SpiderWeb Press

You may be looking for the Man from U.N.C.L.E. story, Spiderweb.

Zine Publisher
Name:	SpiderWeb Press
Contact:	Susan L. Williams
Type:
Fandoms:	LOTR, The Sentinel
Status:	active at least until 2005
Other:
URL:	SpiderWeb Press website
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SpiderWeb Press is a gen and slash fanzine publisher.

as a room dealer at the 2008 MediaWest*Con

On their website, they describe themselves as: "Spider is the totem animal for writers, who spin their wondrous webs with words. In the spirit of Spider, SpiderWeb Press is dedicated to excellence in fanfiction, enhanced by professional-quality art."

It may be related to Skeeter Press.

Zines

The editorial of "Leap of Faith" mentions it is the second publication from this press.

• Leap of Faith (Sentinel) (2003)
• Nenya (Lord of the Rings) (2005)
• Vilya (Lord of the Rings) (2003-2006)

Contributor Guidelines

Contributer Guidelines:

I'm looking for good writers to tell good stories. Stories may be any length. Short is fine, long is better. Much, much better. For slash, any rating, any pairing, members of the Fellowship preferred, but please no immediate-family incest. This includes foster-parents, so no Gandalf/Frodo, Bilbo/Frodo, Elrond/Aragorn, etc. Cousins are not a problem. Light, dark, humorous or tragic--any tone will do.

Authors should be familiar with the source material, whether the movie or the books or both, and should be able to write in a Tolkienesque voice. No modernisms or slang, please. Anachronisms make me shudder. Unpublished stories only. That means they cannot have been posted anywhere, even on a list or a live journal.

For Narya, volume I: Into the West, I am seeking stories having to do with Valinor: dwelling there, the voyage, dealing with the knowledge that one must go, what life is like for those left behind, etc. Characters may be from The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit -- any Tolkien work -- though, as always, members of the Fellowship are preferred. I will accept slash or gen, keeping in mind that the zine is for adults. The quality of the writing is what counts, not whether the characters are in love with each other.

The scary part: The editor will edit. This includes grammar, style, characterization, and content. I will try to send editorial suggestions to the authors as quickly as possible, and ask that revisions be completed in the same way, though not, of course, so quickly that it's detrimental to the writing process. Please have stories beta-read before submitting.

Please send submissions in Word if at all possible. If not, a text file is fine. I request that stories be in Times New Roman 12 point font, single-spaced, with indentation at the start of each paragraph.

I will do edits and comments in Track Changes whenever possible. If your system doesn't have Track Changes, please let me know when you submit the story. Things get messy otherwise.

Also seeking cover and interior art, black and white or color, for both slash and gen zines.

Comments by the Editor: 2004

I'm editor for Skeeter Press, so I don't do the production or sales stuff, though I do sell at cons, but I can tell you it's been a while since we put a zine out and since I had anything to edit for Skeeter. We've had trouble getting submissions--especially gen stories--for several years now. Whether this is because writers aren't writing, they don't want their stories to be in a zine, or they just don't want their stories edited, it's hard to say.

I do know there are many writers out there who don't want to be edited and/or don't understand what goes into editing a story. I do try to break it to them gently, but when writers first get the file back with all the pretty red and blue Track Changes and highlighed editorial comments, it tends to come as a shock. <g>

I do everything for SpiderWeb Press. So far, I've only published 2 zines; it took me 2 years to get enough stories to put out a LOTR anthology zine; the other is a TS novel. Both are slash. They've been out since last May, and have won awards, but haven't paid for themselves yet. I'm trying to put 2 more LOTR zines together--1 gen, 1 not--but getting submissions is once again proving problematical. I've lost one story to editing, am hoping not to lose another, and just received a third yesterday. My original deadline for both zines was January. Obviously, I'm extending that. <g>

I haven't been in the zine business all that long, but as I understand it, zine sales used to be much larger than they are now. Of course, nothing else was available. Some fandoms still have thriving zines, some don't. There are very few LOTR zines, but still a good number of TS zines. I don't know what their sales numbers are, though.

As for me the reader, I rarely buy zines. I've found very few that I thought were worth the cost. It helps if there are really pretty pictures. <g>