Ralan Conley is the owner and operator of Ralan's SpecFic & Humor Webstravaganza, the leading market listings website and quite possibly one of the most valuable resources available to new and experienced writers working in various genres from horror to fantasy.  The site has been a three-time finalist for the Bram Stoker Award.  To learn more or to find out how you can support Ralan, visit www.ralan.com.

You started as a writer long before becoming the premier market listings provider.  What first led you to try your hand at writing? 

I was eight-years-old when I read my first speculative fiction book. It was the first of Hugh Lofting's Dr. Doolittle books. I began writing simple, childish stories at once—mostly copies of what I read. As I grew my reading graduated to Verne, Wells, Bradbury, and Heinlein who remains my all-time favorite author. In the late 1960s I started submitting speculative stories to The Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, Playboy, Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker—I’dnoticed names in them like Bradbury and Heinlein. I collected quite an impressive pile of rejections, some of them with personal comments, but no sales. Then life intervened and my typewriter sat forgotten.

Living abroad in 1993, during a long illness, I began to write again—on an old portable, manual typewriter with Scandinavian keys. The layout was so different that my touch-typing skills were confounded and I returned to two-finger typing. I wrote my first novel, "The Search for Power," in eight very intensive months. After that I bought my first computer and after retyping the whole novel onto it and beginning the first of many rewrites, I began writing short stories.

Your published stories of the last several years seem firmly rooted in the speculative fiction genre.  Has this primarily been the area you’ve focused on even in those earlier years, both in what you enjoy writing as well as reading?

As I mentioned above my main interest has always been in the speculative fiction area and I write exclusively in it. My reading, however, has been all over the map, from the classics to best sellers. I believe all writers must read widely, not just in their own genre, or you become too firmly fixed.

What was the market listing environment like before your website came along?

In 1993 the only thing out there I could find was Writers Digest and it cost a fortune for delivery to the frozen wastes of Scandinavia. I subscribed to the monthly magazine anyway and bought their yearly Writer's Market, but found out the hard way that: 1.) their listings for small press speculative markets were limited, and 2.) many were badly out of date. It wasn't until I had started my listings that I found Janet Fox's "The Scavenger's Newsletter" and subscribed. It was excellent in covering the SpecFic small press (and had some great articles and stories too!), but again a month between issues was too long for this fast-moving marketplace. Before long I had become a resource for Janet and in January 2003 she closed it down after 19 years of faithfully putting out an issue every month, plus two market round-ups, "The Scavenger's Scrapbook" each year.

What made you decide to take on the rather large task of becoming a worldwide resource to other writers?

The lack of anything that could keep up with the marketplace. It started just for me. I wrote to every magazine I could find asking for guidelines, and filed these in notebooks, which I still have—I never throw anything out. When I got my first computer I began putting them into electronic form, separating them into non-paying, paying, and semi- and pro markets, along with writing resources I found. I taught myself how to program in HTML and used that format for my new pages.

In November 1996, I felt I had enough material for a Speculative Fiction Market web site, which I called "Ralan's Home on the Web" at first. My main reason for going online was to help other writers like myself. People stuck in far away places with little or no information about writing, manuscript formatting, or how to find markets. I've always visualized my target user as someone in an underdeveloped country, who walks long distances to get maybe ten minutes on a solar-powered computer. Those other writers were soon contacting me with tips on markets and resources -- and the thing just grew. In 1998, I started mailing out a monthly newsletter, Ralan's Monthly Report, which now goes out to more than 2,000 writers, editors, and publishers every month.

How many people visit Ralan.com these days?  How much has it grown over the last several years?

The web site gets more than 10,000 unique visitors every month, each of whom visits an average of 2.58 times per month. When it started in 1996, I got maybe 10 visitors per month. You do the math.

One thing you seem to take great pride in is being the most up-to-date resource for market listings.  As unbelievably helpful as it is to the writing community to have constantly updated markets, the pressure on you to keep this up must be significant.  Do you ever feel the site eating away too much of your time or keeping you from focusing on other things in life (family, writing, etc.)?

Absolutely. Without the help of all the people who help, writers who send tips, editors and publishers who are good enough to let me know when guidelines change, it would be impossible. My one full-time helper is Fil, my virtual monster, and we all now how much those virtual helpmates can do. So basically Ralan.com is a one-man operation.

But I do have the support of my family. This is a labor of love for me and they know that. My wife is a wonderful supporter and goes to all the Cons with me (I don't go to many, however). My daughter has also helped me with contests and other things. My oldest son is my web designer. Generally I work on the web site in the morning and do writing/self-editing in the afternoon, if there's time. I've been concentrating on longer work for a couple of years, but that is harder to do when you don't have so much time, as every writer knows.

It’s probably safe to assume that having to bear the financial burden of maintaining the site can’t be easy.  Donations, contests, and some limited advertising probably have helped over the years, but are you satisfied with the level of support you receive to help ease the pain?  Has the site’s popularity enabled it to be somewhat self-sufficient?

I'd say the site has become self-sufficient in the last couple of years. At the rate donations and advertising have come in, however, I doubt they can make up for the years before that. But that's water under the bridge. It would be nice to get something out of this; I'd like to go to more Cons for example.

I've had plans for quite awhile to upgrade the web site with a new design and turn it into a database with search, submission tracking, and response time reporting options. But circumstances have prevented that. In conjunction with the new web site design, it would be lucrative to make a part of the info only open to subscribers. Donations are fine and I'm very grateful to those who do, but out of 10,000 people who visit Ralan.com each month there are fewer than 100 who donate each year. I'd like a way to get those other 9,900 visitors to kick in. My Dog, if ten thousand people sent me $10 a year, I'd be at every Con there is!

                                              
Any particularly rough times in which the site’s continued existence was in question? 

There have been rough times. There have been times when I've been ready to chuck it all. But I don't really want to get into those. The job is very rewarding and I cherish it.

As owner of the most active market listings site, you most likely have one of the best perspectives on the state of the small press market.  You’ve probably seen many markets come and go.  Have you noticed any recent trends?  Have smaller publishers been any better or worse at sticking around?  Any major differences from how the markets looked ten years ago?

The speculative fiction market tends to be (so far, after 11 years of doing this) basically stable. Individual markets come and go, but new ones pop-up to replace them. The number of markets on my pages stays essentially the same, with the exception of two, which I'll mention later. Of the markets that go by the wayside it is balanced pretty well between new/newer markets and older/old markets. The vast majority of publications I list are people's hobbies. They have day jobs, spouses/companions, children, families, health, and money issues—all the same things we all have. When something goes wrong, it's usually the publication—a financial burden and time consumer—that gets dropped first. It takes an enormous amount of commitment to keep going.

The two exceptions, during the last year, to the above-mentioned stability are the "4theLuv" and "Semi & Pro" markets. I can only guess at the reasons for this. The first has dwindled somewhat and the second has grown a bit.

What are some of the most common questions you hear from writers who visit the site?

Every day I enjoy opening my IN-box. The questions are pretty varied. Most have to do with distinct markets. Are they closed, why isn't this editor responding to me, what is wrong with the link for this one, etc? Some are about the web site, "what does this abbreviation stand for," "what does that (QS) after the e-mail address mean?" Almost all of these are answered on my "Market Notes" page, but not everyone takes the time to read that I guess.

I get about fifty e-mails every day. Happily, many of these are tips from writers and notices of changes or new markets from editors, which will be turned into New Listings and Updates.

I also get requests from writers for aid. Over the years I've helped many writers in various disputes with editors, and vice versa. Not every case has ended satisfactorily, but the vast majority have.

Unfortunately, I also get around a hundred thousand spam e-mails every day. I have to pay for a professional spam filter service, which catches all but a handful each day. Such is the cost of being known on the web.

Should we look out for anything new from you in the near future – both from the writing front and plans for the website?

For the web site, I still have hopes for the new design and database to be implemented—a new design this year if nothing else.

For my writing, I'm still heavily into promoting my illustrated storybook, "Tales of Weupp: Little People Must Surrender." It’s a fantasy-adventure for all ages—I have grandmas reading it to their grand kids, and both enjoying it. It features a different sort of heroine, about whom Piers Anthony has written, "It's fun, and it's good to see a heroine who is not a busty sword wielding Amazon." I'm having a January sale on my www.Weupp.com web site. If the book does well, a sequel is in the offing. I'm also holding a flash fiction contest as a promo for the book with the first prize of $50 (see my "Contests" page for details). And I recently had a story published in Hub Magazine, issue #37 which was reviewed quite favorably at The Fix.

I'll be a guest at the FantastiCon in Copenhagen on the 26-27 April 2008. The writer GOH is Norman Spinrad, so I look forward to meeting him and any other writers and fans in the area.

I've got my eye on the WorldCon in Denver this year. That'd be a kick. But it's a long way to Colorado from over here—and my Viking long ship doesn't do well on dry land.

Thank you, Ralan, for speaking with us.  And thank you for making it a hell of a lot easier for writers and publishers alike to prosper in this business.

It is my pleasure. Thank you.