I was recently at a sci-fi/fantasy writing festival in Edinburgh, which included a couple of seminar sessions with representatives from some major publishers in the genre. I asked a question about short story anthologies, and the speaker (a commissioning editor for a sci-fi publisher) said basically that other than the “best of” collections of big names and classic stories, anthologies don’t sell well. So that lines up with what you’re seeing.
ECLOGUE PRESS is keeping its strict 100% no-AI policy. We want stories told by the intentional human mind, not the black box random number generator. We’ll use every tool at our disposal, including the Mark I eyeball, to detect AI-generated content. We disagree with Fandom Pulse on this issue because AI isn’t a force multiplier for indie authors—it’s a crutch that ultimately atrophies their skills and their thinking. We recommend that everyone writing stay well clear of it, even in publication and promotion. That’s what we’ll be doing too.
I think we are in agreement that AI generated content is of little literary interest. However, what is your stance on using AI for other purposes, such as:
Voice recognition
Grammar/punctuation editing
Research
Translation
My stance is that all of the above is a ok (for the case of translation it is ok provided AI is used for translation of the original content and is then edited my the author). I’ve gotten some great paragraphs and some sparky dialogue by speaking into Word and then using ChatGPT to clear up the recognition errors. I’m not changing my method. But I’m not going to lie about it either. Hence the question. My words are my words, my ideas are my ideas. Do you care how I put them on the page?
I ask this without any intention to be confrontational - only want to clarify your philosophy.
We appreciate the question, and more importantly your transparency about your creative process. That honesty with your audience is the most important thing.
Of these, the specific edge case of dictation you bring up is really thought-provoking as a possibly acceptable use-case, and we’re thankful you’re having us consider the question now and not later. We don’t have a well-formed opinion on that yet, but we’ll get back to you. On the one hand, it seems like just another way of putting word to page, like a typewriter or word processor. On the other hand, admitting it on the basis of being another tool in the toolkit would probably lead to us having to admit AI in many other use cases that we don’t want to use it for.
As for the others, we’re concerned that relying on it for copy edits will regress your unique voice to the mean. The AI will suggest edits based on what it has most frequently trained on, and your writing will sound like everyone else’s.
Research is plagued by hallucinations of sources and things that aren’t actually true, plus, to communicate a thorough understanding of a topic requires a thorough examination of it through your own reading, not just digestible summaries. It can be very painfully obvious when someone writes solely from the surface-level understanding a Wikipedia article, and the same goes for AI summaries.
Translation is an art, not a science. There are many different famous (and infamous) translations of Homer, and each of those translators chose for themselves where to strike the balance between the literal word-for-word and their own interpretation of what it means, which informs a more figurative translation. AI might be good enough to do the former faithfully (hallucinations again not withstanding), but definitely not the latter. It cannot meaningfully engage in the author-translator dialogue. For the author who can speak both languages well enough to check the AI’s output, it’s better just to write the work originally in the second language. That way the intent of the written word is communicated exactly as the author intends.
That all said, we hope you can find a home for your work—whether we decide voice dictation is acceptable, or whether you go with another publisher, or even self-publish.
Thank you for your thoughts. The tricky part for me is that while what I do is compliant with the AI free cert guidelines, at least to the best of my understanding, I am not comfortable saying that I don’t use AI because I do - in the way they deem permissible.
Interested analysis. You're right that people do still buy novels and not so much short stories. But on the other hand you have multiple authors who can do free marketing for you about their story in the anthology. The Rialto Book Review has an interesting model where they pay for your published work, but then profit share based on sales after that. So the author has a financial incentive to get their readers to buy the issue they are published in.
I'd be interested to know your definition of fantasy stretches toward the magical realism end of the spectrum...? I have a very good manuscript that's been compared to Madeliem L'Engle and Paolo Coelho.
We were planning a profit-sharing model very similar to Rialto with our anthology, for the same incentive to promote for the authors that you mentioned. Having more free promoters is definitely a unique advantage anthologies have over single-author novels. But considering that in many cases, people expect that they can read short stories for free (as they do in online magazines, on Reddit, and elsewhere online), it’s a real uphill battle even with all that help to get them to pay for short stories.
There are many kinds of fantasy, and not all of them need secondary worlds like epic fantasy does. Magical realism is still fantasy, and that’s what we’re interested in publishing. Once our submission period opens, we’d love to see a submission from you!
Fascinating stuff - you are definitely doing your homework, which is impressive in itself. Will keep a close eye on all of this, as the timing apppears to be fortuitous for both of us and I don't discount these kinds of 'coincidences' too readily.
Is alternate history/post-apocalypse with very light sci-fi elements within the scope of what you intend to publish? I’m writing such a novel and am looking for publishers, now that the manuscript is getting closer to completion.
I also have a parallel-running worldbuilding series for this novel, which I am posting here on Substack. That should give you an idea of the kind of tone and character of my novel’s setting, if you’re interested in seeing it.
We’d love to take a look at your manuscript when our submissions open! The only concern we have with post-apocalyptic stories sometimes is when they come away nihilistic. From our look at the Fallen Continent, it seems more like you’re focusing thematically on civilization rebuilding itself. If that’s the case, we’d love to see your submission!
Interesting stuff. I'm definitely going to subscribe and keep my ear peeled for the submission guidelines. I have a novella that I'm planning on shopping around after I finish up some current projects and revise the draft. Was definitely leaning towards self-publishing but depending on what y'all's submission guidelines end up being I'd be interested in sending it over.
Our local writing group produce an anthology year, and while I understand the market for such may be at an all time low as a reader it is still useful to sample new authors. However even established authors now market full e-book tittles at 99p, or £1.50 to draw new readers in.
As a self-published author I have published a short story book.
Value for the price is part of the issue too. The anthology from Baen we mentioned in our post is selling for $8 on Kindle, which is much more than most full-length novels
We’re still hashing out whether we’ll allow previously published work as submissions or if we’re only looking for unpublished work, but keep an eye out for our submissions guidelines when we post them for our final decision on that! The one thing we want to avoid is competing with ourselves for our readers—probably, existing posts would have to be archived or go behind paywall.
As an Christian who writes science fiction and fantasy, I'm interested. However, I already do self-publishing. What's the marketing and distribution plan you offer for novels, as that would be a major deciding factor for many already published indie authors. Thank you for any reply!
Great question. For some authors, self-publishing’s the right move, especially if they enjoy the promotional aspects of publishing. Our marketing plan is based on our professional experience in marketing and marketing analytics. We’re planning a test-and-learn approach that uses a mix of owned media and paid promotion wherever we find it works, constantly adjusting that mix as we learn. We aim to go as wide as possible with distribution, mainly to reduce our reliance on Amazon as much as we can, but also to earn a better margin selling from our own online storefront and higher-price print runs. Hope that helps!
We’ve heard anecdotally that novellas are doing well on Amazon. Some readers don’t have the time to binge a whole series of novels, and they like a novella as an easy, short read that still can achieve greater depth than a short story. We still need to do our homework on confirming those anecdotes before we can say for sure, but we’re definitely interested in novellas after our first title goes live!
I was recently at a sci-fi/fantasy writing festival in Edinburgh, which included a couple of seminar sessions with representatives from some major publishers in the genre. I asked a question about short story anthologies, and the speaker (a commissioning editor for a sci-fi publisher) said basically that other than the “best of” collections of big names and classic stories, anthologies don’t sell well. So that lines up with what you’re seeing.
Thanks for sharing Caitriana! That’s another data point that confirms we’re moving in a better direction now.
Yeah, I've heard the same. And it's weird, 'cause I know a bunch of science fiction readers who are total short story fans. Oh well.
I know, I love short stories- one of my favourite writers is Ted Chiang and he does almost exclusively short stories
Same!
A question and an observation:
Will you restrict what you publish to work that is all human created?
The editor of Fandom Pulse said he uses AI for his writing.
ECLOGUE PRESS is keeping its strict 100% no-AI policy. We want stories told by the intentional human mind, not the black box random number generator. We’ll use every tool at our disposal, including the Mark I eyeball, to detect AI-generated content. We disagree with Fandom Pulse on this issue because AI isn’t a force multiplier for indie authors—it’s a crutch that ultimately atrophies their skills and their thinking. We recommend that everyone writing stay well clear of it, even in publication and promotion. That’s what we’ll be doing too.
I think we are in agreement that AI generated content is of little literary interest. However, what is your stance on using AI for other purposes, such as:
Voice recognition
Grammar/punctuation editing
Research
Translation
My stance is that all of the above is a ok (for the case of translation it is ok provided AI is used for translation of the original content and is then edited my the author). I’ve gotten some great paragraphs and some sparky dialogue by speaking into Word and then using ChatGPT to clear up the recognition errors. I’m not changing my method. But I’m not going to lie about it either. Hence the question. My words are my words, my ideas are my ideas. Do you care how I put them on the page?
I ask this without any intention to be confrontational - only want to clarify your philosophy.
We appreciate the question, and more importantly your transparency about your creative process. That honesty with your audience is the most important thing.
Of these, the specific edge case of dictation you bring up is really thought-provoking as a possibly acceptable use-case, and we’re thankful you’re having us consider the question now and not later. We don’t have a well-formed opinion on that yet, but we’ll get back to you. On the one hand, it seems like just another way of putting word to page, like a typewriter or word processor. On the other hand, admitting it on the basis of being another tool in the toolkit would probably lead to us having to admit AI in many other use cases that we don’t want to use it for.
As for the others, we’re concerned that relying on it for copy edits will regress your unique voice to the mean. The AI will suggest edits based on what it has most frequently trained on, and your writing will sound like everyone else’s.
Research is plagued by hallucinations of sources and things that aren’t actually true, plus, to communicate a thorough understanding of a topic requires a thorough examination of it through your own reading, not just digestible summaries. It can be very painfully obvious when someone writes solely from the surface-level understanding a Wikipedia article, and the same goes for AI summaries.
Translation is an art, not a science. There are many different famous (and infamous) translations of Homer, and each of those translators chose for themselves where to strike the balance between the literal word-for-word and their own interpretation of what it means, which informs a more figurative translation. AI might be good enough to do the former faithfully (hallucinations again not withstanding), but definitely not the latter. It cannot meaningfully engage in the author-translator dialogue. For the author who can speak both languages well enough to check the AI’s output, it’s better just to write the work originally in the second language. That way the intent of the written word is communicated exactly as the author intends.
That all said, we hope you can find a home for your work—whether we decide voice dictation is acceptable, or whether you go with another publisher, or even self-publish.
Thank you for your thoughts. The tricky part for me is that while what I do is compliant with the AI free cert guidelines, at least to the best of my understanding, I am not comfortable saying that I don’t use AI because I do - in the way they deem permissible.
Bravo. Aifreecert.com is what I use to communicate human-generated content. There is a literary category.
Bravo!
Hear hear!
That's good to hear.
Interested analysis. You're right that people do still buy novels and not so much short stories. But on the other hand you have multiple authors who can do free marketing for you about their story in the anthology. The Rialto Book Review has an interesting model where they pay for your published work, but then profit share based on sales after that. So the author has a financial incentive to get their readers to buy the issue they are published in.
I'd be interested to know your definition of fantasy stretches toward the magical realism end of the spectrum...? I have a very good manuscript that's been compared to Madeliem L'Engle and Paolo Coelho.
We were planning a profit-sharing model very similar to Rialto with our anthology, for the same incentive to promote for the authors that you mentioned. Having more free promoters is definitely a unique advantage anthologies have over single-author novels. But considering that in many cases, people expect that they can read short stories for free (as they do in online magazines, on Reddit, and elsewhere online), it’s a real uphill battle even with all that help to get them to pay for short stories.
There are many kinds of fantasy, and not all of them need secondary worlds like epic fantasy does. Magical realism is still fantasy, and that’s what we’re interested in publishing. Once our submission period opens, we’d love to see a submission from you!
Fascinating stuff - you are definitely doing your homework, which is impressive in itself. Will keep a close eye on all of this, as the timing apppears to be fortuitous for both of us and I don't discount these kinds of 'coincidences' too readily.
This is really exciting. I’m so happy this made it to my feed today.
Is alternate history/post-apocalypse with very light sci-fi elements within the scope of what you intend to publish? I’m writing such a novel and am looking for publishers, now that the manuscript is getting closer to completion.
I also have a parallel-running worldbuilding series for this novel, which I am posting here on Substack. That should give you an idea of the kind of tone and character of my novel’s setting, if you’re interested in seeing it.
We’d love to take a look at your manuscript when our submissions open! The only concern we have with post-apocalyptic stories sometimes is when they come away nihilistic. From our look at the Fallen Continent, it seems more like you’re focusing thematically on civilization rebuilding itself. If that’s the case, we’d love to see your submission!
Looking forward to your sub guidelines. I have a fantasy novel with some scifi leanings that I’m shopping around at the moment.
We’re looking forward to reading it! Stay tuned for when our submissions open!
Keeping my eyes peeled! 👀
Interesting stuff. I'm definitely going to subscribe and keep my ear peeled for the submission guidelines. I have a novella that I'm planning on shopping around after I finish up some current projects and revise the draft. Was definitely leaning towards self-publishing but depending on what y'all's submission guidelines end up being I'd be interested in sending it over.
If it meets our submission guidelines, we’d love to take a look!
Our local writing group produce an anthology year, and while I understand the market for such may be at an all time low as a reader it is still useful to sample new authors. However even established authors now market full e-book tittles at 99p, or £1.50 to draw new readers in.
As a self-published author I have published a short story book.
Value for the price is part of the issue too. The anthology from Baen we mentioned in our post is selling for $8 on Kindle, which is much more than most full-length novels
I got a short novel I just posted the final chapter here. Would something like that be allowed for a submission
We’re still hashing out whether we’ll allow previously published work as submissions or if we’re only looking for unpublished work, but keep an eye out for our submissions guidelines when we post them for our final decision on that! The one thing we want to avoid is competing with ourselves for our readers—probably, existing posts would have to be archived or go behind paywall.
This one is behind a pay wall
As an Christian who writes science fiction and fantasy, I'm interested. However, I already do self-publishing. What's the marketing and distribution plan you offer for novels, as that would be a major deciding factor for many already published indie authors. Thank you for any reply!
Great question. For some authors, self-publishing’s the right move, especially if they enjoy the promotional aspects of publishing. Our marketing plan is based on our professional experience in marketing and marketing analytics. We’re planning a test-and-learn approach that uses a mix of owned media and paid promotion wherever we find it works, constantly adjusting that mix as we learn. We aim to go as wide as possible with distribution, mainly to reduce our reliance on Amazon as much as we can, but also to earn a better margin selling from our own online storefront and higher-price print runs. Hope that helps!
Are you interested in publishing Novella’s?
We’ve heard anecdotally that novellas are doing well on Amazon. Some readers don’t have the time to binge a whole series of novels, and they like a novella as an easy, short read that still can achieve greater depth than a short story. We still need to do our homework on confirming those anecdotes before we can say for sure, but we’re definitely interested in novellas after our first title goes live!
Personally and anecdotally, I can tell you that my standalone novellas consistently outsell both my novel series.