristmas.com 