What is Beneath Ceaseless Skies?
Beneath Ceaseless Skies (beneath-ceaseless-skies.com) is a non-profit online magazine of fantasy short stories set in other worlds. We've been publishing free issues every fortnight for over ten years. Each issue includes two text stories (up to 15,000 words each) and usually one audio podcast story. We've averaged 55 stories and 22 podcast stories every year since 2009.

We have been a finalist seven times for the Hugo Award and six times for the World Fantasy Award, and our stories have been finalists for the Hugo, World Fantasy, Nebula, Sturgeon, Locus, Aurora, and Aurealis Awards and won the World Fantasy Award.

Why is BCS on Patreon?
Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a non-profit supported by reader donations. Our parent company, Firkin Press, is a 501(c)3 non-profit. We offer our issues and podcast stories for free, but we pay all our writers and artists a professional rate for their work. We depend on our readers and donors to make this possible.

We have always paid our authors the pay rate that Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) sets as their qualifying "pro" pay rate for short stories (currently 6 cents/word). We publish many new and emerging writers, and we are proud that their stories sold to BCS help them qualify to join SFWA, the professional organization for SF/F writers.

SFWA's pro pay rate for short stories is increasing by 33% on Sept. 1, 2019, to 8 cents/word. All writers deserve this higher pay, but we need a 33% increase in support from our readers and donors in order for us to pay this new higher pro pay rate.

Patreon is a way for you to support BCS and us paying our authors a professional rate. Whether your monthly pledge is $2 or $25, it is a significant and vital help. We are on Patreon so we can continue to publish great fantasy stories set in other worlds, as text and audio podcasts, and pay all our authors a pro rate for them.

Goals
Our first goal is to raise our pay rate for short stories to 7 cents/word. We need $350 in monthly pledges to to cover that pay raise. We would like to reach this goal in summer 2019.

Our second and most important goal is to raise our pay rate for short stories to 8 cents/word, to meet the new higher SFWA "pro" pay rate. We need $700 in monthly pledges to cover that pay raise. We want to reach this goal before Sept. 1, 2019, when the new higher SFWA pay rate goes into effect.

Our third goal is to increase the honorarium we pay our First Readers, aka slush readers. All rejections from BCS are personalized, and our First Readers each write 80+ personalized rejections each month. We pay them an honorarium, but we would like to increase it. We need $800 total in monthly pledges to cover that increase.

Our fourth goal is to hire a fifth First Reader, aka slush reader. Our four current First Readers--Kerstin Hall, Deirdre Quirk, Rachel Morris, and Beth Horn--work tirelessly reading BCS submissions, but submissions are up over 50% since the pandemic. A fifth First Reader would help share the load and make our reply times to authors even shorter. We need $900 total in monthly pledges to reach this goal.

What Do I Get?
In addition to helping us continue our thirteen-year run of publishing an award-winning, pro rate fantasy magazine, your donation will earn you one of the titles of honor we have for all our donors and will get your name listed on the Donor page of our website.

Our parent company, Firkin Press, is a 501(c)3 non-profit approved by the IRS. Your donations to BCS through Patreon are tax deductible.

Also, we give our Patreon supporters of all tiers free exclusive early downloads of BCS ebooks of new issues and special past issues, over a week before they appear on the website, and exclusive early access to episodes of the BCS Audio Vault podcast.

(If you would like to support us by buying an ebook subscription and getting every fortnightly issue of BCS delivered to your reading device a week early, you can buy a BCS ebook subscription at WeightlessBooks.com.)

Titles of Honor for Our Donors
Many readers enjoy traditional fantasy set in pseudo-medieval realms, even though BCS publishes all sorts of fantasy set in all sorts of worlds, so we have donor tiers with nifty medieval-inspired titles to honor our donors.

By choosing one of our titles of honor tiers, you can earn the title of Honored Guest (we promise not to stab you at a wedding), Person-at-Arms (sword not necessary), Knight (you must provide your own Rocinante), Vizier, or Royal. All donors can have their names listed on the BCS website under their tier or can remain anonymous. At the Royal tier, your donation has enabled a full story to be published in BCS, and you can choose a story title to be listed with your name.

Thank You!
Your support is vital to us. We can't meet this raise in pay rates without your help. Thank you for supporting Beneath Ceaseless Skies and our authors!

(A financial statement is available upon written request from the Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs, Commonwealth of Virginia.)