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Acquisitions Update

I know what you’re probably thinking: Where has Cirsova been? Why haven’t they been updating?

Well, we’ve been too freaking busy buying stories, sending out letters, fulfilling subscriptions, etc. etc. to spend any time blogging about this or that little cool thing we’ve read, played, or been up to in general. Sorry!

We’re already blocking out issues 1 & 2 of Volume 2 for next year, plus we’re looking at doing a Summer Special, focusing on longer novelette and novella length works by a couple returning favorites as well as some newcomers.

We need to get a few checks in the mail for people who opted for paper-payment, but by next week, we’re hoping we should be able to officially announce our line-up.

We ended up buying 21 short stories, 6 novelettes, and a novella. Oof! More than we said we would, I know, but we’re crossing our fingers that the spring issue will bring in so many new readers and new revenue that we won’t regret splurging a bit for 2019.

In addition to all of this going on, we’re working on an anthology of weird stories by Misha Burnett and Louise Sorensen that should be published early next year. This isn’t the official announcement, just the tease. But it’s cool, I promise!

Finally, I’m freelancing on a new Clock book from Michael Reyes, which will reprint The Iynx from earlier this year along with an all new novella; it’s awesome and I can’t wait for you guys to see it!

So, that’s what I’m up to.

Yes, we’re still doing Stark, too, but since we’re not crowdfunding for it, there’s no real news on that until we get the last two covers in. Expect them out in late spring of 2019.

 

If Your Copy of Cirsova Arrives Damaged…

If your copy of Cirsova you received as a Kickstarter backer arrives damaged, please let us know! Amazon is really good about replacing damaged-in-transit Print-on-Demand items. Send us a picture of the damaged item, and we’ll let them know you need a replacement copy.

If you ordered a copy of Cirsova from Amazon yourself and the copy arrived damaged, contact Amazon about a replacement copy and send pictures. Again, they’ve always been good about replacing damaged-in-transit items at no charge.

Please do not leave a review that the items were damaged in transit; Amazon most likely does not see these and we only see them when we’re cruising to see who’s reviewed us on Amazon or if someone points it out to us. We want our readers to be happy, and reaching out to us or to Amazon is the best way to ensure that you get your damaged copy of Cirsova replaced with a pristine one. If Amazon is unable to satisfactorily replace your copy, we will personally do everything we can to ensure that you get a replacement.

Happy Thanksgiving + Acquisitions Update

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving Weekend!

Right now, I’m making final painful decisions on what stories to acquire for 2019’s line-up.

We’re getting into the part where I’m going to be crying over stories I have to say no to. There were so many great stories that you could probably put out at least three issues of Cirsova’s worth of good stories we had to turn away, if not more.

We’ll be getting offers out to authors next week; sorry that it’s taken this long.

As it is, 2019’s issues may be a bit thicker, because there’s a lot we really didn’t want to let go, so we’re stretching our budget as far as we reasonably can–in part because we’re banking on some especially cool news for our Spring issue, which we can’t tell you just yet.

Maybe before Christmas.

We’re aiming for a lot more “weird” next year, which I hope people will genuinely dig, but we’ve still got our share of Raygun Romance and Sword & Sorcery.

In the meantime, please do what you can to support us by buying Cirsova Merchandise and back issues! Every dollar we make right now goes back into paying contributors and making Cirsova the best SFF magazine out there today!

All Copies of Issue 10 Have Gone To Fulfillment!

Issue 10 is out the door.

It’s available on Amazon now!

Some of the changes which Amazon has implemented reassure us in our decision that using a subscriber method going forward is unfeasible unless better solutions can be found all around.

Beyond issues we have with the existing crowdfunding platforms available, the following KDP issues are unacceptable:

-It’s impossible to “hide” a book from Amazon until subscribers have been sent their copies. We pulled out all the stops to get all of the physical backers’ copies sent to fulfillment this morning and this afternoon, but it still meant that Issue 10 was up on Amazon for two days before any subscribers were sent their copies.

-Entering fulfillment info on Amazon now takes 3 times as long due to several additional steps per order not present in Createspace.

-Amazon cannot fulfill to Australia. We have several Australian subscribers and at least one regular Australian contributor, and Amazon’s KDP denies users the ability to fulfill to Australia. Our Australian subscribers are being taken care of, but this is a hurdle going forward if we wanted to use a subscriber/fulfillment model like we have been using.

In more pleasant news, we’re finally finished with our submission pile, so we’ll be buying stories for 2019 very soon!

We hope that you will stick around, follow us, and stay regular readers even if we don’t spend two months out of every year flogging crowdfunding pages!

Once we get a lineup for 2019, we’ll let you know here, and maybe we’ll figure out a mailing list or something.

Cirsova 10 [Digital] Going Out to Subscribers Today

If you are a subscriber, the link is on the latest Kickstarter post.

Hardcovers are entered into fulfillment and should all arrive before Christmas.

Softcovers generally arrive sooner, but…

…Due to how Amazon has changed their POD system, we can’t enter softcover fulfillment until the book is live on Amazon. Before, the books were on a secret hidden Createspace page, and we’d get them all mailed then flip a switch to make the books show up on Amazon. With Createspace gone, we can’t do that anymore.

So, Issue 10 will be available on Amazon before we’re able to mail them out to subscribers. We’re very sorry that this will be the case, and even though you’ll have saved a few bucks by backing via the Kickstarter, we know this can be annoying to some people. Regrettably, it’s out of our control.

We hope that you enjoy our exciting new issue and find it a thrilling close to the year.

We’ve already made some of the first acquisitions for 2019 and have many other pieces still under consideration. We guarantee that there’s some great stuff in store for you in the future!

Just another quick submissions update

• Total Subs: 156
  • Read: 136
    • Acquired or under consideration for acquisition: 36
    • No longer under consideration: 100
  • Unread: 20

Everything we’ve read, we’ve contacted people about.

If we haven’t contacted you, we probably haven’t read you.

It’s taking a little longer than we expected to get through our stack because in the last three days, we received about 40 more stories.

Even with all of the culling we’ve done, we’re still looking at just shy of 40 top-notch “maybes”, and it’s gonna be really tough on us.

We’ve got 20 stories left to read.

If we told you “Maybe” and you haven’t heard back from us again yet, your “Maybe” still stands–we’ll get back to you with our final decision as soon as we can.

We were hoping to be able to get all of our offers out before the end of the month, but early December is more likely with how things currently stand.

Due to some insurance related stuff, I’ve got a few big expenses which I will be reimbursed for but, until I’m reimbursed, I’m out of pocket and I want to make sure Issue 10 is out the door before I start cutting more checks.

Update on Amazon Issues!

While Amazon refused to act as an intermediary regarding Gifts Delight’s use of our name in a product listing, after reaching out directly to Gifts Delight, they promptly responded, confirming that the content was created by bots, and addressed the issue.

We would like to thank Gifts Delight for their quick and courteous resolution to this situation.

A Porn Company is Using Cirsova’s Name and Amazon Refuses to Act

A company that primarily sells posters of pornographic images and cars on Amazon is selling a poster of a Caspar David Fredriech painting that we posted once years ago and is using the name “Cirsova” in the listing.

Cirsova is a unique word that was not used for anything prior to the existence of this blog, the publishing company and the magazine it publishes.

Amazon’s IP protection department, however, refuses to act, claiming first that we failed to make proper “identification of the intellectual property right asserted” and later claiming that our rights were unenforceable.

All we want is the name “Cirsova” taken out of the product listing; the company can sell their posters and their porn–we just do not want our company and magazine’s name associated with them!

Issue 10 Update!

All of the files for issue 10 have been uploaded and are ready to go!

We’ll be fulfilling hardcovers very soon and making digital copies available to subscribers.

We’re crossing our fingers that the change to our fulfillment workflow won’t be too brutal now that Amazon has shut down Createspace. We’ll probably start fulfilling before Thanksgiving.

The last couple months have been a nightmare, between my car getting wrecked, being buried at work, getting more submissions than we could’ve imagined (not a bad thing in itself), and all sorts of other craziness. For instance, we’re trying to get Amazon to take down a listing by a screen-scraping bot that’s using our name to sell a poster of a painting we once blogged on an ‘art’ day. And markup text doesn’t work on Amazon descriptions anymore. Go figure.

We’re trying as hard as we can to put our submission period to bed. We’ve gotten to under 40 stories left to read and nearly 20 rejection letters to write (plus whatever gets cut from those unread stories). It’s exhausting! Not to mention emotionally draining.

If you want to help alleviate some of our stress and misery, you can do so at the cost of nothing more than a few moments of your time by leaving a review of an issue of Cirsova that you’ve read!

Or, if you want to drop a little coin on us, you can pre-order an eBook of Issue 10.Or, if you want to drop a little coin on us, you can pre-order an eBook of Issue 10.