With its first issue published in 1949, and publishing continuously since then, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF for short) is one of the oldest and most prestigious short fiction markets in the field of speculative fiction. For authors at every stage of their careers, a story, poem, or novella in F&SF is an important writing credit.

F&SF takes First North American Serial Rights and pays on acceptance (which in practice means on receipt of a contract). Acceptance emails indicate that writers will receive a contract and a check within two to four weeks. However, Writer Beware has recently received multiple reports from writers whose work has been officially accepted but, months later, are still waiting for contracts and checks. Reported delays range from six months to over a year, considerably extending an (already unduly lengthy) three-year publication window. (Spilogale, Inc. is the publisher of F&SF, owned by Gordon Van Gelder).

Writers also report a variety of other delays: waiting for notification of official acceptance well beyond the stated acquisition timeline of 6 weeks to 6 months; receiving copy edits and proofs for accepted stories without having received a contract or payment; receiving contract and payment only weeks before the publication date, after months of waiting; completing requested revisions and then hearing nothing more. Many of the writers who contacted me say that they've sent repeated emails asking about the delays, and haven't received a response.

I've written two prior warnings about Adelaide Books, but it seems that a third is in order.

Background: Adelaide, which presents itself as a traditional independent publisher but has a long-standing practice of imposing extra-contractual book purchase requirements, has been the focus of author complaints for many years. These intensified in 2021 and 2022, with authors reporting a range of problems including lagging royalty payment/reporting, poor editing, production and release delays, and major communications issues, with questions and emails going unanswered.

In 2022 the Authors Guild got involved on behalf of members, and (after some initial difficulty getting him to respond) extracted some apparent concessions from Adelaide owner Stevan Nikolic: he agreed to revert rights for authors who wanted to get out of their contracts, to provide digital book files to those who requested them, to pay all royalties currently in arrears, and to refund authors who paid for books (remember, this was a requirement for publication) but never got them.