Possible Rejection Letter and Notes

You're right, Aaron. Doug shouldn't be the only one burdened with responsibility. I have left a few comments on the blog volunteering to generate content (my specialty) for the new site so we can get that rolling ASAP.

I also generated a potential rejection letter. It's rough and without much personality, but check it out:

Dear contributor,

Thank you for your submission(s) to Nexus. We have decided not to publish your work at this time. In its new format, Nexus is a highly competitive publication and we receive far more submissions than could ever see print. Please feel free to contribute to Nexus in the future. We are always on the lookout for new work.

All the best,

Aaron Larson, Editor

(or The Nexus Editors)

I was going to stuff some SASEs with the new letter talking about online contributions, but I wasn't sure if I should be doing that with things currently separated in piles. Let me know if we want to just send out the SASEs for everything, or if we're going to give the stuff that's already been mailed a chance.

If there's anything else I can do, let me know.

Webspace and a hastily put together to-do list

I just filled out and submitted a Fund Request Form for $71.40. This is to pay for 12 months of web hosting to JustHost.com. They have a lot of great sounding features, were ranked number one on BestHosts2008.com and generally sound like a good idea. It gives us free space and transfer, a free domain name, and a free e-mail client. When I tried to leave the register page, it offered me a 20% discount, so I should be able to knock the actual price down to 50-odd dollars. The domain will be www.wsunexus.com.

Anyway, I should know soon if the funds have been approved and then we'll be able to get this train moving. This sexy, sexy train.

This also means that there's no more time to put things off. I'm going to get PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, and a FTP client this weekend and hopefully put them on the computer in the Nexus office. Doug shouldn't be the one burdened with responsability. We still need a contract, to be on duotrope.com and various other like-minded sites, to be in the short story/poem market books, and to tweek the website so that it'll be a good virtual representation of the journal. So there's all that. Totally within our grasp.

Prototype SASE letter

This is what I've been working on for the last song and a half. I tried to keep it short, informative, apologetic, and have a bit of personality (which is what the Nexus should have and I think we're well on our way to achieving that). If you have suggestions, let me know.

Thank you for your submission, but we are no longer accepting print submissions. Please feel free to e-mail your piece(s) to wsunexus.submissions@gmail.com. Do not send attachments; Paste your work in the body of the e-mail.

The Nexus is going through a period of transformation and shall soon emerge from its cocoon as a much better journal. Until that time, things are going to be messy. Please excuse our temporary disorder and be on the lookout for the new and improved Nexus.

Thank your for your patience,
Aaron Larson
Editor of WSU Nexus

Please be critical of this. It'll be what everyone who has submitted will see, and I want it to be as close to perfect as we can get it. In the meantime, I'm going to start working on the rejection letter.

Orgsync

Orgsync

This is important. It's what WSU is using to track its organizations and members, so it's important that you are on here. Register. Find WSU. Find Nexus. Join Nexus. I'll take it from there.

It is not a hard process. It takes 10 minutes. Ten if you are very slow.

Gmail Usage

This is how to use the submissions Gmail account. I spent a little bit of time trying to think of the most effective and least confusing way to go through the list of submissions. This is what I've come up with.

First, Gmail doesn't allow multiple folders. It's just one of those things, I guess. It does, however, have labels. One message can have multiple labels, whereas one message cannot be in multiple folders. This is handy.

I created labels with each of our names, as well as "Not Read", "Needs Rejected", and "Rejected". If you look at a piece of mail but don't read what's in it, mark it as "Not Read". If you do read it it, label it with your name. If it sucks out right either reject it right then or label it for rejecting later. If it's good and should be looked at more, just mark your name and let it sit. If two people have read a piece and both think it's good, mark it with the star. Those will be the ones we keep and consider for publication.

That seems to be the easiest way to go about the e-mails. If you have optimization suggestions or ideas, comment.

Doug's Prototype Website

I just want to say that I'm very, very impressed with it. I haven't looked at the code of it yet, but I imagine it's pretty basic. I'll leave this post here to be something that can be commented on with ideas or suggestions, which can be discussed and turned into proper posts with maturity.

Oh, and I know why the alignment is off, Doug. The header has a block boarder on both sides, but the footer does not. You probably have a row of black on both sides of the white, and that row is pushing both graphics to the left. Because the header has that boarder, it's being pushed more than the footer.

*Edit: It's also being stretched. I opened it up in MSPaint and got rid of the black space, and the image stretched to fit the whole space. You can try turning the black margins into transparent space in PS or just shorten the space alloted for the image in DreamWeaver. I don't know anything about DreamWeaver, but I imagine it goes something like that.

Quick post about Media Board meeting

Valita sent me an e-mail detailing the proposed times from the Media
Board meeting. I can only make it to the one of Thursday and I wanted
to post this up here to see if either of you are moreavailable . Even
if I can go, I think it's important to sit in and get a feel for what
the Media Board is like. The times are below, comment with your
availability.

Dear Members:

It is time for the Fall 2008 meeting. Please review the following dates/times and respond as soon as possible with what works best for you.

Monday October 27 at 11:00am
Monday October 27 at 4:00pm

Tuesday October 28 at 4:00pm

Thursday October 30 at 4:00pm

Thank you,

Archive Rights, Website, Submissions & Other Thoughts from Max

THOUGHTS FROM MAX

Much of this is from the email I sent out to you guys on Friday, but since we're going to be doing our discussions here, I thought I would edit and add to what I wrote in response to Doug's post and other thinking I've done over the weekend and slap it on the blog.

MEETING

As decided last night, we are set to meet Wed at 12-1 PM. Maybe we can come up with an agenda of important things to discuss (other than what's been mentioned) between now and then.

Re: DECISIONS

• I think we should hang on to the archive rights to the stories we publish. I mean, otherwise, every time we let them go, we lose content. We should be building Nexus as an ongoing online entity from here on out. I don’t know how this is handled on other websites (from what I’ve seen, a couple maintain archives) but I agree with Aaron, without a print copy, our contributors have nothing to show for their work. Does holding onto archives make it impossible for writers to reprint stories elsewhere? Also, we definitely need to figure out about if we’re allowed to reprint them in our “Best of Nexus” print edition. Of course, Doug is more knowledgeable about this sort of thing, so his way may be the way to go, but those are my thoughts.

  I do still think we should have a “Best Of” issue, only if it comes out once a year. It’d be a shame if we didn’t put out anything in print.

  
  

• Possibly including a PDF version of each issue could make the print issue a little moot and allow for the cover art and artwork, giving the feel of a real magazine.
• I like Doug's idea of having Each Issue be 2 Short Stories,
  3 Pieces of Flash Fiction, & 3 Poems. Maybe we could expand the poems a bit (we get so much) or add one more piece of flash fiction, but then again, we could be doing monthly updates with this limited format and it wouldn't be too much trouble. We should also consider artwork and photos and how many we want to do of each.

WEBSITE

• Aaron snuck up on me while I was writing this post (well, actually he sat quietly while I worked and I didn't notice him) and pointed out the very first thing we should do is modify the existing website to reflect new information.


• I’ve been going over websites that Doug pointed out and have been looking for features and aspects of them that would, could or should be implemented, as well as things we want to try to avoid and taking notes on all of this. I wanted to come up with a draft of a website design, at least function-wise (I’m not the best at aesthetic design) over the weekend that we could discuss this week, but I’ve only completed a bit of said draft. Hopefully Aaron’s been able to look at the sites and has some ideas of his own.

  If the website doesn’t get discussed too much at the meeting (there are other issues more pressing) the things we should think about between now and then are features we ABSOLUTELY want to include, and ones we want to avoid. I’ll definitely have a short list at the very least by Wed.

• I don’t know if we’d have to bring in a big-time coder for this next idea, but at a couple websites I worked at, there were back end form programs that would format, sort and publish content on the website. This would make maintaining Nexus online a breeze, make it easy to update, easy for others who follow us to keep things consistent and not that big a problem. I know a couple guys from my past who I might be able to talk about this possibility. Maybe even con one of them to create such a backend for us. Then again, I’ve never used Dream Weaver, but I know that using such forms made updating almost mindless and much easier than using Front Page (which I understand is like Dream Weaver). Still, Front Page was pretty easy to use too, but if we established a working back end for the Nexus site, it could sustain itself without major revisions for some time to come.

SUBMISSIONS

• First priority should be to establish the email submissions and the rejection letter. I have looked through requests asking what happened to submitted poetry and people are coming by the office wanting to contribute. The sooner we get those generated, the better. Getting these together are duties we should allocate at the meeting.


• Last night Doug brought up the fact that we are only receiving poetry submissions, and I agree it sucks. Somebody even stopped by the office while I was here today to ask about poetry submissions. We really need to do something to get the word out. One thing I think we could do would be to flyer. Being a school organization, we can flyer more places than usual postings do. The flyers should include requests for short stories, artwork, photographs… poetry too, but we may want to emphasize we’re looking for more than just poetry at this point.
  Another thing said flyers could do is put out the call for volunteer(s) if we still want to do that.

• We need to get into any class that is teaching fiction writing (I suppose the poetry classes too, but fiction writing is what we need) and give announcements/brief presentations to let it be known we’re desperate for short stories and flash fiction. This should definitely increase the submissions for fiction. Maybe we can make a list of classes to hit and then divvy them up based on our schedules at the meeting.



• We should tell any established or upcoming writers we know that we’re looking for submissions. I’m looking at you Doug, though I’ve talked to Tad & Tony at Super-Fly, both who write and wrote on story comments from somebody in Brady's class that he should submit to Nexus.

• Can we do a radio commercial on WSU’s radio station putting out a call for submissions? Or one in the Guardian? Either or both hopefully without spending a ton?

That’s about all I have for now. I know that’s a lot to take in, but hopefully it keeps the ball rolling and gives us things to discuss at the meeting. Aaron, maybe you should cull from Doug’s and my posts to post a meeting agenda, so we don’t waste the one hour we have.

Take care guys! Good to see you both last night and I look forward to discussing this more with you online and on Wed. Also, happy anniversary, Doug!

Decisions to be Made

Rights

What exactly are we purchasing from our contributors? My suggestion:

First North American Electronic Rights - right to publish a writer's work in an electronic medium for the first time.

This means that we would no longer consider reprints, which might ensure that our potential contributors are actually putting thought into what they're sending us instead of just cramming a baker's dozen poems into an envelope and hoping for the best.

Archiving

This becomes a tricky issue... Archiving the stories might be a great thing for the contributors, since it provides a free place where an author can direct readers to find their work. On the other hand, it may cause problems if the writer wishes to republish the piece in question.

My suggestion: We archive each successive issue for a year. At any time, our contributors have the option of asking that their story be removed from the archives. At the end of the year, we collect the published stories in an annual anthology and remove them from the site. This may be a better idea than a "Best of Nexus" antho, since this pressures us to make sure that EVERY piece is deserving of the "best of" distinction.

Format

Do we want to publish the stories on the site? Do we want to compile a PDF file for each issue? The on-site option provides us with an easier method of removing content from the site and allows the reader to easily navigate between pieces, but the PDF option allows us to gussy up the presentation a little, complete with cover art, etc.

Also, what kind of ratio of prose to poetry do we want for each issue? Here's my thought:

Each Issue
2 Short Stories
3 Pieces of Flash Fiction
3 Poems

Keeping each issue short like this might allow us to have time to compile a greater number of issues in a shorter period of time.

That's currently all I've got. Let me know how this all sits with you fellas.

--Doug

WSU Nexus

'Lo. The purpose of this blog to create a running, constantly updated documentation of the working of Nexus. It's also a good way to communicate intra-staff when we can't have a meeting and without cluttering up inboxes. Both of you, Doug and Max, should register and get involved with this blog. Once registered, comment on this blog so I can add you to the mod list.

Problems, ideas and solutions should all be posted here and discussed through comments and other posts. Posts should be tagged accordingly. this one won't be, because it's the first and there's nothing archive worthy here.

I should mention that the main idea for this is not ust to have a forum between us, but to have large and complete documentation of what we're doing so that the next group of people have something to look back at.

So yeah. Get on this.