Funding
Strange Horizons is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit business. The magazine neither carries advertising nor lists sponsors on its website. It has an annual operating budget of approximately $20,000. About one-third of the annual budget is funded through donations, primarily during a yearly fund drive. Some years the goal is met (2009 was over); some years (2010) it is not.
The magazine also generates revenue by being an Amazon.com affiliate. Its bookstore, reachable through a link on the magazine’s home page, lists publications of its contributors by month and is updated weekly.
The staff is composed entirely of volunteers. Staff members reside in at least eight states and two foreign countries.
All contributors of featured content (not posts in the user forum) are paid professional rates.
The all-volunteer staff and its decentralization allows the magazine to keep down costs and put what funding it does have toward paying the professional rates that attracts quality authors and artists.
Content, Copyright, and Permissions
Content is obtained through author/artist submission. For text content, the magazine obtains exclusive electronic rights for two months and, for art, ongoing non-exclusive electronic rights for the current issue. The original authors retain copyrights.
The limited exclusivity of the magazines rights and the authors’ retention of copyright also helps to attract professional authors and quality work.
User-Generated Content
The magazine attempts to build community through its discussion forum. Each article and short story is given a thread and there are threads for general discussion of books, magazines, visual media, and random chit chat. These threads are not very active, although a particular article or story will occasionally generate several posts of actual discussion.
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