thedreadmachine

[thedreadmachine]

[thedreadmachine]

[thedreadmachine]

Look, I know this isn't really on-brand or whatever, but this brought me an absurd amount of joy this morning. Watch it. Watch it now.

[thedreadmachine]

ig: da_schlechti

[thedreadmachine]

We're here.

Hello Tumblr fam. I'm Alin (@allhailalin), the executive editor of an indie magazine you've probably never heard of (The Dread Machine). We've been publishing dark speculative short stories and poetry since 2020.

We mostly toil in obscurity. We've never won any awards, nor are we ever featured in reviewer blogs. Our marketing game apparently sucks, because nothing we've tried has worked.

As a niche-within-a-niche, we knew profitability was a pipe dream, but we hoped we'd be able to build a solid community and make something awesome together. We've succeeded in that respect. Our Discord server is considered one of the friendliest and most welcoming in the indie publishing space. Our web metrics are bonkers. However, our financial performance sucks, so we've had to stop publishing stories for free in an effort to boost print and digital subscription sales.

I fucking hate this change. I hate that our stories and poetry aren't being read and shared all over the internet. I hate having to "sell" what we're doing. Each quarterly issue costs us between $1,700 and $2,400 to make, so it's not even like it costs a fortune to do this. Our failure to cover even half of our expenses after three years is pretty upsetting, because we know people value what we're doing...they just don't value it enough to help ensure its continuation.

Indie publishers are being taken for granted, and this is why we're all dying off.

Currently, we pay $0.05/word for original fiction and $10 per poem. My goal was to increase our rates to $0.08/word in January of this year, but we're not in a position to increase our overhead any further.

So, I'm here to let you know we exist, and we'd love if you joined us. If you're into writing, science fiction, cyberpunk, slipstream, synthwave, pixel art, video games, and TTRPGs, you should come hang out with us in our Discord server. Maybe consider subscribing or supporting us on Patreon or Ko-fi. Follow us on Kickstarter so you can be alerted when we get desperate enough to run a campaign. You can also follow me on Tumblr, if you like Disco Elysium fan art and synthwave stuff.

Idk man. We're just a bunch of punk asses doing the best we can to keep written art alive. Join us if you're into it. Reblog this and we'll love you forever.

#indie magazine #indie publishing #bookblr #amwriting #amediting #science fiction #sci fi #short stories #short fiction #speculative fiction #speculative poetry #ko fi support #ko fi memberships #patreon #support #gaming #tech #reading #amreading #motherfuckersplzhelp #theexistentialdreadisreal #writing community

[thedreadmachine]

[thedreadmachine]

TikTok84

[thedreadmachine]

Hey, you. This thing needs more reblogs. It's cool.

sudden powers.

twitter | ko-fi

[thedreadmachine]

HEY! We publish weird stories for free. You should read this one, like, right fucking now. It's pretty great. It's not really a story, actually. It's more like a list. A Christmas list from an interstellar POW. Whatever--you'll like it. We promise. (And if you don't, that's cool too. It's not like you had to pay for it, right? Our site doesn't have ads, and we don't want your goddamn cookies.)

#indie publishing #science fiction #speculative fiction #short stories #free #indie magazine #fiction #writers of tumb #writeblr #amreading #what the hell are you reading these tags for #I hope you didn't think you'd find anything interesting here #dark fiction #experimental fiction #no seriously #stop reading the tags #writing community #reading #bookblr #I'm just tagging fucking everyone on tumblr #lets be friends