I’m an author and I want to be on your YouTube channel. What do I do?
The easiest and quickest way to get on YouTube is to review a book for us for one of our Free Friday posts. It’s super easy. Just email Maria Korolov at [email protected] and tell her that you want to be one of our reviewers, and she’ll add you to our list. Then, on Friday morning, she’ll email everyone with the titles and links to the top ten free books on Amazon’s sci-fi and fantasy page. Pick a book you like, let her know which one you’re going to do, then, over lunch, read the first couple of chapters. Write up a few paragraphs explaining what the book is about, what happens at the beginning, what the writing style is like, who you think would like the book, and whether you yourself plan to stick with it. Be honest, but fair! Since the book is on this list, plenty of people do like it, so what is it about the book that attracts them? Then email Maria with the review by 2 p.m. Eastern time. Your review will be added to the story — and you will get an invite to our 5:30 p.m. Zoom taping, where all the reviewers discuss the books they started reading. The video is posted immediately afterward, with no editing because of the time constraint — these books don’t stay free for long — and are shared with all our newsletter subscribers and social media followers. You can see all our Free Friday videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7LdNxnZtN4M5z5HerfNcfevRqDm10rlW.
If you have a new fantasy or sci-fi book coming out, you can also email Maria at [email protected] and ask about becoming a guest on our Long Lost Friends segment. Previous guests include Larry Niven and Mercedes Lackey!
Or maybe you have an idea for a new show segment that you’d like to host or co-host. That’s great! Email us and let us know, and send us links to your previous videos. You’re welcome to use MetaStellar’s channel as a way to test the waters, too, before starting your own channel.
I’m an author and want to be in your next anthology. What do I do?
There are two ways to get into our anthologies. One is to have an original piece of fiction accepted by our judges for publication. We pay 8 cents a word for short stories, but your piece has to be approved by every single judge. We normally get hundreds of submissions each cycle, and accept about a dozen. Since the criteria for acceptance are so hard, every single story is automatically included in the next anthology.
The other way is to have a reprint accepted by our reprints judge. We do not pay for reprints, but, as a result, we are able to accept a lot more stories. Our reprints editor looks for pieces that she believes that at least some of our readers will like. To quality as a reprint, a story has to have been published somewhere before. That could be another magazine, or a newsletter, or even your own website or social media page. However, not all reprints will be selected for our anthologies.
Why isn’t your anthology e-book available on Amazon?
The MetaStellar anthologies are available in all major online bookstores in both print and digital form. However, only the print version is available on Amazon. That’s because Amazon has limitations on publishing books from third-party distributors that include content available elsewhere on the Web. All the short stories in the anthology are also available on our website, for free. The anthology is there for people who like to read in paper form, or to own the ebooks for their convenience. However, you can get the e-book from Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Scribd, and other online retailers.
Do you have any openings for copyeditors?
Currently, all our editors, readers, and columnists are volunteers. All the money that we raise from our Patreon page and other sources goes toward paying for original fiction. However, we’re growing fast. Although we launched less than three years ago, MetaStellar is already the second-most-popular online magazine of fantasy and science fiction in the world. At some point, we may well have a budget for columnists, artists — and, yes — copyeditors. Until then, if you’d like to get involved, you can volunteer. We especially need people to help with fundraising and marketing, so that we can afford to do all the cool things we’d like to do next.