February 2021

A big thank you to everyone who sent us a story during our open submission window in January! We're reading them now, and will try not to make you wait too long for an answer.

Our stated response time of 3 months after submissions close is probably a bit optimistic. Realistically, we do need to have decided what we're publishing July through December by the end of May to leave enough time for editing the July and August stories, since these are published to our Patreon page on July 1st. So, 4 months after submissions close. We wish it were closer to 2 months, but have not yet been able to transform this dream into reality.

Mysterion 2 now available on Kobo

In addition to Amazon, you can now acquire the e-book version of the new reprint anthology to read on your Kobo device.

We may at some point add Apple and Barnes & Noble to our list of e-book retailers, since we published the first Mysterion anthology to those platforms. It isn't really a priority, though. Last time we checked, we hadn't sold a single copy of the original anthology through Apple, and they're the most finicky and complicated retailer to upload books to (and you can only do it from a Mac). We've sold 4 e-books through Barnes & Noble, but they won't pay us any royalties until some account information gets updated, which they're apparently in no hurry to take care of. So we aren't inclined to give them any more content until this is sorted out.

(For all the--often entirely justified--complaints about Amazon, they make it very easy and straightforward to update any address and/or tax information that they need in order to pay you your royalties, and we have never had an issue with them. At least not as publishers.)

We had sold 6 copies of the original Mysterion anthology through Kobo, though, and although they haven't paid us any royalties yet either, that's only because we haven't reached the minimum payment threshold. So it made sense to spend an hour publishing the new e-book to their site.

(Amazon doesn't have a minimum payment threshold, and will happily send you as little as 35 cents, if that's what they owe you this month. Via direct deposit into your checking account, not in Amazon gift cards, as a friend once asked, with some snark.)

You can get the paperback version of the new anthology from Barnes & Noble, and we do get paid for those copies, because B&N just buys them from Amazon and resells them to you (so we get paid by Amazon, and less than if you just bought the book from Amazon directly, because B&N wants their cut, and we want to keep the price the same on both sites). Kobo e-book publishing is completely separate from Amazon.

Like most independent publishers these days, we sell almost all our books through Amazon. It is what it is. But now you can buy the latest one somewhere else, if you want to.

Tangent Online Recommended Reading List

We were delighted to see that 6 of the 14 stories we published in 2020 made it onto the Tangent Online annual Recommended Reading List!

"In the Fields of Sin, Down Among the Dead" by Brian Winfrey

"Reformed" by Caias Ward

"Gordon's Knot" by Jennifer Milne

"What Comes Before" by John Nadas

"Michael" by Em Liu

"The Original Sin of William Blackhand" by R. Keelan

It's always fascinating to see which stories readers and reviewers like best. Of course, we like them all, or we wouldn't have published them! But others from whom we've gotten feedback don't always prefer the same stories.

This is good, as far as we're concerned, because it shows that we're managing to publish a range of stories that explore similar themes but are still quite different from each other, rather than 14 variations of the same story each year.

Thank you Mysterion authors, for giving us the opportunity to publish so many wonderful stories!

We know some of you will be seeing warmer weather along with the longer days by now, but here in Massachusetts we're still in deep winter, with temperatures well below freezing for the last several days and a big snowstorm expected to move in today. Wherever you are, we hope you stay safe, warm, and COVID-free!

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