what is long trek press?

We love ‘genre’ fiction, as people call it, and we noticed the trend of Aus publishers publishing little genre fiction and got a bit frustrated.

So we thought, why not publish some of this stuff?

What’s the plan?

Long Trek is going to start as a zine and the first issue will be ready for FOTP in Feb 2024. The cover will be riso printed and the insides will just be done on a photocopier. It will also be available as an ebook. Audio is on our minds for sometime in the future, but it’s a skill we need to develop, and might not be ready in time for Feb. Watch this space!

Long Trek will join dedicated SFF publications like Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways, Moss Piglet and we hope it will be around for a long while yet.

Pieces published in Long Trek will be eligible for awards such as the Hugos, the Aurealis awards and the Vogels. This zine will be another way to Aus + Kiwi creatives to get their work read by people.

Eventually, we’d love to move into publishing novellas and turn this whole thing into a little indie press. But that is all way outta our knowledge zone! We know about zines and we know about short stories, so we’re starting here.

Money stuff

We do want to be able to pay people more. The artist fees and printing costs are being paid for out of our pockets and we are volunteers.

A portion of sales will be allocated to artist royalties and the rest of the proceeds will go into paying artist fees for the next issue. We will be keeping track of the money and plan to do a yearly run-down like Alison’s blog post about their personal income.

We will be applying for grants and looking into other funding options.

Issue one will be supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants and so we are able to pay contribs $200.

wHO RUNS long trek?

Alison Evans and Rafeif Ismail. Together, we have books published, collections edited, zines made, short stories published.