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#103 - Data Scientist Starts Science Fiction Magazine

2017-04-13

A Colorado scientist publishes a science fiction magazine and builds it to a sustainable income of $1,800/month, funded largely by his readers.

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Many other and welcome back I'm critical about the societal school. I know listening to pipe gasped, or at least this one I also like to read out the reader as a kid books along a video games, were some of my closest friends, and to this day I still try to read one book a week. I mostly related fiction myself: I just finished reading the New York trilogy by Paul Oscar, I'm in the middle of the animators by Taylor, Re Whittaker Asunder, Also region reflection, which is known as popular fiction, tends to be divided into categories. Mystery, fantasy romance science fiction. I just tried to read widely so I'm not really a huge on reflection reader, but some people are very passionate about their field of interest when it comes to these rose, so if you're a romance novelist reader, you don't just it one romance novel, deeper, read a lot. You probably have several
right. Authors, those authors probably right series, or at least multiple bucks with different stories. Save for the other genres and wherever people are abbot, consumers or fans of something there's an opportunity to create products and services for them. So today, story is about a colorado. Scientist who starts at by monthly Science fiction magazine and does it to a sustainable income source of about eighteen hundred dollars a month, funded largely by his readers. Tell you all about it right after this, in beautiful bolder Colorado, there are three hundred days of sons every year the just accept many of them from his desk. He works as a scientist verse offer a company is experiences, led him to an appreciation for the kind of science fiction. It is on
believable canning industry. This is called hard. Science fiction features an attempt by the rider to be credible and rigorous in the use of scientific knowledge more about current technology, less about alien visitation one day, Joe, had the idea to create an online magazine devoted to supporting the cat in writing. He enjoyed. He decided. He do it for three issues and then evaluate if it was working for him great. If not well, it had been an experiment, then Three was important because Joe knew that he couldn't judge success by the first issue alone. Inevitably, he'd make mistakes that he could correct for the second one it still wasn't working after issue number three. He knew would be a long road ahead, so he'd be better off trying something else to get started.
He created a landing page inviting people to participate either as readers or writers, even posted, that linked to hacker news. A popular online publication in a number of prospect of authors signed up as well as a list of people who just want to subscribe, as he was preparing for his first issue Joe thought about how he distribute the stories he settled on a model of recruiting readers as supporters. Every story can be for free on his website, compelling science fiction, dot com or they can be purchased at a low price for reading on Kendall. He also started a patriotic account at Patria dot com. This is a service that allows artists and creators of all kinds to receive regular financial support from the people who appreciate their work, it's kind of like a kickstarter, but not for one contributions for regular, usually monthly contributions, so people make pledges and their accounts or debited. Then the funds are transferred to the creator,
Joey, setting all that up. At the same time, he was reviewing submissions from writers. After listing is new project on a writers directory. He received more than two hundred stories. And he read every single one of them in search of the five stories that would be chosen for the first issue, and over time he learned that he could quickly tell us the story was worthy of publication in his new gesine, but for his first issue you wanted to be especially diligent. You discovered. It did indeed take a look the time to read all those stories. Still quality came first. He wanted to make something. He was really proud of. Joe published his first issue to his first I have some scribes and he found that he actually hunt made a lot of mistakes is biggest one was trying to carefully read each submission. Even that gave him some good information from moving forward. The launch was featured in hacker There again, which gave him a strong enough base to move forward the that go or no go zone of issued. Number three he's not published six issues, one every other month, unease
running just under two thousand dollars each time. This is a passion project, not something he needs to make money from, but the regular extra income is both helpful and motivating, not assign earns money. Three different ways. First of all, from that patron funding, which is the most important source- The he set up his campaign. You can pledge as little as three dollars and sixty cents per issue, and he has about two hundred subscribers who made that commitment. Some are paying more than three thousand sixty cents. That's just the minimum, and he also offers larger underwriting option of three hundred and sixty dollars were you can fully support one of the stories in a particular issue. Second issue is also available as a one off purchase on Amazon's Kindle platform.
That brings in around three dollars, or so a month from people who aren't subscribers and last he began offering sponsorships for companies and small businesses to support each issue. That's brought in another study source of income, nothing huge, but steady, inconsistent. Other marketing efforts have not been successful. He's tried Google Adwords in pockets interviews without seeing a ton of response, but he still experimenting was Gmos forward. He's playing to regroup in sea were also focuses efforts as he continues reading and creating his favorite science fiction stories for the magazine and its readers just like yesterday. This story is another example of someone King money, doing something they love and are not dependent on it, but they're having funding getting paid. Another commission patron before
They'll pay, eighty, our eco ban at your own dot com and, as I said it's like Kickstarter, but for a recurring, regular contributions. The platform is focused on artists, but they define artist quite broadly. So, if you're considering it funding campaign or you just an artist who, once more sustainable income, consider taking a look and, if you're in jewish and trying to decide what what's better Kickstarter patriotic ask yourself: are you making something once and then its dine like a product, or are you making something that will be published over and over or created hovering over like Joe Science Fiction magazine, which are making a product in its dine, Kickstarter INDIGO something that might be better, but if you're making regular work like the magazine, then Patria might be worth luck. This was episode number. One hundred and three, we are rolling along to find the show notes for today check out Jose site, read more about Patreon, just come to sallisaw school dot com, one hundred and three
Thank you for listening. More stories are on the way I'm critical about precisely school.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-07.