Scaffolding: First Issue Updates

We thank everyone who submitted material to the first issue of Scaffolding magazine. Currently submissions to the first issue, scheduled for December 2016, are closed, however we are accepting submissions to the next issue, scheduled for March 2017. The deadline is January 5, 2017. To submit, use the submission page.

​Regarding the status of submissions, we will shortly get in touch with the contributors. If your submission is accepted, you will receive a contract. This contract, among other things, specifies two important things:

1. The authors retain creative and legal control over their works. This means that you can publish your work elsewhere, no limitations.
2. You will receive royalties from sales.

 
What’s next?
 
Some of you may receive editor’s notes. These notes may contain the following:

1. Minor grammatical edits.
2. Minor edits in terms of sentence structure, if it influences readability and clarity.
3. Citation of sources – if any specific data needs to be cited. Even if we do not include the reference in the article, the editor must be able to fact check the data. This is more likely relevant to the writers of editorial articles.
4. In rare cases, suggestions to work on the word choice, particularly if the author’s word choice could be interpreted as offensive, demeaning, promoting violence, advocating for a specific political party, or in other ways violates publisher’s ethics policy.

 
We chose this approach in preference of simply rejecting material without any explanations, because we believe that a little communication goes a long way. It is likely that these minor edits can be reconciled.
 
Some of you may have to obtain permissions from your project collaborators, which is often the case with the visual arts projects. For example, the project may result in collaboration between a photographer, a model, and a costume/makeup artist. We need to make sure that all attributions are included.
 
When all these aspects are resolved, we will put together print and digital versions of the magazine. In order to make the magazine known in the industry, we are planning to distribute a significant number of free hardcopy issues among the distributors, reviewers, and other people who can help us advance. For this purpose, we are going to launch a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter. This is scheduled for October-November 2016. We estimate that printing cost of one copy will be around $15 and average shipping cost around $10, which makes $25 in total. If we want to distribute at least 100 hardcopies, we need to raise $2,500! This will be our starting point for the Kickstarter campaign.
 
Once we distribute advanced readers’ copies by early December, we will start selling the issue to the general public, at which point the contributors will start earning royalties.
 
Finally, after the first quarter of sales, we will post a detailed financial report for contributors to review costs and expenses of the issue.  
 
We again thank you for your interest in this exciting startup and hope for many more opportunities to work together in the future!
 
Sincerely,
Oksana Sudoma
Executive Director
 
Brittany Micka-Foos
Chief Editor