For those not familiar with Anathema, a recap:
We’re a free online tri-annual speculative fiction magazine publishing the work of queer POC/Indigenous/Aboriginal creators. We pay $50 (CAD) for fiction and non-fiction, and $100 (CAD) for art.
And in 2016 you helped us raise enough money to run three pretty fantastic issues – a full year’s worth of original fiction, non-fiction, and art.
Yes, we’re biased. But judge for yourself:
We’re fundraising again because we’re not self-sustaining yet; over the last 12 months our regular subscriptions were only able to raise enough to pay for most of an issue. But we know we can get there.
We want to continue presenting a free, accessible magazine that boosts the voices of emerging and established creators. None of us take any salary or receive any remuneration for running the publication. Everything we make goes to paying our contributors and keeping the website running.
This year we want to bump our pay rates for fiction and non-fiction up to $100 (CAD), and fund two more years while we work toward becoming fully self-sustaining. We’ve got a cost breakdown below, and any money we make above this campaign’s $,6000 (CAD) goal will go directly toward paying our contributors for a fourth year and/or being able to raise our rates still higher.
Three of our stories ended up on the 2017 Nebula Reading List (“Everything You Left Behind,” “Learning to Swim,” and “Never Yawn Under a Banyan Tree”) and we’ve had one of our stories narrated in a professional podcast mere months after its release (“A Complex Filament of Light” at Cast of Wonders).
We’ve spent the last year doing what we can to fight the global creep of ultra-conservatism’s “new normal” – and the rejuvenated aggression against queer communities that’s been spurred in its wake.
We’re here to stay but we need your help to do that. Help us keep Anathema a podium from which marginalized voices can be heard.
This is only the beginning.
Our Costs
Anathema's annual (base) funding model is inexpensive and streamlined:
- $1,800 for fiction and non-fiction: 18 pieces over three issues, all paid at the new flat rate of $100 (CAD).
- $300 for cover art: one cover each over three issues, all paid at a flat rate of $100 (CAD).
- $450 for production: cover layout, ebook production, and website costs.
Our goal is $6,000 (CAD) to cover the above costs for two years, IndieGoGo's fees, covering transit fees and bank transfer fees (we believe we, not the content creators, should be covering these fees), and to give us some room in case of unexpected costs. And in publishing there are always unexpected costs.
We've chosen the flexible funding option on this campaign so that no matter what we get, we can put that straight toward paying for content, and make up the rest as we go via subscription and individual issue sales.
The Rewards
In exchange for your support, we're offering a range of perks: everything from subscriptions, to ebooks, to short story edits, to novella and novel critiques. We're also looking into adding additional rewards during the course of the campaign.
As much as possible we're aiming for rewards that don't involve mailing costs so we can put your contributions directly towards purchasing content for the magazine.
Stretch Goals
If we raise more than our initial goal, we'll be able to do the following:
- $8,000: raise year two and three's pay rate for fiction and non-fiction to $150 (CAD).
- $12,000: fund year four's content at the $150 (CAD) rate for fiction and non-fiction.
The Team
Though Anathema is looking to expand its editorial staff in future, right now we're a team of three:
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Michael Matheson is a genderfluid Clarion West ('14) graduate. Their work has been nominated (longlisted) for the Sunburst Award, and has been published in Nightmare, Shimmer, Augur, Stone Telling, and the anthology Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, among others. A former Managing Editor (CZP eBook) with CZP, and former Submissions Editor with Apex Magazine, their first anthology as editor, The Humanity of Monsters, was published by CZP in 2015. Find them online at michaelmatheson.wordpress.com, and on Twitter @sekisetsu.
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As a writer, Andrew Wilmot has won awards for screenwriting and short fiction, with credits including Found Press, The Singularity, Glittership, Turn to Ash, and Those Who Makes Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories. As an editor, he's worked with Drawn & Quarterly, ChiZine Publications, Broken River Books, ARP Books, Wolsak & Wynn, and is the former Marketing and Production Coordinator for NeWest Press. Books he's worked on have themselves taken home multiple awards from the Sunburst Awards, the Eisner Awards, and most recently the Shirley Jackson Awards. His first novel, The Death Scene Artist, will be released in Fall 2018 from Buckrider Books. Find him online at andrewwilmot.ca, anathemaspec.tumblr.com, and on Twitter, hating everything about Twitter, @AGAWilmot.
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Chinelo Onwualu is a writer, editor, and researcher living in Toronto, Canada. She is currently editor and co-founder of Omenana, a magazine of African speculative fiction. She is a graduate of Clarion West ('14), which she attended as the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship. Her work has been featured in Nightmare, Ideomancer, Strange Horizons, Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond, and Terra Incognita: New Short Speculative Stories from Africa. She's been longlisted for the British Science Fiction Awards and the Writivism Short Story Day Africa Award. Follow her on Twitter @chineloonwualu.
Risks & Challenges
As with any startup, there are challenges, known and unknown. After a year of running Anathema, here's what we know:
We're a small team, and keeping Anathema's output and costs small is a necessity. The low costs and smaller pay rates are advantageous for running a magazine on a tight budget, but can sometimes make it harder to attract content, so we solicit in addition to relying on our slush pile. Despite that approach, we've seen content shortfalls: In 2017, one of our authors contracted for the December issue disappeared entirely, too close to publication to replace them. (We still haven't heard from that author despite repeated attempts at contact, and in this political climate we're deeply concerned and hoping that wherever they are they're safe.) We learned from that shortfall, and as of January 2018 have gone to open submissions year round so we have more content to work with.
But being a small team also brings one other potential problem: if one of us is no longer able to contribute, for whatever reason, a staff shortfall can slow or stall a magazine's production cycle. Which is why we mentioned above that we're looking to expand our editorial staff down the road.
Are there still other unknowns?
Absolutely. And we'll find out when we get there. Between the three of us, we've got a wide range of editorial experience in book and magazine publishing on two continents, and we've spent a year making Anathema work, one issue at a time.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you're able to contribute to the campaign directly that's fantastic. But even if not, there are other ways you can help:
- Use IndieGoGo's sharing tools to get the word out directly.
- Spread the word on social media channels.
- Check back for new content to share: we'll be posting essays from the editors and past contributors, as well as updates, throughout the campaign.
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Anathema's open to unsolicited submissions year round, so spread the word.
- And if you're considering submitting to us, please don't self-reject. If your work fits what we're looking for, we want to see it!
