Frank Fradella on "Don't Suck"

Back in 1999, I started an online magazine for superhero fiction that was, in those heady days of the internet’s infancy, the first and only one of its kind. The magazine went on to do great things, including winning the Writer’s Digest Grand Prize in their first ever Zine Publishing Awards, and landed me a gig on their Zine Advisory Board, helping to shape the future of electronic publishing.

It also — and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here — launched a few careers, including my own. Just a year later I would go on to sign a six-book deal and a few of the fine folks who saw publication in our digital pages are now doing fine, fine works for much larger houses.

Today, Sean Taylor, one of my right hand men, and the first to truly believe in what I was doing, wrote a post about two simple words I had included as a rider in our submission guidelines.

Don’t suck.

That was it. That simple. The rest of the sub guides were what you’d expect — story length, format, style notes, don’t blow up Cleveland. You know. The usual.

But those two words added at the end were simple. I wasn't being funny. I wasn't being coy. I was receiving dozens of submissions every week and every story I bought came out of my pocket. And I bought every single good story that came my way.

Read the full article: https://medium.com/@frankfradella/dont-suck-a0c728b77ac8