There’s a new market for (very) short science fiction stories. Martian: The Magazine of Science Fiction Drabbles is a niche site that will be publishing short spec fic stories of exactly 100 words each. It’s running a fundraising campaign now, maybe check it out? Maybe support it? Maybe spread the word?

After the break I’m going to spend a few words being industry wonky, so feel free to skip it, but if you want a teeny peek behind the curtain…

… here’s why this is pretty wild. Publishing is hard to make money doing. . Writing is also hard to make money doing. The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) considers a professional rate of pay for fiction to be $.06/word. That’s not much! Here’s a fun fact too, that professional rate hasn’t really changed with inflation. Back in the pulp days, before computers even, the pro rate was pretty much the same.

Martian is paying $.10/word. They’ve made a commitment to scrape that pay rate up a bit. Sure, $10.00/story isn’t retire in the South of France money, but it’s not too shabby either.

Also, the person running Martian, Eric Fomley, has basically created out of whole cloth MULTIPLE markets for short fiction. He ran a successful kickstarter for an anthology of horror drabbles, Drabbledark (which I have two stories in). He started a kickstarter for a reprint anthology, Timeshift. He started a market that pays over pro rates. Oh, and he’s done all this in like the last two months. There’s a lotta hustle there.