Bewildering Stories discusses...
Compliments
Every week, Bewildering Stories receives compliments from contributors, often even when we request a revision or feel we must decline. We appreciate them all very much.
Here’s one that is unusual in that it addresses primarily the very structure of the website. We prefer to maintain the author’s anonymity because, we feel, the message speaks for many:
Dear Don,
I was pleased to see my story come up on Bewildering Stories’ website during an internet search with direct and clean links. Thanks.
Often when my work is accepted and published, it’s almost impossible for readers to track down the site and, when and if they do, there’s still a lot of scrolling and searching before they can locate my story.
I also appreciated the opportunity to edit and correct my story up to the moment it was published. Your commitment and professionalism separates Bewildering Stories from the host of other trumped-up sites that are specious at best.
We’re very happy to receive confirmation that we’re meeting an important objective: to make our contributors’ works easily accessible on the Internet.
Younger contributors and readers may find the Bewildering Stories website unconventional. Actually, it’s so old it’s new. It follows the precepts of website construction widely used at the turn of the century. The home page is organized like an advertisement in the Yellow Pages, and the site itself is organized like a bookstore. We’d like to think it’s akin to the Great Library of Alexandria, but let’s not get carried away.
As for “the host of other trumped-up sites,” we sympathize with the author’s frustration. Some seem to resemble what might be called a “bargain basement clearance table.” We have accepted for republication works that the authors told us were already on line at one website or another. We either needed a long time to unearth the story or poem or we simply couldn’t find it at all. We chalk up such submissions as meeting our “hard to find” criterion.
We make it possible for authors to revise their works up to the last minute because we’re applying our official motto: “Proofreading never ends.” And that principle applies to one and all.
Don Webb
Managing Editor
Bewildering Stories
