Realms of Fantasy was unceremoniously closed by its publisher this month, and operations are on schedule to shut down completely following the April 2009 issue. Authors whose stories had been purchased for later issues are being returned, and the Realms of Fantasy website is now directing subscribers to reimbursed procedures.
According to Locus.com
“The closure is primarily due to plummeting newsstand sales, the problem currently faced by all of the fiction magazines. ‘We’re shelved in the back of the bookstores,’ says managing editor Laura Cleveland, ‘Nobody can even find us.’
Realms of Fantasy started in 1994, and had been looking forward to publishing its 100th issue this year.”
However, a movement is brewing to keep the much loved magazine alive, and yours truly is part of that movement, even if just a small part. If you are on facebook or livejournal, you can join the “Save Realms of Fantasy” groups and lend your support to the effort.
I asked some authors about the magazine, and here is what they had to say.
Jay Lake said,
“Realms of Fantasy was one of the first pro magazines to give my fiction a home, and editor Shawna McCarthy has been very supportive of my work in the years since. I’m very sad to see the market, with its interesting fiction and high production values, slip away, and only hope that Realms is not a bellwether.”
Tim Pratt said,
“I got my start at Realms of Fantasy. The first professional story I ever sold, “The Witch’s Bicycle,” appeared there in 2003, and over the next few years I had another seven stories in their pages. Shawna McCarthy was the first major editor to see something worthwhile in my work, and her support was invaluable for letting me know I was on the right track with my strange stories. It was always an extra special treat to have stories in Realms because of the beautiful illustrations, commissioned individually for each story, and I was lucky to receive gorgeous art to go along with my fiction. I have some of those illustrated pages razored out of the magazine, framed, and hanging on the wall over my desk as a source of inspiration and delight. As a reader, too, it was one of my favorite magazines — I discovered new writers in Realms, and welcomed new stories by writers I already loved, and enjoyed the non-fiction, too, especially Terri Windling’s folklore columns. I truly thought I would be publishing stories there for many years to come. The loss of Realms of Fantasy leaves a hole. A little bit of light has gone out of the world.”
Josh Rountree, author of Can’t Buy Me Faded Love, said,
“I was fortunate enough to have seven stories published in Realms of Fantasy over the last five years, and everyone I dealt with at the magazine was great to work with. My condolences to Shawna, Doug, Laura and everyone else at the mag. I will miss Realms of Fantasy both as a reader and a writer. The loss of Realms is a great loss to short fiction.”
Cat Rambo, co-editor of Fantasy Magazine, said,
“I’m sorry to see Realms go. It consistently published some of the best writers in the field.”
Following just days after the announcement of Realms closing is news that the magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is switching to a bi-monthly schedule starting with the April/May issue. Editor Gordon Van Gelder said at the F&SF blog that
“Each issue will be 256 pages (16 pages longer than our last Oct/Nov issue) except for this year’s anniversary issue, which will be a jumbo.”
Van Gelder cited rising costs and the hurting economy as factors for the move, but the changes will only lead to a 10% decrease in the magazine’s published word count. I applaud Van Gelder for the change. Creative thinking like this is what magazine publishing needs as consumers are faced with an increase array of options for their disposable income.
All in all, this means that authors, established and unpublished alike, have one less professional magazine to submit to, leaving Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, and Asimov’s as the final remaining big three. Realms was rarely put in the company of the big three, it seemed to me, but it deserves to be there for its content, quality, and contributions to the field of speculative fiction.
But this brings another issue to mind. Are magazines slave to bookseller placement? Are people less interested in short fiction, or have magazines simply competed themselves to death? Have you been to a Borders lately? There are thousands of magazines to choose from, and the likelihood of someone stumbling across an issue of Realms is virtually non-existent.
Magazine sales across the board are down. Why pay money for pictures and text when most of the content you find in magazines can be accessed for free on the web? Why purchase Realms of Fantasy when I can read Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Lone Star Stories for free? I hate to say this, but my dollars are precious, so what’s in it for me?
Now, let me back up and say this: I am not implying that magazines are dead (but they are in trouble, I think), nor am I saying that people won’t buy them. I have purchased many issues of Realms from the newsstand. I enjoyed it, but we need to understand that few people are going to do that. That is self-evident in that the magazine has shut down. There is too much competition in the marketplace.
If print magazines are going to not just survive but thrive, they need to rev up the marketing machine and give people a reason to buy. This doesn’t have to be expensive, nor must it be complicated. I hope Realms can be saved, and if it is, the folks in charge need to think seriously about their business model and their competition, or we’re just delaying the inevitable. Where are the PDF versions, the interactive online communities, the online subscription counterparts complete with bonus podcasts, interviews, widgets, wallpaper, and more?
Publishing great stories isn’t enough these days. You need to be where people are, and you need to excite their digital space. Don’t expect them to come to you. Give them a reason to buy, and they will buy.
Those are my thoughts. What are your?
Hey, Shaun, just a quick note to say Gordon Van Gelder’s last name is Van Gelder, not Gelder.
Just like mine is van Eekhout, or Van Eekhout, but not Eekhout.
We vans gotta have each other’s backs!
One thing I just realized (and didn’t think to mention it to you when we chatted today) was that back when i was more active on MySpace I friended F&SF. When I looked at their page I was startled to see how many people had left comments “I had never heard of this magazine! I love science fiction! I’m going to check it out!”
So there’s an obscurity problem it seems the Internet can help dispel.
Thanks, Greg. Fixed. But you can’t just leave a correction without adding a comment to the article! Come on, dude! LOL
That is scary, Mur. But it also shows how much potential there is for magazines to get online and introduce their product to readers.
Having worked at some of the more venerable SF magazines, it will take a radical shift in mindset for their marketing to change. When you’re part of a corporate publishing structure, it can be difficult to move into new venues. It’s rarely a case of one person deciding something and then it happens (as it can in small magazines). More likely, there’s a whole raft of people that need to be convinced that something is worthwhile, and I unfortunately think there’s a lot of publishing that hasn’t grasped where the world has moved in the Internet Age. It’s not an editorial assistant can decide he’s going to create and maintain a Facebook fan page without getting approval from above.
This isn’t to say it can’t happen or it hasn’t happened (see Tor.com), but periodicals have worked for so long based on the three-legged stool of subscriptions, ad sales, and newsstand sales. Newsstand sales for genre magazines are terrible, and ad sales are drying up as people suffer through this economy.
Shifting to the web (as a publishing medium, not a marketing medium) isn’t necessarily feasible either, since sustaining their current system of expenses would be very difficult without a product to sell to the public. Maybe places like Baen’s Universe or Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show will prove to be a viable way for the big three to move online. Or perhaps it will be the model of Strange Horizons (donations) or Clarkesworld and Fantasy Magazine (supported through book sales).
I think we are on the cusp of something big.
You mention several great examples, John. I also like what Weird Tales is doing with their website. Perhaps print magazines can’t flourish under the control of corporate America, then? Do we need individuals or small businesses to lead the way?
Print genre magazines certainly can’t flourish under corporate America the way that distribution and postal costs have changed over the past two decades.
I think publishing in general is suffering the same way the rest of the country is, the large corporate structures are not holding up under their own weight. Whereas smaller places have a lot less overhead and can have flourishing success with more moderate sales. A book that sells 5,000 copies for Night Shade or Small Beer performs a lot better for the parent company than a similar book for Tor or Del Rey.
I’m very interested to see what happens with F&SF since that’s a strange amalgam of big and small. It’s one of the largest SF magazines, but it’s run by essentially one person. That lends itself to Gordon doing a lot of work to maintain the size, and little time/energy left to grow into new markets. And, like the Night Shade or Small Beer example, with Gordon’s low overhead (compared to Dell Magazines and Asimov’s/Analog) he can be successful with smaller numbers.
That doesn’t mean things don’t need to change further; it just means that Gordon has a better chance of thriving/surviving longer than the other magazines.
My question is: Why aren’t some of the big magazines latching on to POD technology, eBooks, web-based fiction, etc.? It seems only logical that these magazines would evolve with the times.
These are very interesting times. Everyone in the publishing industry needs to look at their business models and see how they can adapt to the changing times. Cheaper methods of advertising and getting the word out will help. I never heard of most of the magazines out there for SF like F&SF and Analog. Never heard of them till I stumbled upon them.
I know they can’t afford tv spots, but they can probably afford to get on with google ads. Maybe some sort of “Get a free issue with every new reader you get to subscribe for a year.” Send out newsletters via email to people who sign up. Make a blog. Ask your writers to go to their local B&N and perhaps autograph the magazine that’s in store. Little things that aren’t expensive and gets other people involved. Maybe something like if you sign up for 2 or X numbers of years, you get a, for example, F&SF thermos. Ya know, I bet people would sign up for that extra year because some of them might just be needing a thermos. Reminds me I need to get one… SHirts, bumper stickers, all this stuff that is free to make and use something like cafe press to handle.
These are the times to be creative. By our nature, we writers are creative. Time to drop the idea of thinking outside the box, and unleashing all the creativity that is present in the publishing industry.
Thanks Shaun, this was a very interesting read. Keep up the good work. I look forward to future podcasts and posts!
Thanks stopping by, David. You have some great ideas.
And I want to add that I certain support paying for short fiction. I do so myself, and I donate to podcasts and magazines. But we need to be mindful that with so much free content available, we can’t assume that readers will part with their dollars when free stuff is available.
That would be like me charging people 5 bucks a month for this podcast. Why would they do that with I Should be Writing and Dragonpage are free?
But. . . um. . . would anyone pay it? 🙂
John, I totally agree with the large corporate structures sagging under their own weight. The larger the company, the more waste. I don’t know Gordon personally, but I know he is passionate about his magazine. He seems really smart to me, and if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on F&SF being around for a long time.
David, you’re absolutely right. I think there’s certain amount of inertia that’s keeping SF magazine publishing the way it is. You have a lot of people that have been in the industry for more than 20 years, who have seen all sorts of things, and in their mind, they know what works and what doesn’t.
Obviously the model we’ve been following for decades now is no longer sustainable. I think the argument you’d hear from places is “We tried that before and it didn’t work” or “Promotional items create new subscriptions, but they don’t create new subscribers” (meaning they don’t renew, which ties into content). To which I say, poppycock. I’m not afraid to try things again and see if things have changed since the last time.
I created a small Google ad campaign ($15/month) and I get hundreds of visitors every month to my site from it. You know that if Asimov’s or someone spent the $50/month that’s recommended (or more) that they’d get a lot more traffic. And they should be able to find some interns who would run Facebook/Twitter/Whatnot for the price of a free subscription.
In the end, though, I think genre short fiction is going online. And I don’t think charging for content will work. So the publisher has to devise some other means for sustaining the work.
And then I look at something like McSweeney’s and you have to wonder how it’s surviving. How does it work? Each issue is $24. Often their issues are hardcover, or have some insane design that includes a comb or a tri-fold cover. Of course, I think it works since they’re appealing to the broad field of all readers rather than the subset of genre readers. This is all just thinking out loud you know.