So about that poll...

[chipotle]

...no, I haven't definitively decided to make a webzine, but I'm collecting data points. And they've been interesting ones -- not entirely consistent with what I predicted.

I used the 1-5 disagree/agree scale on as many questions as I could; there was a method to that madness, in that it let LJ give me median, mean and standard deviation. (Can you guess that I did time in a marketing department analyzing survey data?)

General observations:

• Most people think such a webzine should openly associate itself with furry fandom, or at least not shy away from the association. This was a 1-5 scale question, and while 3 and 4 tied, 4 was the median response.
• There's a bias toward paying contributors, although this response had the highest deviation. A third of the responses were neutral, with the balance slightly tilted toward payment.
• The definitive answer from "would you pay for access" is that nearly everyone hates the idea of micropayments. The other three answers -- traditional subscription, free current content but paid archives, and no payment for reading at all -- were equally split.
• Nearly everyone wants to see both fiction and non-fiction, with nearly as many people interested in artwork and reviews. Despite the conventional wisdom about online community, the ideas of forums, ratings, user-maintained lists were much less popular.
• A clear majority of people do like the conventional wisdom about the web freeing you from publishing schedules, and think a webzine should post stuff when it's ready on an ad hoc basis.
• The idea of being "canted" toward a genre was greeted with active antipathy -- nearly three-quarters disagreed with the idea, and only one person agreed with it.

I'll explain the last question a little. The last magazine that I attempted to do was a revival of Mythagoras, in its second incarnation billed as "New Tales and Animal Legends" -- I was specifically canting it toward a magic realism/urban fantasy feel, while remaining relatively furry. (We didn't want to advertise it as a "furry" magazine, however, feeling that furry fans would recognize it as such without the name, while people who might be put off by the word might pick up the magazine and realize they liked it.) I'm wondering if I should have chosen a word other than canted, or if in fact, what I was asking was perfectly clear and that people by and large just didn't think it was a good idea.

Despite the payment question, I'm not entirely sure that if I do such a thing I could pay contributors, so it's good that people are somewhat neutral on the idea! Seriously, if it happened and there was payment, it would be very small payment indeed, although I'm not sure exactly what that would be. I'm aware that there's something of a qualitative difference between paying markets and non-paying markets, even if the paying market is only paying you a token. Being a paying market may mean I'd be required to be a real company, though, which could be more of a headache than I'd want. (Or more accurately, when I go through that headache next, it's going to be for something I hope to actually generate a real profit.)

The next things in idly thinking about this project would be, then:

• Coming up with a name, which would manifestly not, repeat, not be any form of wordplay involving a variation on the word "fur."
• Finding software to run this.
• Coming up with the design.
• Quietly soliciting a first batch of original stories so it could be announced with content.
• Lying down until this stupid idea leaves my head.

Comments

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah; I often lie down when I feel the urge to write.

Still, if you want to do this, and you want to have something "from the author of Tails of the City" let me know, and I'll see if I can't come up with something.

*nods*

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

I should be in bed now too. I've been doing character studies and writing truly evil filk.

I can provide content; you know this (I can't even make an "Iron Author" story unreadable!). I can also provide layout and design assistance, which you may not know (or may not even need, but I figured I'd throw it out there).

I also think you're right on the mark. Mythagoras was my first exposure to the furry world, and my first realization that I had a furry side, and that I liked it. I didn't know it was furry until I picked it up, and when I read more, I didn't mind. Later, it was a selling point, but by then, even the second incarnation was gone. (I went overseas in 1991, and didn't return for a year--and then went back out for two years, and so on.)

As far as names, here are a few that occur to me:

Stories Innovated (it's a wordplay, true, but on "Illustrated." Bit of a stretch, but it's 3:30 a.m.)
Headspace (not sure if it's been taken)
The Multiversal Delta (slogan: where all of our streams of consciousness meet)
The Story Tree (Hey, it's not a play on "fur")

And now you've got the stupid idea stuck in my head. How fair is that? :)

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I think micropayments are the most hated method because there's still no effective system in place that can do them. Someday, someone may be able to apply the concept, but for now it's an idea that's dead in the water.

As for lying down until the idea leavs your head... It never works. =};-3

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Well, I specifically mentioned Bitpass (http://www.bitpass.com) because it's a system which actually does seem to be working -- it's essentially like a pre-paid card that you stuff money into and that works at any website that accepts it. It's become moderately popular among commercial web comics.

However, if I do this, the chances are pretty good that it's going to run based on donations, ad banners and/or "sponsorships" (like Kevin and Kell), with an option to go to a paid archive of some sort down the road.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

How about "New Legends" or "Future History"? It implies fantasy but nothing about furries. And our community is small enough that word will get around about furry content anyway.

Let me know if I can help.

[bfdragon.livejournal.com]

I think it is no surprise that there is a bias against the forms and rating and such are not terribly popular. We have that already, in fact, we have so many some of us can’t even really keep up with them. I think that what we sort of lack is edited content, not something that is just another amalgamation of people. Now, while I think it’d be nice to have a small forum with the editor, I think that much more is getting a bit away from that “single vision” idea.

[tikaani.livejournal.com]

> Lying down until this stupid idea leaves my head.

So that's what those holes are there for!

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

*general road-trip-exhausted token of interest*

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

You'd better lie down. ('gryn)

Here's a question: what would you want to accomplish by starting such a web-zine?

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Well, it connects back to something that I've observed in passing on more than one occasion over the past year -- basically, there's no website (at least that I'm aware of) that's made an effort to collect and promote higher-quality furry stories. If someone wants to see "good" furry art it's not too difficult to track down archives and galleries; if someone wants to see good furry *writing,* though, where do you send them?

Right now, the best answer I could possibly give would be to send them to Sofawolf -- and in fact I'd like to send as many people there as possible! -- but their stories aren't free and online. Miavir's story index is, well, an index, and it's not frequently updated. Yiffstar, well, we won't talk about that. Giza's archive is probably the best, but a random sampling suggests most of the stories there are from 1998 or earlier, too. (*My* stuff online at Belfry and my home page is ancient!) And, last and possibly least, I'll admit that the typographer in me cringes at the online presentation most fans use with their writing. I'm sure people aren't trying to make the stories ugly and painful to read, but they're frequently succeeding at doing so. I know furrydom has a disproportionate number of Old School geeks who think sticking to HTML 2.0 is a point of pride -- they're wrong. :)

So basically, I think there's a niche here that isn't being filled and should be -- an edited story magazine/archive that presents new works in an attractive way.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Admittedly it wouldn't be bad to have a nice high quality webzine to point to and say 'That's what anthro fandom is capable of doing', but the workload... Aiee.

You'd also either have to sell adspace, which is tough when the fanbase is small, or charge for admission, which is a big putoff when it's either a small quantity or unpredictable quality. Aiee.

If you're gonna do it, I suggest you do it in a laissez-faire 'see what happens' sort of way that doesn't require you to adhere to deadlines or pay anyone for anything short of the bandwidth to host it.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

I'm being extremely lassez-faire about it so far. :)

I'm pretty sure that if it happens, there won't be deadlines. I'm still batting around the idea of payment for contributors, but that's definitely in the 'easier said than done' category for a variety of reasons -- all of which you could immediately think of, I'm sure. :) At this point I haven't even thought about what hosting would be like, or at least, I haven't thought about it seriously.