An avid fan of SpaceWays Magazine, Ken Roberts, and the editor of SpaceWays Magazine, Rigel Chiokis, were meeting to discuss the future of the struggling magazine.

In the editorial of Issue #4, Rigel had said that he was temporarily ceasing publication of the magazine while he explored the possibility of publishing on the Internet. But Rigel barely understood what the Internet was, much less how to use it as a tool for publishing.

Ken had written to SpaceWays Magazine in response to the editorial. He said that he was interested in becoming involved in electronic publishing on the Internet, but he did not know how to be an editor. He thought that between the two of them, perhaps they could come up with something.

The two quickly realized that they were of a similar mind and could work together. Ken would provide the web server and technical expertise, Rigel would provide the editorial services. All they needed to settle was what form the project would take. Rigel wanted to translate the magazine format to the Internet as web pages. Ken pointed out that web pages did not have the same restrictions as the printed page, so perhaps they should not stick to the printed format. He then suggested that they could publish on a weekly basis. Rigel agreed, suggesting that they publish one story per week. That would give them fifty-two stories per year, which easily matched what large print magazines were publishing.

The discussion turned to protecting the copyright of the authors. It was decided that the stories would not be published directly to the Internet via web pages, but instead would be turned into an e-mail message and shipped directly to the reader. The reader would then have the option of reading from their screen or they could print one copy to read from paper.

Thus was born the concept of a Short Story Subscription Service.

It was then decided that they should have three months worth of stories purchased and ready to go before launching the new service, which was to be called SpaceWays Weekly.

Over the course of May to August, market information was posted to various sites, requesting submissions; stories were read and bought; Rigel learned HTML and designed the website; Ken wrote the software which would handle sending out the issues each Friday, as well as the administrative web page (with its security). The format for the e-mail message issues was established. Also during this time, the service was announced and subscribers were solicited.

September 5, 1997 arrived. The first few issues had been formatted and installed to the server and a list of the current subscribers (all 15 of them) had been built and coded. The server was told to mail Issue #1 to the current subscriber list. The computer dutifully loaded the text file, converted it to an e-mail message, pasted in the name and address of a subscriber and sent it on its way.

In January, 2001 the last issue of SpaceWays Weekly was shipped out to the subscribers, now numbering almost 300. It finsihed with a total of 178 stories and two anthologies (the "best" stories as voted on by the readers) being published. The system worked and a delivery was never missed. The subscribers were delighted with the arrival of a new short story every Friday in their e-mail box.

Over the course of the years, the editor was interviewed by several print journalists, a university student, two radio show hosts and other editors all of whom expressed an interest in e-publishing or the workings of SpaceWays Weekly in particular. During the course of the run of SpaceWays Weekly, the term e-publishing went from "what???" to being a common household term.

Now SpaceWays Weekly is finished. But the editor has plans to return to e-publishing some day and a reborn SpaceWays Weekly will be the flagship of the new project. As can be seen from the Reader's Letters there are a good number of people eagerly awaiting its return.

"I would like to think that SpaceWays Weekly achieved two things; 1) that it helped new writers to get started into the field of being published and 2) that it helped to promote the concept of electronic publishing as a viable alternative to the rising cost of printed material."
Rigel D. Chiokis, Editor

"Friday's won´t be the same. . . ."
Richard Dowling
SpaceWays Weekly subscriber.