Having trouble figuring out what to say. "Dear [Sci-Fi Artist or Writer], your work is amazing, and..."

I'm the poster child for both failure and success in idealistic sustainable independent SFF -- Straight talk from someone who creates and supports professional indie scifi work:

This does not appeal to professionals. It's somewhere between an inexperienced startup and PR pitch. I would pass over it in my Inbox unanswered. Basically you want to rehost assets with no pay to the creator in exchange for exposure -- which you can't actually provide. We're looking for numbers/rights talk, or some asset in exchange that has value to us. Cashless promotional exchanges and deals are fine at times, but again that's numbers talk (we have x unique users or x subscribers or can guarantee x traffic or x sales and only need x amount of your time). Most small press involvement is interview (Q&A) and we provide some promotional assets like a movie poster or book cover and what we get back in return is a great interview or review asset as well as promotion with numbers behind it. I gave an interview to a zine published by one guy 4x a year (his small project) because his ask was succinct and professional, his layout and editorial work was solid, the numbers were solid and upfront (1k SFF readers) and he made it clear that it would only take a 20 minute Q&A over video chat on my part. Easy. Enjoyable. No exploitation of artist's work/labor.

John Scalzi has a few pages on his site of great info on how to engage with him about his work and time, and it's pretty much the most universal thing you'll find in regard to approaching a professional creator.

Good luck!

/r/scifi Thread