AniaR
06-24-2013, 07:36 PM
I want to start this with a disclaimer, that this isn't directed at anyone on mernetwork. It's about Tail Flip, some frustrations Sirena and I have been dealing with, and I need to get it all out and get some advice from you all. I'm going to vent about some of the stuff we're dealing with, and preface it by saying it's none of you. So many of you have helped us out with Tail Flip. I am immensely thankful for that.
Okay, Let me start off by saying, Sirena and I literally put hundreds of hours into every issue of Tail Flip. We've been working long distance online, having never met each other in person, for almost 2 years now, and produced 5 issues with a 6th on the way. A HUGE Amount of work goes into each magazine, and we do it all for free on our own time.
Sirena handles the design and formatting, I handle the content and mostly tracking stuff and people down. I often end up writing a large amount of the articles, or paraphrasing mernetwork threads into articles. We both write and send out the interviews.
Tail Flip was started with a lot of community input. The name itself, was decided by the mernetwork community. We had a thread for suggestions, and then that thread was turned into a poll. Several of our featured articles, are decided by the community: The Featured Tail Maker, the Featured Mermaid. These articles are intended to provide information on who the community wants to know more about. In a way, they're a popularity contest- but that's sort of the point in that we wanted to feature WHO the community wanted to see.
With the other mermaid magazines and fantasy magazines, we discussed years ago on this forum when they launched, that we didn't feel they represented the whole community, but rather featured the same people and groups over and over again. The idea behind Tail Flip was that it would feature people and happenings the community wanted to know more about, and be a platform for the community to express itself.
We decided, we wanted to use a lot of content that we couldn't use if we were a printed magazine, that, plus the environment in mind, made us decide to go digital and free. This allows us to link and use content all over the web royalty free so long as we do not make a profit. It also means everyone anywhere could access this platform of the community and utilize it. And, allows for international collaboration!
We have people volunteer to help, but the best way we can get help is to have people write and submit content- so we don't have to do it all. Sirena uses her awesome professional skills to make the thing look great and be perfectly formatted, and I tie it all together with the narratives. In theory, the rest is supposed to be done by the community.
The problem?
People aren't interested in our dreams for tail flip. They aren't interested in helping the community. They aren't interested in writing interesting articles. All they want is for us to post their photo and a write up about them, even if it has nothing to do with anything. Well, that's what facebook is for. And honestly, we think Carolyn does a kick ass job of featuring mermaid personas on her blog. But for every article you see published in tail flip, there's at least 10 "Here's my article. It's a write up about me, and here's my photo" articles. Honestly, do you WANT to read a magazine that is nothing but other mermaids only talking about themselves? On every page? Sometimes I feel like we're pushing it with the number of interviews we cram in each time! We work really hard to make sure the content isn't repetitive, redundant, and that it's related to the mer-community. We didnt create a magazine that reads like a mermaid dating site, you know? But that's pretty much all we get.
90% of our emails, contain either that, or cover photo submissions. I'd say 75% of the cover photo submissions don't even meet our guidelines. Our guidelines arent much, but they're there to save us a bit of time. The same problem happens when people simply do up an article and don't even check the guidelines. We end up taking something that should = about 10 seconds, "thanks for your article, we'll publish it" and turn it into multiple emails over the course of months to try and make it work for the magazine.
Sirena and I rarely say no to things either. Because, we figure, this is the COMMUNITY magazine. We try to be neutral and feature people and things even if we don't like them or personally agree with them, because we want the magazine to represent the community, not just Sirena and Raina.
You know how much junk mail I get with my mermaiding business? The same things happen with Tail Flip. Most of the emails take forever to sort through, before we find the serious people.
And honestly, so many people come off demanding, and selfish. Many of them haven't even read an issue of Tail Flip.
I guess, we're both sort of feeling, why the hell are we doing this? It takes us months to put an issue together. We never publish on time because even though we do end up with some great people writing articles or being interviewed- we never get them all in on time. We have SO MANY PEOPLE commit, and drop out. Most have legit reasons for dropping out- and we get it, life happens, but a large amount just stop responding to us. Then sometimes down the road, get upset when we didn't publish them way back when.
We make all our stuff super accessible. All the info is on FB, it's on the threads here, heck I even made a video that spelled it out. We both advocate for it on our personal and mermaid FB pages too. But so many people are lazy, ignore everything, and jump right to "put me in your magazine please!" (actually, most times there isn't even a please)
I am ridiculously proud of every issue we've put out. Even when people criticize it and go on and on about how it should be better. We learn every time we publish. We get better each time, and we become more efficient. But Tail Flip is a HUGE chore for both of us. You should see the two of us, texting each other all the time with article ideas, content ideas. I've tracked people down you'd be so psyched to read about! I have to-do-lists all over my house, agenda, and computer that are all tail flip related. Despite asking people to only email the tail flip email account, we're both organizing and forwarding emails from our personal emails, pages, and the FB page. People wine about it not being printed (first, we'd need to spent mega money to do that, would only be able to do 1/3 of what we do, and you wouldn't spend the $$ to buy it and ship it!) and yet havent even read the darn thing.
I think what it comes down to, is that we're both feeling pretty used and taken advantage of, and realllly unappreciated by some of the people we encounter. I don't need an "aww poor Raina, there there" I just need people to STEP up if they want to see this magazine CONTINUE. I am WILLING to put in the time and hours if I know the community will benefit from it, and if it means we might open the doors for some of you. But Sirena and I simply can't do it alone. Well wishes and offers to help are all well and good, but what we really need are people who are also community minded and motivated by the idea of helping others, not so much focusing on propelling their own fame. We ALWAYS Make sure people who submit for us, are well advertised and credited. Obviously, we don't pay people, so that's how we thank them for contributing. Everything gets hyperlinked. You write an article on a sea horse and we pimp your mermaid page in both the magazine and on FB. It's not like we're asking people to anonymously submit something and no one cares who you are. We're happy to help feature people and their talents. We try to curb people to get them to write about something they do instead of "I'm a mermaid!", in the past you've seen underwater modelling and photography articles, beach cleanup articles, tail making articles, charities and event articles.
Just take a peek at what Tail Flip has done so far, and you'll know there's so much more we can do!
At the end of the day, Tail Flip makes me happy. I feel like I am teaching others, and helping them in the mer-world. But it also sucks away precious time, energy, resources, and causes a lot of stress. I was hoping after almost 2 years of work, this thing would be carrying itself. But I find Sirena and I having to climb the whole way.
Our current Issue, #6, is so bare bones. We have two submitted articles, and one of them was one we accidentally missed publishing last time. We have a poem, we have a few pieces of art, a few adds and event listings, and then we have all the articles I've written by myself and assembled. We have more cover photo submissions than we know what to do with, so I am putting together a photo spread since most of them don't meet the criteria we asked for. (btw, I get routinely harassed by cover models on a daily basis demanding to know if they've been chosen or checking to make sure that yes, I really did get their entry)
If you want to be involved with this issue, it is obviously not going to publish on time (which would be Monday) cuz we have nothing really to publish (no offence to the few of you on here who submitted content, it's great, just not enough to publish a whole issue). Here's the things I would like:
-More Articles on a variety of topics, so long as they relate to the merworld, are not interviews (since we have enough of those), haven't already been done in previous issues, and follow our submissions guide.
-Photos from the Coney Island Mermaid Parade and Meetup- we'd love an article on this too!
-If we sent you an interview and you still want it published, (I get if you're too busy this time around) please reply. We haven't even received our featured mermaid interview yet, though we got 5 photo submissions for the cover from her -_-
-ads
-book, tv or movie review related to mermaids
-tutorials on anything related to the mer-world and professional mermaiding
-photos from any meetups we can feature
-event listings if you want them in here and they haven't already been put in
HERE'S HOW TO SUBMIT CONTENT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ IT BEFORE YOU EMAIL US: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tail-flip-magazine/how-to-submit-content-ads-articles-events-photos/183739215088941
Here's a video I did before Issue #5 that tells you all the stuff you can do to be involved
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152658764315425&set=vb.183696595093203&type=3
(if video doesnt show up: click here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152658764315425&set=vb.183696595093203&type=3 )
I really really don't want to retire Tail Flip. But if Sirena and I don't get more community minded people, like the people who have been involved in the past, we're going to have to. We just can't do the whole thing, and it was never meant to be Raina's magazine of mostly articles she's written!
Okay, Let me start off by saying, Sirena and I literally put hundreds of hours into every issue of Tail Flip. We've been working long distance online, having never met each other in person, for almost 2 years now, and produced 5 issues with a 6th on the way. A HUGE Amount of work goes into each magazine, and we do it all for free on our own time.
Sirena handles the design and formatting, I handle the content and mostly tracking stuff and people down. I often end up writing a large amount of the articles, or paraphrasing mernetwork threads into articles. We both write and send out the interviews.
Tail Flip was started with a lot of community input. The name itself, was decided by the mernetwork community. We had a thread for suggestions, and then that thread was turned into a poll. Several of our featured articles, are decided by the community: The Featured Tail Maker, the Featured Mermaid. These articles are intended to provide information on who the community wants to know more about. In a way, they're a popularity contest- but that's sort of the point in that we wanted to feature WHO the community wanted to see.
With the other mermaid magazines and fantasy magazines, we discussed years ago on this forum when they launched, that we didn't feel they represented the whole community, but rather featured the same people and groups over and over again. The idea behind Tail Flip was that it would feature people and happenings the community wanted to know more about, and be a platform for the community to express itself.
We decided, we wanted to use a lot of content that we couldn't use if we were a printed magazine, that, plus the environment in mind, made us decide to go digital and free. This allows us to link and use content all over the web royalty free so long as we do not make a profit. It also means everyone anywhere could access this platform of the community and utilize it. And, allows for international collaboration!
We have people volunteer to help, but the best way we can get help is to have people write and submit content- so we don't have to do it all. Sirena uses her awesome professional skills to make the thing look great and be perfectly formatted, and I tie it all together with the narratives. In theory, the rest is supposed to be done by the community.
The problem?
People aren't interested in our dreams for tail flip. They aren't interested in helping the community. They aren't interested in writing interesting articles. All they want is for us to post their photo and a write up about them, even if it has nothing to do with anything. Well, that's what facebook is for. And honestly, we think Carolyn does a kick ass job of featuring mermaid personas on her blog. But for every article you see published in tail flip, there's at least 10 "Here's my article. It's a write up about me, and here's my photo" articles. Honestly, do you WANT to read a magazine that is nothing but other mermaids only talking about themselves? On every page? Sometimes I feel like we're pushing it with the number of interviews we cram in each time! We work really hard to make sure the content isn't repetitive, redundant, and that it's related to the mer-community. We didnt create a magazine that reads like a mermaid dating site, you know? But that's pretty much all we get.
90% of our emails, contain either that, or cover photo submissions. I'd say 75% of the cover photo submissions don't even meet our guidelines. Our guidelines arent much, but they're there to save us a bit of time. The same problem happens when people simply do up an article and don't even check the guidelines. We end up taking something that should = about 10 seconds, "thanks for your article, we'll publish it" and turn it into multiple emails over the course of months to try and make it work for the magazine.
Sirena and I rarely say no to things either. Because, we figure, this is the COMMUNITY magazine. We try to be neutral and feature people and things even if we don't like them or personally agree with them, because we want the magazine to represent the community, not just Sirena and Raina.
You know how much junk mail I get with my mermaiding business? The same things happen with Tail Flip. Most of the emails take forever to sort through, before we find the serious people.
And honestly, so many people come off demanding, and selfish. Many of them haven't even read an issue of Tail Flip.
I guess, we're both sort of feeling, why the hell are we doing this? It takes us months to put an issue together. We never publish on time because even though we do end up with some great people writing articles or being interviewed- we never get them all in on time. We have SO MANY PEOPLE commit, and drop out. Most have legit reasons for dropping out- and we get it, life happens, but a large amount just stop responding to us. Then sometimes down the road, get upset when we didn't publish them way back when.
We make all our stuff super accessible. All the info is on FB, it's on the threads here, heck I even made a video that spelled it out. We both advocate for it on our personal and mermaid FB pages too. But so many people are lazy, ignore everything, and jump right to "put me in your magazine please!" (actually, most times there isn't even a please)
I am ridiculously proud of every issue we've put out. Even when people criticize it and go on and on about how it should be better. We learn every time we publish. We get better each time, and we become more efficient. But Tail Flip is a HUGE chore for both of us. You should see the two of us, texting each other all the time with article ideas, content ideas. I've tracked people down you'd be so psyched to read about! I have to-do-lists all over my house, agenda, and computer that are all tail flip related. Despite asking people to only email the tail flip email account, we're both organizing and forwarding emails from our personal emails, pages, and the FB page. People wine about it not being printed (first, we'd need to spent mega money to do that, would only be able to do 1/3 of what we do, and you wouldn't spend the $$ to buy it and ship it!) and yet havent even read the darn thing.
I think what it comes down to, is that we're both feeling pretty used and taken advantage of, and realllly unappreciated by some of the people we encounter. I don't need an "aww poor Raina, there there" I just need people to STEP up if they want to see this magazine CONTINUE. I am WILLING to put in the time and hours if I know the community will benefit from it, and if it means we might open the doors for some of you. But Sirena and I simply can't do it alone. Well wishes and offers to help are all well and good, but what we really need are people who are also community minded and motivated by the idea of helping others, not so much focusing on propelling their own fame. We ALWAYS Make sure people who submit for us, are well advertised and credited. Obviously, we don't pay people, so that's how we thank them for contributing. Everything gets hyperlinked. You write an article on a sea horse and we pimp your mermaid page in both the magazine and on FB. It's not like we're asking people to anonymously submit something and no one cares who you are. We're happy to help feature people and their talents. We try to curb people to get them to write about something they do instead of "I'm a mermaid!", in the past you've seen underwater modelling and photography articles, beach cleanup articles, tail making articles, charities and event articles.
Just take a peek at what Tail Flip has done so far, and you'll know there's so much more we can do!
At the end of the day, Tail Flip makes me happy. I feel like I am teaching others, and helping them in the mer-world. But it also sucks away precious time, energy, resources, and causes a lot of stress. I was hoping after almost 2 years of work, this thing would be carrying itself. But I find Sirena and I having to climb the whole way.
Our current Issue, #6, is so bare bones. We have two submitted articles, and one of them was one we accidentally missed publishing last time. We have a poem, we have a few pieces of art, a few adds and event listings, and then we have all the articles I've written by myself and assembled. We have more cover photo submissions than we know what to do with, so I am putting together a photo spread since most of them don't meet the criteria we asked for. (btw, I get routinely harassed by cover models on a daily basis demanding to know if they've been chosen or checking to make sure that yes, I really did get their entry)
If you want to be involved with this issue, it is obviously not going to publish on time (which would be Monday) cuz we have nothing really to publish (no offence to the few of you on here who submitted content, it's great, just not enough to publish a whole issue). Here's the things I would like:
-More Articles on a variety of topics, so long as they relate to the merworld, are not interviews (since we have enough of those), haven't already been done in previous issues, and follow our submissions guide.
-Photos from the Coney Island Mermaid Parade and Meetup- we'd love an article on this too!
-If we sent you an interview and you still want it published, (I get if you're too busy this time around) please reply. We haven't even received our featured mermaid interview yet, though we got 5 photo submissions for the cover from her -_-
-ads
-book, tv or movie review related to mermaids
-tutorials on anything related to the mer-world and professional mermaiding
-photos from any meetups we can feature
-event listings if you want them in here and they haven't already been put in
HERE'S HOW TO SUBMIT CONTENT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ IT BEFORE YOU EMAIL US: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tail-flip-magazine/how-to-submit-content-ads-articles-events-photos/183739215088941
Here's a video I did before Issue #5 that tells you all the stuff you can do to be involved
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152658764315425&set=vb.183696595093203&type=3
(if video doesnt show up: click here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152658764315425&set=vb.183696595093203&type=3 )
I really really don't want to retire Tail Flip. But if Sirena and I don't get more community minded people, like the people who have been involved in the past, we're going to have to. We just can't do the whole thing, and it was never meant to be Raina's magazine of mostly articles she's written!