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Difficult Times For SF Magazines
Lawrence Person writes "Another speculative fiction magazine folds: Realms of Fantasy is ceasing publication. This comes hot on the heels of the announcement that the venerable Fantasy and Science Fiction will be moving from a monthly to a bimonthly schedule, and underscores what a tough environment this is for science fiction and fantasy magazines, all of which have suffered declining circulation for quite some time. This is a real problem, since short fiction is generally where new writers cut their teeth, appearing in print alongside their more famous peers. Given that a one-year subscription costs less than the average video game, those with an interest in science fiction might want to consider buying subscriptions to Asimov's, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Analog. (Those in the UK might want to add Interzone and/or Black Static and Postscripts as well.)"
The issue (pardon the pun) is that having one's story in print physically sitting on store shelves gives one significantly more notority than having a story on a website. Internet only, its extremely difficult to separate the good writings from someone's crossover slash fanfic of Drizzt on Legolas while being flogged by Commander Rico under the supervision of Corwin, with many Lensmen watching the show.
I am going to subscribe to the magazines mentioned. Even if I don't read them, there is something nice about reading a book and quality fiction, as opposed to having to separate the good stuff from the garbage. Call me an old fogie, but I can't bear to sit on a computer and read even a short story. I rather buy a book.
There's a "Science Fiction" bookstore near where I live, and they've shifted gradually towards carrying mostly fantasy.
Genuine Science Fiction has always been rather thin on the ground. Doing it well is *hard*. Hal Clement was one who did it well. Larry Niven occasionally did it well. (Known Worlds series incl. Ringworld et seq.)
Currently I only know of Charles Stoss, though there may be others. (I've cut back on my reading a lot.)
But a thing to note is...the Science Fiction book store near me doesn't care the magazines regularly. They can't get the distributors to deliver them. And this is in the SF Bay Area, California, USA. Books they can get, but not magazines.
Unfortunately, in my opinion the quality of the single magazine I followed regularly, Analog(Astounding) has also deteriorated. Significantly. Very significantly. So much so that a subscription is practically a waste of money. (There have been a few periods when I also regularly followed Galaxy or Worlds of If...but those are now decades in the past.)
And it's not that I don't still like good Science Fiction...or even good fantasy. I still buy many books. (*Almost* all of which I count as fantasy of one sort or another...but NOT Science Fiction.)
I wish Randall Garrett had lived. *He* could have written decent Science Fiction in the current age. (He wasn't just the Lord Darcy series. There were long periods when he was the most prolific writer that J.W. Campbell had writing for him...under lots of pseudonyms.) He wouldn't have written the same stories that Charles Stoss writes...and nobody will ever know what he would have written. Sigh.
But, in my opinion, most of the magazines don't really deserve to live. It's a real pity, because the magazines is where authors used to develop their skills. Now ... now there doesn't seem to be any decent place for such development. Which means that the people who can become authors are far fewer.
On line? Who pays for on line? IMHO that only works if you are already a well enough known name that a publisher will pick up your work anyway. (I.e., even if they don't have exclusive rights to distribution.) A few authors can get away with that.
Science Fiction has always been a shoe-string operation. And SF magazines have always been VERY highly dependent upon their editor. A change of editors can make a weak magazine or break a strong one. Astounding/Analog was extremely lucky in having Campbell for so long. Galaxy was lucky in HL Gold. Asimov's ... faded rapidly when he did. I don't think that Stanley Schmidt was as good an editor as Campbell (average rating...Campbell sure had his off periods!), but he was more than adequate. But he didn't keep the spark going. He didn't have the fire that inspires authors and readers. Recently...I haven't been following. Occasionally I see one and pick it up. But rarely...meaning I rarely see one. When I do see one, I'm rarely inspired to buy it.
All magazines are falling off, but Science Fiction magazines have always lived closer to the edge...so any fall off in business affects them more profoundly.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They can make more selling google ads on any blog site than they ever could have getting published in a low-volume sifi rag.
Speaking from experience:
Bullshit.
Seriously. It's not as easy, nor as profitable, as you think. Furthermore, your stupid (and it really is stupid) assumption that a blog will provide the same kind of exposure is...well, exactly that: stupid. The magazines are used to find out who are the good authors. Somebody published in Analog is automatically considered better than Joe Fuckstick who posts his stories on a blog, no matter how many readers he has. The separation of wheat from chaff is largely done there.
(This excludes stuff like Jim Baen's Universe, which are online magazines of wonderful quality. You can get Analog and the rest through Fictionwise just fine, too, however, though that's not where the majority of their subscribers come from by any means.)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I publish a magazine, so I understand what the problem is:
When the magazine is printed, one pile gets sent to the magazine distributor who gets them to the bookstores.
They have a relatively efficient system and they get to the stores in a timely manner.
The other pile goes to the mailing distributor who puts labels on them and then they are at the mercy of the USPS.
These are NOT sent First Class Mail, but Periodical rate or "STANDARD" (used to be called BULK)
It can take from a week to 4 weeks for the mailed copies to make their way across the USA.
I have seen people on both coasts get theirs while other people that are a 6 hour drive from where they were originally mailed wait 4 weeks!
Some mail bags are held until there is "enough" mail to get moved from a main USPS point to someplace else. All this used to work much better when there was a lot of other BULK mail in the system, but now that there is less, a lot of this stuff just sits waiting for enough for a full truckload or something.
It is extremely frustrating and has gotten much worse in the last year.
This is how it works for smaller publications.
Larger ones like TIME, NEWSWEEK, etc have their own PRIVATE Distribution system that gets all the magazines delivered to the main Post Offices around the country so they can ALL be delivered on a Friday or Saturday and that is when they also hit the Newstands.
They can benefit from the economies of scale of their operation, smaller pubs cannot.
I like microcars
I pretty much agree with you. I've read a shit load of fantasy and s.f. over the years, but as I've gotten older, I've found much of it less satisfying. The truth of the matter as I see it is that a large portion of fantasy/s.f. is akin to those trashy romance books that my grandmother used to read by the hundred. They're geek porn.
Just to be clear, it's not the the entire genres are bad--it's that a lot of what is popular and people read are popcorn fluff. There's still a lot of really good fantasy and s.f. lit out there, it's just not always readily apparent.
Can't someone post an oppositional opinion on slashdot without being modded "troll" or "flamebait" or the even more senseless "overrated"? The guy's got a right to an opinion, however off the beaten path he may be.
The entire publishing industry--magazines, newspapers, and books--is in trouble these days; the traditional hard copy distribution system is breaking down and there's no clear alternative that will provide authors and publishers a similar level of employment.
Millions of us have basically switched from reading books (or watching TV, which is the original book-and-magazine killer) during evenings and weekends to interactive media--cable/satellite TV and, increasingly, the internet.
Probably a majority of people now get their daily news hit from the internet, and after a couple of hours of surfing there's just not much mental space left to sit down with a magazine, except maybe on the toilet.
I foresee a time when hard copy is basically a thing of the past, with some kind of cheap, reusable or recyclable programmable paper replacing grab-and-read magazines at the supermarket check-out line (if indeed we will still have supermarkets). I think Neal Stephenson in "The Diamond Age" did a great job describing future books and magazines with multimedia graphics dancing on the pages in place of plain old static ink.
Since there's still a huge market for creating compelling content, it stands to reason that we'll find a way to charge for it. Maybe in the end it will come down to advertising or else a pay-if-you-like-it approach that will probably eliminate the large production houses that make movies and TV shows today.
I used to love taking home a science fiction magazine--Analog was my favorite--but today there's just so much stuff available for free, and real life has caught up with so much of science fiction today that it seems more interesting to read about real world developments. Isaac Asimov in an introduction to one of his collections wrote about growing up in the 1920s and 1930s when real world science progressed at a much slower pace, and every new issue of Analog had this special glow around it as he retrieved it from the magazine rack and paid his ten cents. Now that was a time!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I was reading in my comfortable chair, three feet away from where I'm now typing this.
Am I the only one who still finds it more comfortable to curl up with a book than to read a screen?
I really, really like modern digital stuff as much as any slashdotter out there but a book, or magazine, is still a superior technology in many ways: it needs no power, it's durable, I can stuff it into a pocket and take it with me, I can read anywhere there's enough light, from any position I find comfortable; if I lose it or drop it in the bathtub, no big whoop.
Some of these advantages would go away if I had one of these new-fangled readers, I suppose, rather than the laptop I mostly use but dead trees are still more "user-friendly".