"Our last month’s „Competition Call for Illustrators“ caused a series of unpleasant comments as well as controversial discussions on some artists forums and polemic posts in weblogs. I’m confident this happened only because we couldn’t articulate clear enough the very nature of this book project. Sure enough the artists are irritated. That’s why I want to sum up all the important details once more in this post in order to set things right.
„spatien“ is a non-commercial magazine for prose and poetry for German readers, in existence since 2005. It is published online every six months.
Additionally the publishers design a printable version that can be downloaded for free at the same address. If readers prefer a printed paperback (real magazine style) they can order it via a book-on-demand service for the actual manufacturing cost. The low budget in money and higher budget in time comes from the publishers who are enthusiasts in literature but working in different regular full-time jobs. There is no money coming in. All authors contribute their texts knowing that „spatien“ cannot and does not pay royalties to them. They do so because they like the idea of this project or like being published in a suiting non-commercial publication that is available for free to any reader interested in it.
For the first time we are now planning to publish a book in a very similar way and on the very same restricted budget. This book will have an ISBN and shall be available via amazon and book stores. The selling price will be the manufacturing cost of the book plus the margin that amazon and booksellers claim for themselves. From our point of view this is still in the category of a non-commercial publication since we don’t earn anything and the book gets to the reader for the lowest possible price. This book will not be available online. We are planning to publish promotional abstracts of the essays but not the complete texts.
I really hope that this post could sort out the misinterpretations that caused the uncertainty and polemic responses."
Benjamin Stein
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This note was written in response to all the negative messages I received and to various discussions which were posted around the web.
I´m happy that not all people seem to see the contest in a negative context and I´m specially grateful to the participants of the contest. Thanks!
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