When I began this journal, my intention was to publish 15-20 individual works in each issue. But the average has been between 20 and 25. This number put a minor strain on my budget, which I could live with. But the work load has been taking a toll. The September issue was particularly hard. By a nasty coincidence, my day job work load increased unexpectedly, and at the same time some old family drama was stirred up in my life. My CPTSD was triggered and I was an emotional wreck for a couple of weeks, but I got through it and things are calming down. I'm thrilled with the content in Issue 7, and I'm excited to begin reading for #8. But I took the hint and am implementing a couple of changes effective immediately.
The biggest change is that I am going to limit the number of pieces accepted for each issue to 15. The bad news is a slight decrease in our acceptance rate. The good news is that I can afford to raise our pay rate to $15 per work. I can also minimize the impact of a lower acceptance rate by only accepting one work per contributor (most issues have included multiple works from single contributors).
The stressors that popped into my life in September are not likely to occur again. In addition to extra work, I experienced three different relationship conflicts that were triggering. I haven't experienced that level of trauma in years but it's all past, and some old wounds are finally being healed. But it still seems right to lessen my journal work load just in case.
The other change with Issue 8 is that we are now accepting any kind of photography, not just black and white. While we never explicitly required photography to be analog (film), it was somewhat implied with the constraint of only accepting b&w. So we've updated our submission guidelines to be clear that we accept any kind of photography, digital or analog, b&w or color.
We don't get a lot of photography submissions, but I'm going to keep trying. I'll say more about that in a subsequent announcement that will talk about changes in our social media usage.
The theme and prompt for Issue 9 in January will be posted to the website this week. I'm still a few days behind schedule for some things.
Thnk you for your continuing attention and interest,
Eric