Inchiostro (this is the May/August 2008 issue) is an A4 100 page Italian magazine (4 euros) for budding writers, available in newsagents of a few big cities, in a few bookshops elsewhere, and by subscription. It focusses on publishing stories rather than market information, which makes it rather like the UK's Transmission. It's survived for 14 years, so it must be doing something right. Here's the winning formula: 16 stories of about 2000 words (8 mainstream, 6 SF/F, 1 Noir, 1 scene from a play), 3 pages of poetry, 2 pages on a selected publisher (interview with publisher and an author, plus a book review), 6 Flash pieces, 8 pages of Web/Book reviews, 2 pages of letters, a page of sentences that could start a story, a section on SF/Fantasy, half a page of news and half a page explaining why 12 other stories didn't quite make it. I can't easily judge the quality, though the subject matter's rather male-oriented (only 25% of the writers' names in this issue are female).
Authors aren't paid and waive all rights to future royalties. All the same, were it English I'd send stuff to them. The magazine offers an evaluation service for 60 euros.
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