This morning on Slashdot I read that the March 2009 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction will be the last monthly issue published. From now on, the magazine will be a little longer, and will only come out every two months.
You can read Gordon Van Gelder's explanation for the change in format here.
But the Slashdot article I read, titled Difficult Times for SF Magazines, was actually announcing that Realms of Fantasy has folded.
It's no news that speculative fiction genre magazines haven't been selling well. I've seen theories for the decline from editors and fans blaming everything from the economy to the short attention span of the TV-internet generation. But I think an even bigger problem is that many magazines have misunderstood their audience.
Spec fiction fans are usually technophiles. They're excited about the future, the latest technologies, the coolest new ways of reading books, watching movies, and experiencing their favorite fictional worlds.
Mass market genre fiction magazines seem to think, for some reason, that their readers want to walk into a brick and mortar store, pick up a dead tree magazine off a rack, and purchase it. Or that they possibly want to wait for their magazine to show up in their mailbox, slightly dirty and dog-eared- and often after it is already available for sale in bookstores. Old-fashioned distribution is simply not cool enough for people with their eyes on the future!
Asimov's Science Fiction isn't folding or going bimonthly. Their homepage offers me a free podcast of a story read by the author. Their special e-Asimov page lets me know that I can get their magazine as a Fictionwise eBook, or on the Kindle. Oh, and the free podcast pointed out that their favorite authors have plenty of short story content on audible.com that I can enjoy on my iPod.
F&SF had to go bimonthly. F&SF is not available on the Kindle. There are links to eReader, Fictionwise, and Audible on the F&SF home page- but the links are at the very bottom of the page, and I didn't even see that the links existed until I got a comment on this post from the magazine's editor pointing out my error. Maybe it was just me who missed those links, but there's no doubt the Asimov's webpage draws more attention to their electronic formats at the top of their page.
The folding Realms of Fantasy isn't even on Fictionwise- at least, when I searched for the magazine on Fictionwise, the results yielded nothing but an erotica novel. Realms of Fantasy is not available on Kindle.
Perhaps the problem of folding and shrinking magazines isn't the state of the economy or an unwillingness of spec fiction fans to read. Perhaps magazines are offering content in an outdated format inappropriate to their audience, and could do a better job marketing toward their technophile target fans.
2 comments:
There's a link to Fictionwise right on our home page, along with a link to eReader.
---Gordon V.G.
Fair enough. I did not see links to Audible, Fictionwise, and eReader at the bottom of the home page.
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