Behind-the-scenes

Thank you to each of you for continuing your support through these months as Radon Journal continues to grow. This patron newsletter will not be formally structured, but contain the musings, thoughts, workings, and machinations from Radon editors that we do not share elsewhere. Call us a literary onion, as there are many layers working to make this enterprise succeed. And you are the most important ones.

Issue #2 Launch and Growth

Our efforts since May 15th culminated in launch of our second issue which contained nineteen writers and two artists. If you follow our social media accounts and saw our issue infographic, you may have seen that during the window for Issue #2, the submissions doubled and went well over a thousand. Through our CLMP membership we were able to put a call out for volunteers and found excellent additions to our humble anarchist science fiction journal. We have been able to handle the volume quite well the last few months. Though if we are again placed in the newsletter from AuthorsPublish again (directly reaching 300,000+ writers), we may be working overtime once more. Speaking of our team, we were unable to find a willing social media manager. One of our goals this fall is to refine our social media strategy and reach more eyes. As a group of predominantly communist and socialist editors, our first skill is not marketing and advertising. We are of course taking lessons and learning as we move forward (in true punk DIY fashion) to broaden our skills. Success stories such as AK Press and Clarkesworld show that a balance of both worlds is possible for a niche literary magazine.

The launch itself of our second issue was met with immense support and outflowing of love. From our website analytics, it has experienced a greater sustained readership than our first issue. We continue to receive nothing but love from writers and other journals and are happy to be serving our community.

Patron Funding

Speaking of serving the community, we are thrilled to officially be over halfway to our funding goal. We remain committed to doubling our author payments should we reach the full milestone.

Currently, no Patron supporters have contributed to the graffiti wall perk: magma.com/d/Zixm25OGqV

Unless you communicate to us that you would like to see it remain, we are heavily considering removing this perk and replacing it with another. Our journal is currently paying $10/month for this collaborative art image. In its stead we are considering replacing both our graffiti wall and Wix submission system (together totaling $20/month) with a move to the Submittable submission system. Through our CLMP membership it will be only $30/month and offer a great deal of additional options to our authors, not to mention an increase in visibility. Should we decide to run contests in the future, this will allow the infrastructure to do so.

In place of the graffiti wall we are considering adding a new feature: Author Interviews. Essentially, we will offer interviews of the authors from our issues to our audience. This new feature would be available exclusively to Patron supporters for a set number of weeks (likely 1-2) before being available to the general public. Besides the lack of graffiti wall use, we have been looking for a way to offer more ‘reader-oriented’ Patreon perks to compliment our existing ‘author-oriented’ services. These author perks do not seem to be as popular as we expected. We could offer a ‘tip-jar’ feature for editorial services at submission but are hesitant to go this route as we do not feel it to be a very ‘anarchist-y’ item to launch. We are in the unique position, given the nature of our journal, of walking a fine line between ensuring support for the journal and making sure we do not fall to capitalist demands.

Future Goals

If you are privy to the sci-fi publishing world you no doubt heard that the Clarkesworld founder won the Hugo Award for ‘Best Editor (Short Form)’ and the award for ‘Best Semiprozine’ went to our friends at Uncanny Magazine. Truth be told, these are the long-term goals of Radon editors. We wish to be a professional resource and champion of writers and readers for decades to come. Many literary journals come and go, but we are confident that our editors’ expertise in the industry will ensure we stick around. We will see, however, if Radon being also an anarchist journal causes any pushback from the science fiction establishment.

Where We Are

We are not firmly into reading for issue #3 launching in January. Our editors may take their first respite this year for one week at the beginning of October. But our response time will still remain the same for all authors. We are also continually tweaking the website and looking for upgrades. We will keep you up to date as everything happens. For now we have other Advance Reading Copies from publishers to read and review, submissions to sort and read, website pages to build, and a growing journal with a bright future ahead.