Lately there’s been a lot of talk among writers, readers and editors about the death of short sf and f.
Simon Haynes, the Aussie author of the Hal Spacejock series, the author of Mainspring, Jay Lake, and the man known as the Slushmaster, Douglas Cohen of RoF, have all been musing publicly on the state of the market for short fiction. And the state of said market is bad. Yes indeed.
The general consensus seems to be that markets for professional short fiction are shrinking (I’m not talking about ‘zines here, I’m talking about Asimov’s, RoF, F and SF and other such warhorses of the fiction magazine world) and while I have to agree, I’m also not surprised.
I think that as a writer of short fiction I have a greater interest than most in keeping the short fiction market healthy, and I only have one subscription to an sf short fiction magazine (which I got in a fit of joi de vie after said publication purchased a story of mine) and right now, I’m letting it lapse.
I do intend to replace it with another, but I’m not sure which or when. Why let the subscription lapse? Because it often had a gem hidden somewhere, but it was never the sort of magazine that made me go “wow!”. For my sixty five bucks, I want wow, most of the time.
The fact is, it bugs me to spend seven bucks on a magazine that’s loaded with advertisements only to find one short story and maybe a review that enjoy reading. I’d rather spend ten or twelve bucks and get a paperback I’ve been wanting to read (and there’s no shortage of those).
Paperbacks, in fact, eat up just about twenty percent of my personal income every month. That’s almost as much as the grocery bills. So, could the desperate-for-subscriptions short fiction market get a piece of that? Well… maybe. But they’ll have to make some changes.
I was a subscriber to McSweeny’s Believer for years (until I stopped getting it as a Christmas present) and now I buy it fairly regularly, despite the daunting cost (about 20$ per issue).
The Believer is a great way to illustrate my buying habits. It’s monthly, costs twenty bucks, so it shows I’ll shell out regular and considerable amounts for content. And content it has. It runs to about a hundred and fourty pages each issue (versus the, say, fifty pages of regular magazines, less advertisements), contains about ten articles (always interesting and educational) as well as book reviews which were so funny I collected them all and then bought the Polysyllabic Spree so I could pack them around with me.
Part of the reason I’ll lay down Her Majesty for a copy of the Believer is because there’s so much text in every issue. I can justify the cost because I’m essentially buying a novella and I’ll want to read some of the articles again. Plus, the magazine contains no advertising. Color me weird, but the advertising is the one thing that will make me put down what I’m reading. It’s distracting (it’s made that way) and I see enough of it everywhere else. It takes me out of the story and puts me back in the real world. I freaking hate it.
So, short fiction markets, if you want my subscription dollar, you’ll have to meet my demands. I ask three things of short fiction: i) entertain me so that I’ll want to collect the magazine, ii) treat me like I’m a semi intelligent adult and not a prepubescent and iii) cut the advertising (you don’t have to nix it all, but a lot of it has got to go).
If you (you fiction markets out there) do these things then I’ll subscribe. If you make me reach for the dictionary occasionally, or read a new book, I’ll subscribe. If you give me a reading list at the end of every issue, I’ll subscribe. If you have erudite editorials or thought provoking articles, I’ll subscribe.
Lastly, don’t whine about how subscription numbers are down. Don’t weep about the end of the short sf era. If sf markets are dying, there are reasons for the demise. Get to your desks and make some changes.
