Prism

[Johnlprobert]

Interesting cover.

The Mudie one would have been a lot more festive!

[David A. Riley]

Especially if it had been in colour.

At least I managed to retain it. Neither Dark Horizons nor New Horizons have individual interior covers. It was for this reason it was decided, without my knowledge, to publish the Mudie picture without any lettering on it.

I must admit I do not like relinquishing doing the layout for Prism myself. There are numerous things in the new edition which I would have done totally differently, from the size and positioning of photos used in it, to the choice over single or double columns, and the font used for headings. I have already expressed my views strongly over this internally, though others involved in the Journal seem happy with how it's been done. I think I'm the only dissenting voice so far. ;D

There are some reviews in the new edition which will certainly raise a few eyebrows, not to mention hackles, which may prove interesting. But stuff like that's healthy now and again. Helps to keep the interest there.

David

[Craig Herbertson]

I don't like delegating things really either. Editorialship is a very intimate and personal thing.

[David A. Riley]

All that's left is being controversial. There are at least two reviews that will get some response, one being perhaps the longest review ever published in Prism - or, at least, for some time. This is of Chris Barker's collection from Ex-Occidente, Tenebrous Tales. It's a full reprint of Des Lewis's Real Time Review of it, which covers several pages. Some people are not going to like so much space being given over to a review of a book by someone as controversial as Chris Barker. On the other hand, it is perhaps one of the best collections of ghost stories published in recent years.

Another is a very negative review of a previous Fantasy Award winner's latest collection.

But controversy is something which would be good to stir up in a magazine like Prism. It might get some debates going. Things can get too quiet.

[dem]

Dec 2, 2010 13:06:48 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

I don't like delegating things really either. Editorialship is a very intimate and personal thing.

couldn't agree more with you on that, Craig. for me, it's what the editor brings to the party in terms of design as much as what he/ she sees fit to include that gives a publication its identity.

have now read much of the Prism content and speed-scanned the rest of the BFS Journal to get some idea of the look of the thing, and if you can suffer an outsider view then yes, it's very impressive, there's absolutely tons to read, it hasn't - as feared in some quarters - been swamped in advertisements for P.S. publishers, and i don't doubt the bulk of BFS members will be happy enough, though i certainly sympathise with Mr. Riley's concerns about the presentation. With the uniform look, if i didn't know better my first impression would be that the Journal was the work of one editor, not four (five if you include David J. Howe, who prepared the whole for publication). I appreciate that it's likely easier to distinguish between the three separate publications when you've a hard copy of the Journal before you, and of course, we shouldn't forget this is a debut issue, and a damn fine one at that. Being a confirmed fanzine head, my slight, purely selfish disappointment is that, having enjoyed the recent Prism's, i was looking forward to watching its progress, as, to my way of thinking, each issue of the magazine under DR's editorship was an improvement on its predecessor and with what would have been the fourth issue, he's cracked it. As Mr. Riley strongly hints above, the Warhammer-heavy reviews column reveals some festive surprises which may not be to certain individuals tastes, and i sure wouldn't like to be in one particular fellow's shoes just now! Not having read or seen a single one of the books, graphic novels, films and DVD's to come under consideration, i shall have to leave it to our more finger-on-the-pulse contributors to decide whether the respective critics have called it right or otherwise, but the efforts of Steve Dean, Mario Guslandi, Karen Stevens, D. F. Lewis, David A. Riley (on Johnny Mains's debut collection, In Deepest Sympathy), Jay Eales (who digs the dirt on a plethora of recently published graphic novels), Matthew F. Riley, Simon Taylor, Ian Redfern, Gary McMahon, Stephen Theaker and Selina Lock make for an engrossing and often enlightening read. Lord Probert contributes two items: The self-explanatory It Came To Dinner: R. Chetwynd-Hayes and the Pan Book Of Horror Stories, a fitting tribute to Britain's much-missed "Prince of chills", while his regular Profundo Probert film column sticks it up sequels in general, and the J-Lo bereft Cell 2 in particular ("a travesty of a move in every sense of the word": i suddenly have a disgusting urge to track down a copy!). Two interviews, one with Celtic historian and fantasy novelist Kari Sperring whose Living With Ghosts landed her the BFS's 2010 'Syd J. Bounds: Best Newcomer' award, the other with weird fiction author, friend of Richard Stains and notorious Vault henchman, Mark 'Pitbull' Samuels. We've David & Linden Riley's report on the Halifax Ghost Story Festival. Ramsey rants about "cautious packaging" from publishers who won't have it that horror and humour mix rather well thank you very much, and ruthlessly excise any reference to hilarity from a book or film's publicity quotes. Mark Morris's equally chatty column references the works of M. R. James and Ramsey Campbell, but mostly concerns itself with the weather, or rather, how "like a sturdy house, every good piece of fiction needs a solid foundation, and simply taking a moment to decide that the story you want to tell will take place on, say, a drizzly day in mid-April could be the first stone you lay toward establishing that."

A final plus to close on: i think i shall have to frame the photo of Black Book of Horror cover artist Paul 'Moody' Mudie with his inflatable spotty dog. And a final minus: surely Paul's illustration should also have been in colour?

[Craig Herbertson]

I think there are some combinations that work. A strong editor like say Campbell in the 50's in SF really gives everyone a kick up the butt. I'm sure there were good writers that maybe didn't get a look in because of his draconian tactics but the genre benefited because of his grand enthusiasm. It's quite good for an editor to have an assistant or two to assist with reading or sort of persuade him on things he might otherwise reject but generally one bloke is enough. It can even be an amateurish fan with no taste. A lot of the early small press was quite professional - Works by Hughes for example, always looked quite polished -but those mags that were amusingly badly done provided entertainment too. The worst scenario is a kind of committee where the mag takes on a kind of collage feel.

[dem]

Dec 4, 2010 9:06:29 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

It can even be an amateurish fan with no taste.

There's hope for me yet!

Craig, what i was trying to get at is this; if you lump three separate magazines together - as has happened here - and appoint just the one person to prepare the whole for publication, then you run the risk of the three publications losing their identity. it's my belief, rightly or wrongly, that it's the editor's quirks which give a magazine/ fanzine/ journal its soul as they are essentially, extensions of his or her personality (try and think Ghosts & Scholars without the name Rosemary Pardoe coming straight to mind). You risk losing this if the design is taken out of his or her hands. All he or she is doing is compiling copy for someone else to lay out as they see fit.

[David A. Riley]

I think you've hit the issue straight on the head, Dem.

Personally, I would much prefer to see each section of the Journal have a distinctive look, with its own typeface, headings, etc. It would also save time if each editor did their own layout. As it is, the deadline for me to get what I have off to David Howe is a month earlier than I used to send what I'd finished to the printer. After David gets it, that's when the layout has to be done - a much bigger job than any of the individual editors would have had to do since the new person has three periodicals to do at once, without really having much idea what's in it till they open up the files.

I think this is far too big a job to be done like this.

I think the journal would look better and more interesting if separated up, with their own individual internal covers. I notice this time that the editors for Dark Horizons and New Horizons didn't even bother to get covers done. That's why it was decided - without my knowledge - just to publish Paul Mudie's artwork without the Prism title or anything else written upon it. That takes away the very reason for having it.

I dislike the homogeneous look to the periodical. Really, as it stands, there's no reason for having Dark Horizons and New Horizons as separate entities. They might just as well be merged as Dark Horizons.

Whether this new experiment will ultimately succeed or not I don't know. It may save a few shekels, but at what a cost? Though I'm not sure whether it will save us money or not. That remains to be seen over the long term - as will whether whoever now does the layout will continue to do so - or want to!

David

[Craig Herbertson]

Dec 4, 2010 9:24:47 GMT dem said:

Dec 4, 2010 9:06:29 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

It can even be an amateurish fan with no taste.

There's hope for me yet!

Craig, what i was trying to get at is this; if you lump three separate magazines together - as has happened here - and appoint just the one person to prepare the whole for publication, then you run the risk of the three publications losing their identity. it's my belief, rightly or wrongly, that it's the editor's quirks which give a magazine/ fanzine/ journal its soul as they are essentially, extensions of his or her personality (try and think Ghosts & Scholars without the name Rosemary Pardoe coming straight to mind). You risk losing this if the design is taken out of his or her hands. All he or she is doing is compiling copy for someone else to lay out as they see fit.

Spot on Dem. I went on ramble mode but you are right. The 'editor's quirks' are as interesting as the novelists imagination. It's what actually makes you buy the thing in the first place.

[dem]

Dec 4, 2010 9:41:53 GMT David A. Riley said:

Personally, I would much prefer to see each section of the Journal have a distinctive look, with its own typeface, headings, etc. It would also save time if each editor did their own layout ..... I think the journal would look better and more interesting if separated up, with their own individual internal covers ....
David

Makes sense to me, but perhaps the BFS and/ or PS might find the end result too ramshackle for their tastes? but if they're going to persevere with three magazines under one roof, then yes, i think individual internal covers are a must. very well done to David J. Howe, by the way - i sure wouldn't fancy his workload! it will be interesting to see what kind of feedback the Journal gets from the membership who are, i guess, the ones that matter seeing as how they're paying for it

[peterkc]

Not really happy with discussing this outside the BFS forum, but... The colour cover of the BFS Journal #1 was intended to be the cover for a separate New Horizons -- so David is wrong about other editors not selecting one (and as he knows, including DH in the Journal meant that it was brought forward hence insufficent time for a separate cover for this secion). The illustration for Prism is great and would be a wonderful cover if in colour but it was in b&w and hence not suitable for the Journal as a whole. If it was available as colour why wasn't this sent to David Howe?

David is wrong about the design. It works well. The individual editors now have time to select and edit their sections and not worry about design -- and the overall appearance is one of uniform quality. A book with designs all over the place (different fonts, headings, margins, etc) would look amateurish. I do agree with him that the book reviews would probably work better in two columns rather than across the page.

And surely the identity of the sections comes through what the editors pick and include -- not how that section appears. Look at mainstream magazines: one, two or more editors but the publication is put together by a design team. It's time the BFS produced more books that match the quality of the Yearbook.

[Craig Herbertson]

I'm not a member so you can happily ignore me. Just a general feeling though that placing three or four things - purportedly separate entities - under one packaging is often a recipe for failure. It tends to suggest that ultimately you want one rather large magazine/book and the separate functions are going to fade like vestigial limbs. This kind of principle is that behind conglomerate supermarkets and shopping centers and has only really worked for me in 'compendium of games' where its handy to have a bunch of things to entertain the little ones at Xmas. I could easily be wrong about it though.

[David A. Riley]

Peter Coleborn asks why a colour copy of the Prism cover wasn't made available. One was. It was never asked for and the first I knew of the cover used was after the event. The b&w cover was originally intended for the previous version of Prism when it was published on its own. If anyone had made the possibility of it being used for the journal a colour copy was there. I doubt, though, whether this was ever even considered.

Peter Coleborn says I am wrong about the design. You may think so, Peter, I don't. In this, I believe you are wrong. I dislike the fonts used for the headings in particular. If anything looks amateurish, they do.

Furthermore, I don't believe it would have looked amateurish at all to have each section - DH, NH and Prism - individually laid out. Nor more so than having all three bundled together anyway. They would have looked instead like three individual publications bound together.

[rolnikov]

Long time lurker, first time poster...

Collecting the BFS publications together like this hasn't saved any "shekels". If you go and have a play with the print estimate tool on the Biddles website you'll see that this issue is probably going to cost four or five hundred pounds more than Prism and Dark Horizons combined.

Once you take into account the increased cost of posting it out, of sending out contributor and other freebie copies (because every contributor, interviewee, etc will now have to get the whole bundle, not just the publication they contributed to), it's going to be very expensive indeed.

On a simple level, each issue of "BFS Journal" (great title!) is expected by David Howe to cost about £8 per member - you can see that sending four of those out to people who have paid £30 for their membership doesn't add up. It certainly doesn't leave much money for anything else in the budget.

To pay for that the BFS has cancelled its budget for special publications for members and will increase membership fees by 33% over the next year. The awards budget is also being given a hard squeeze. The BFS will still lose a lot of money this year, but it has no money to lose, so there's been talk of siphoning funds from the FantasyCon account to pay for it all.

In the end, though, once we're over this hump and things settle down, £40 won't be an outrageous amount to pay for membership, even if you're only getting four publications. The price of a joint membership will actually be the same as before - £45 - so couples won't notice a change. Introduce a £20 ebook option and I think everyone will be happy.

[rolnikov]

Peter says "it's time the BFS produced more books that match the quality of the Yearbook". In which respect? That's the crucial question. Though the content of the Yearbook was generally praised, the book itself was criticised in nearly every review I read for sloppy proofreading and editing.

If you mean the quality of the printing, fair enough, but I'd say the BFS should only print books at that expense if it can afford them. The Yearbook left the BFS with huge bills to pay and very nearly forced the society to close last Christmas. Things were so bad we couldn't afford to send out our mailings.

Surely the part of the book that attracted the most praise was the content, the fiction from professional writers - which we paid for. If we were serious about replicating the success of the Yearbook, I would have thought the answer would be to spend the money (if we actually had it) on professional contributions, rather than putting my reviews (for example) in hard covers.

I'm certainly looking forward to reading my first issue of the journal (bit frustrated to see lots of other people reading pdfs when they haven't been offered to members), but the sooner it abandons the fiction that it's three publications rather than one, the better.

Peter's right that professional publications have section editors, but they also have an overall editor. Part of my reason for not wanting to work on BFS Journal was that I didn't want to end up in that role, nor did I want to end up with someone else in that role telling me what to do... But a ship does need a captain.