Escape Artists need our help

Oct 14, 2013

You all know by now what a huge fan I am of short fiction podcasts. I listen to a whole bunch of them. I also love it when my own short fiction gets podcast, and that’s happened a few times now. I made a page here with all my own podcast fiction linked up and a list of all the audio fiction magazines I enjoy. Check it out, I promise you’ll find good stuff there (and not just my own stories.)

Among my absolute favourite short fiction podcasts are the three Escape Artist ones – Pseudopod for horror, Escape Pod for sci-fi and PodCastle for fantasy. They collect original and reprint fiction from a wide variety of sources and always commission excellent readers. These podcasts are regular, brilliantly produced and full of a broad range of stories. They also pay excellent rates to their authors. But they’re currently in dire financial straits and need some help – and it’s very easy to help them. All these type of online zines have options to subscribe or make once off donations to pay their server costs and authors. Until now, I’ve always gone to their sites at the end of each year and made a small donation.

But it it turns out that less than 1% of the people enjoying these otherwise free stories are regular subscribers. It’s got to the point where all three Escape Artist podcasts will have to shut down at the end of the year if they can’t increase their incomes. This would be a tragedy, because they’re awesome. So rather than remembering to make a once a year donation, I’ve just gone in and signed up as a regular monthly subscriber to all three. You can subscribe with as little as US$2 a month. That’s US$6 a month for all three. That’s not even two cups of coffee!

And no, they’re not paying me to say all this. Pseudopod published one of my stories and I hope all three podcasts are around long enough to publish more of my work. I’m just sharing their appeal because I love these podcasts, I wish more people would listen and I really wish more people would subscribe.

It’s as easy as clicking a PayPal button. If you’re a regular listener, go and sign up. If you’ve yet to discover the joys of Escape Artists, go now, subscribe for $2 a month and cancel your subscription if you decide it’s not worth. I bet you won’t.

Pseudopod is here (horror).

Escape Pod is here (sci-fi).

PodCastle is here (fantasy).

Go get some awesome short fiction in your listening holes.

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