Been gone for a year - what's new?

[Moritz]

So after becoming a father for the first time back before the years of the plague (i.e. 2019) I stopped listening to the escape artists' podcasts for a while and didn't visit this place, either.
I've now listened to all of 2019 and started with the 2020 episodes. And I have sooo many questions:

- what happened to Artemis Rising?
- there was this issue in Pseudopod that they switched to many public domain stories in late 2019/early 2020 because of financial issues. has this been sorted out? It looks like the podcasts still exist and do have new episodes...
- is it OK if I post comments to episodes after more than a year or would this mess up this... not that much active forum?

[Languorous Lass]

Hi Moritz!  Congratulations on fatherhood, and welcome back!

I’m very new to the EA team, so I can’t speak to several of your questions.  I can say, as the new Cast of Wonders Community Manager, that we heartily welcome comments to any and all episodes, no matter how old.  In fact, we’re just catching up on posting CoW episodes in our section of the forum, so your thoughts about a particular episode may be right on time. 

I would love to see the EA forums become more active again.  I know that we have many smart and thoughtful members—they come out of the woodwork when we have flash fiction contests.  The discussions then are lively and engaging.  If you have any thoughts about how we can prompt the same types of discussions during the rest of the year, we would love to hear them.

Again, welcome back!

[divs]

Welcome back, and congrats on becoming a parent!

Regarding Artemis Rising, we decided after 5 years of the event to pause and consider whether we should continue or whether our attentions are better spent highlighting other types of stories and authors. For example, Escape Pod is going to do a Black Future Month special event this October.

In terms of budgeting, we're still operating under some constraints, but we've been able to weather the change to paying authors an additional 25% per story in order to maintain professional industry standards (as set by SFWA). We're super happy to say that we also have the funds to start paying our associate editors this year. That said, each of the podcasts is dealing with their story budgets in different ways. PseudoPod likes to draw on public domain stories, and I think they're continuing to do that in part because of the wealth of good stuff they're finding in that sphere. (tl;dr: our financial health is good thanks to the continuing generous support of our audience!)

[Marlboro]

Why don't more people post comments? It seems like there used to be a bunch  of regulars but they all seem to have disappeared.

[Languorous Lass]

Why don't more people post comments? It seems like there used to be a bunch  of regulars but they all seem to have disappeared.

I don’t have any idea, Marlboro.  Do you have any theories? 

[Marlboro]

I'm not sure. I think fewer people post comments on forums in general these days. Maybe they have moved to other social media platforms.  With the huge catalog of stories already posted here combined with fresh content added multiple times per week, you would think there would be at least a few semi-regulars hanging around.

I used to belong to a movie tracker that had a thriving forum which slowly but inexorably died out. At the time I thought that some of the blame lay with the Mods in the sense that they could have done more to encourage participation. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe it's just inevitable.

[Ocicat]

Ya, I think mostly how people use the internet has changed. And once you don't get new people coming in, your numbers start going down, and that means less conversations and eventually you loose critical mass...

[Languorous Lass]

Lots of people do come to the forums when we're having a flash contest.  Maybe we should try to recruit them to stick around after the contests are over.

[Moritz]

Thank you all for your answers!

Welcome back, and congrats on becoming a parent!

Regarding Artemis Rising, we decided after 5 years of the event to pause and consider whether we should continue or whether our attentions are better spent highlighting other types of stories and authors. For example, Escape Pod is going to do a Black Future Month special event this October.

In terms of budgeting, we're still operating under some constraints, but we've been able to weather the change to paying authors an additional 25% per story in order to maintain professional industry standards (as set by SFWA). We're super happy to say that we also have the funds to start paying our associate editors this year. That said, each of the podcasts is dealing with their story budgets in different ways. PseudoPod likes to draw on public domain stories, and I think they're continuing to do that in part because of the wealth of good stuff they're finding in that sphere. (tl;dr: our financial health is good thanks to the continuing generous support of our audience!)

OK, a Black Future Month sounds amazing. I've been to an exhibition on Afrofuturism back in 2018 I think and it was awesome, but I have an absolute lack of reading more work by black and PoC authors. Just recently discovered Sofia Samatar for Fantasy - and hey, she's in a 2020 Podcastle episode!

Good to hear about the finances. I've been a monthly* donor since 2012 and I was glad to hear that escape artists was matching the SFWA rates, just a bit worried about the stuff Alasdair said in late 2019.

* @ autocorrect: not "mostly" !!!

[Languorous Lass]

And Cast of Wonders has a selection of staff picks from 2020 coming up!  Not sure of the exact date, but it’s on the way. 

[Fenrix]

PseudoPod has done a Public Domain showcase for the last two Januarys because the Public Domain Clock is finally moving again after a 20-year snooze. On January 1,  a new year's worth of stories hits the public domain, and there's some gems that had been "behind the paywall' for so long that they had been forgotten (e.g. Margery Lawrence.) If they weren't forgotten, the estates were frequently a challenge to coordinate with. Either way, it provides us an opportunity to discuss the public domain and rediscover some stories with our audience.

[Moritz]

Hey, I've now listened up to August 2020!
Great stuff there, last year really had some good episodes.

Now, I just went to iTunes to give some ratings and was confused... Podcastle only had two, and one is from me from 2013?! I thought this site was more popular.

[Ocicat]

Podcastle has over 400 ratings on iTunes. Though there is more than one podcast on there with the same name...