About Us
Welcome to QuarterReads, a new way to buy and sell short writing. Thanks for checking us out. We hope we can introduce you to some great new writers and stories, or introduce your writing to a new audience. But before you trust us with either your work or your subscription money, take a minute to get to know us and our platform a little better.
Who Are You?
QuarterReads was founded by Ian Rose, a writer and web developer in Portland, Oregon. Since I'm the one writing this, I'm going to switch out of the third person now. I built QuarterReads because as a writer, I saw a gap in the short fiction market. On one side, there were the traditional magazines, online and off. Tightly edited and designed, difficult to break into and subject, for better and worse, to the tastes and preferences of the editorial staff. On the other, there was self-publishing, a free-for-all with no barrier to entry, no gatekeeper, and no quality assurance. The space between began to seem to me less like a niche and more like a gaping hole, and both my writer and developer brains got excited about the idea of building something to nestle right into it. A few months later, QuarterReads was born. We launched on October 14, 2014. There are a few reviewers and various helpers that work on the site, but it remains my baby and if there are any problems with it, I take full responsibility for them.
What Makes QuarterReads Different?
I'm a big fan of traditional magazines, especially in genre short fiction. Editors of those markets do an incredible and valuable job. I'm also a long-time admirer of self-publishers, who have enough faith in their own work to be their own editors and publishers. But I built QuarterReads to be a third option, a lightly curated market for short writing. When a writer submits their work to QuarterReads, it is reviewed by a human reader for technical quality. It's true that we turn away some stories. We have standards, which are explained in our policy page, but our taste and personal preference is not included in those requirements. Whether we love, like, or dislike a story, if it is technically sound and not completely offensive, it will be approved.
The other thing that sets QuarterReads apart is our royalty structure. As the name suggests, each story on QuarterReads costs one quarter, 25 U.S. cents. Readers who sign up with QuarterReads pay $5.00 (USD) for 20 reads. Every time they decide to read a story, the reader spends one of their reads. Of that 25 cents, 22 are paid into the writer's account. That's 88%. Also, if the reader loves a story, they can "tip" the author either 1, 2 or 4 reads (equivalent to $0.25, $0.50 or $1.00) and 100% of those tips go straight to the writer.
I Still Have Questions
Whether you're a writer or a reader, we want you to be totally comfortable with our system before you sign up. If you have any questions that we haven't answered above, please get in touch by email at ian [at] quarterreads [dot] com. Please don't spam me, because then I have to put up a web form with a Capcha to make you prove you're human and I don't want to do that. Just shoot me an email and I'll do my absolute best to answer your questions. I appreciate you taking the time to come to the site and read about our system. If you are ready to get on board, head over to oursignup page. Thanks so much.
Sincerely,
Ian Rose, Founder
QuarterReads.com
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