Announcement: Augur Magazine going Pro, Looking for Managing Editor

The title has given it away. So here’s the how, what, why of it all.

In our second year, Augur Magazine is a big team. Including editorial team, readers, social team, and illustrators, we’re just over 30. That’s a lot of growth in two years.

In that time, we have been flattered, astonished, and thrilled with the enthusiasm we’ve seen from our community for the work we produce. It is the absolute compliment.

But we’re an all volunteer team. Finding the time to grow more is hard. Looking into the future, as our management team grows their careers, we want to make sure that the timelines we set for ourselves are manageable.

So here’s announcement #1: Starting in January 2020, Augur Magazine will publish two issues per year.

This maybe sounds like our least exciting announcement. But here’s reassurance: despite going down to two issues, we will only lose 3-5 creator spots per year.

We will work hard to ensure that these issue are bigger, meatier, and don’t remove many opportunities to get published. A lot of markets have closed recently, so it’s important to us that we remove as few publication spots as possible.

And…over the next few years, we’ll work hard to build our revenue streams so we can bring those slots back in the near future.

Moreover, to make sure work is well distributed…

Announcement #2: Augur Magazine will be splitting its two leadership roles into three.

Currently our Publisher Kerrie Seljak-Byrne also acts as our Editor in Chief, managing submissions, editorial process, website, and editing pieces themselves. This is on top of business development, marketing, events, partnerships, and team development.

Our Managing Editor, Alex De Pompa, manages everything else: taxes, nonprofit requirements, all author payments, longlist responses, editorial work, and a number of nitty-gritty tasks that keep the gears moving.

In 2020, these two positions will be split into three: Publisher, Editor in Chief, and Managing Editor.

Kerrie will continue on as Publisher, editing solicitations and/or flash piece, but otherwise maintaining business development efforts, overall quality and creative direction, and marketing.

Alex will step into the role of Editor in Chief, continuing to act as tax/business requirement wizard (as a soon-to-be lawyer, we’re lucky to have him!), but otherwise managing the submissions and production processes.

We will be looking for, whether internally or externally, a Managing Editor to come on board to help us manage author relationships, read submissions, manage our website, and manage our subscriber base. We can’t wait to work with this person!

Especially because it’s going to be a big year for us. You see…

Announcement #3: Starting in January 2020, Augur Magazine will pay at a Pro rate.

That’s right. Read it again. Starting in January, we’re raising our rates.

We will be raising poetry rates from $40/poem to $60/poem.

Comics will raise from a max of $200 (4 pages) to $250 (5 pages).

Illustrations will raise from $100 to $125, and cover art will raise form $200 to $250.

Flash will be paid at $110/piece.

And, finally, short fiction will be paid at $0.11/word, up to $550 for a 5000 word piece.

How is this possible? It’s almost double what we’re currently paying!

This was the most important factor in us going down to two issues. By removing the third issue, it became financially viable for us to go pro, which is extremely important to us. Why?

Canada doesn’t currently have a pro-paying SFF market. And we want one. And we want to be one. We want to create more opportunities for Canadian and Indigenous creators—and creators around the world—to enter the pro rank and show off how AWESOME they are.

So, here we are. And we’re excited to be here. In February, we’ll be launching a kickstarter to ensure that we can continue to be here well into the future.

Because we love our work, and we can’t wait to keep doing it at this level.