Archive for the ‘SF Business’ Category

Today’s Market Health Question: How Many Readers Are There?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

How many indi­vid­u­als, all told in the English speak­ing world, do you think cur­rently read SF/​F short fic­tion, by which I mean read at least one story pub­lished in the past year? Do you think that num­ber is grow­ing or shrink­ing? Explain your num­ber, if you can. My thoughts after the jump.I don’t think the num­ber could be more than 35,000 peo­ple. This is a totally soft num­ber, and I’m guess­ing based on dou­bling the sub­scrip­tion fig­ure of the largest print mag­a­zine, which is as good of a method as I can think of. I sus­pect that we can’t just total up all the sub­scrip­tion num­bers because there’s a huge over­lap between the groups.

If that num­ber is even close to being right, it sure does make genre short fic­tion seem like the most niche of activities…

Now China and it’s SF mag­a­zine… that’s around half a mil­lion? I keep com­ing back to that. There’s some­thing in that num­ber, in that size that I can learn from, that is telling of the sit­u­a­tion, but I can­not fig­ure it out.

Honestly, after being in London, I am sur­prised short fic­tion isn’t more pop­u­lar than it is. Everyone on the tubes appeared to be read­ing some­thing. I saw a lot of books, but mostly the free papers. Has any­one ever tried to do a free paper con­sist­ing of fic­tion? I need to read up on the eco­nom­ics of those free papers. You could get one at every sin­gle tube sta­tion, from one of sev­eral people.

SF Magazines: Financial Models

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

For my own ben­e­fit as much as any­thing else, I’d like to run through the mod­els that I am aware of that can be used to finan­cially sup­port a magazine–whether it is a print or an elec­tronic mag­a­zine. Here’s what I got. If I miss any, please let me know and I will con­tinue to update this. These are not mutu­ally exclu­sive. Many mag­a­zines use a com­bi­na­tion of these.

Subscription/​Pay Model

Giving the con­tent in return for a sub­scrip­tion fee or a cover price. Generally sell­ing a bun­dle of stories/​content. Example: tra­di­tional print magazines.

Advertising Model

Selling access to your read­ers to adver­tis­ers, and plac­ing their adver­tis­ing among your con­tent. Example: most tra­di­tional print mag­a­zines sell adver­tis­ing as well.

Patron Model

Supported by a sin­gle per­son or small pri­vate group of peo­ple from pri­vate funds. Example: The Fortean Bureau was pri­mar­ily our pri­vate money. (If you ever donated? You are my hero).

Donation/​Fund Drive model

The NPR model, as I’ve heard it referred to. Regular requests for funds from read­ers, with no set amount. Example: Strange Horizons is the most suc­cess­ful exam­ple of this. I believe Escape Pod does this as well, but I haven’t seen any fund dri­ves from them.

Full Site Sponsorship

A sin­gle cor­po­rate entity, for what­ever rea­son, sub­si­dizes the mag­a­zine. Example: SCIFICTION. I seem to think Chizine as well?

Premium Content

Special access to spe­cial con­tent. A kind of sub­scrip­tion model. I’m not sure about this one, what do you guys think? Is it dif­fer­ent enough? Example: Salon used to do this, but I am not sure if they do anymore.These mod­els are irrel­e­vant as to whether a mag­a­zine is non­profit, hobby, or for-​​profit. Many of these mod­els are con­sid­ered fail­ures. Which ones do you think work or don’t? Perhaps the best solu­tion for a sus­tain­able mag­a­zine (online or off) would be a com­bi­na­tion of 3 or more?

I am not sure that the sub­scrip­tion model is work­ing very well any­more. As Chance pointed out in the com­ments of the Triad post yes­ter­day, com­par­ing Escape Pod to the Triad isn’t a good com­par­i­son because Escape Pod doesn’t have a cost to sub­scribe. I argued that just because the one has a dif­fer­ent model for sup­port than the other doesn’t mean that they can’t be com­pared as “mag­a­zines” with readerships.

Steve, I know you some­times read this– could you tell me or pro­vide me a link to where you might talk more about the fund­ing model behind Escape Pod? Chance argues that Escape Pod is your hobby, as another rea­son that the sub­scriber num­bers can’t be com­pared. I’d like to know more about how Escape Pod affords to func­tion, if you’re com­fort­able talk­ing about it.

The Central Problem with SFWA’s Main Website, And Solutions

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The Central Problem with SFWA’s Main Website, And Solutions

The cen­tral prob­lem with the func­tion­al­ity of SFWA’s web­site is that it doesn’t know who it is attempt­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with. This is under­stand­able, as there are sev­eral pos­si­ble audi­ences for the SFWA web­site: a poten­tial mem­ber, the mem­ber, and the gen­eral inter­ested pub­lic. You might argue that indus­try members/​publishers/​editors are also another audi­ence, but I would just group them in with the gen­eral public.

A lesser prob­lem is that the site is sim­ply dated in design. A quick look at the html code indi­cates pretty seman­tic mark-​​up, but an odd mix of inline styling and stylesheets. There’s a heavy dose of javascript required for the drop-​​down menus to func­tion, which I think is just fine. The links mostly lack title attrib­utes, which might cause prob­lems down the road with show­ing up prop­erly in search engines, but prob­a­bly not a huge deal there. But the real prob­lem is that it just isn’t very inter­est­ing to look at. This is the group of peo­ple that have inspired more big-​​budget amaz­ing action pic­tures with cool eye candy than any other genre of fic­tion. Their web­site should rep­re­sent this, while still being designed with acces­si­bil­ity in mind, of course. But there is a lot you could do to spice up the look.

The infor­ma­tion and tools are orga­nized in a fairly hap­haz­ard way. Why is the Search tool grouped with with the mem­ber login and con­tact infor­ma­tion? Why does the “Why should I join SFWA?” infor­ma­tion take prece­dence on the front page over the press infor­ma­tion? I would rethink the orga­niz­ing and impor­tance of infor­ma­tion here. The piracy cam­paign stuff? I would remove it entirely. It’s an impor­tant issue prob­a­bly, but does it really deserve such front page real estate? Also, I’m sorry, but web rings went out of style in 1998. This really serves to make the page look dated. Of all the pro­fes­sional writ­ing orga­ni­za­tions I looked at, the only one still fea­tur­ing a web ring is SFWA. That goes for the badge images as well. These are all signs of a designer that hasn’t really kept with the times, and are more indica­tive of a pri­vate web­site than a pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tion. If you dis­agree with me, just scroll down to the links entry on this blog from a few days ago and look at the other orga­ni­za­tions. Even the worst of them have this right. SFWA’s web­site should get it right too.

Among other sug­ges­tions I will be detail­ing in the future, I rec­om­mend chunk­ing the nav­i­ga­tional infor­ma­tion together bet­ter. Focus the outward-​​facing web­site for prospec­tive mem­bers and the gen­eral pub­lic and remove all infor­ma­tion for exist­ing mem­bers to the log-​​in sec­tion. Prominently fea­ture a log-​​in screen some­where on the page for mem­bers, but have the site behind that be designed to their needs. It’s a dif­fer­ent project and a dif­fer­ent site.

Also, I highly rec­om­mend using some of the wasted screen space now to include a side­bar that rotates on a ran­dom basis from a list of sub­mit­ted authors. Call this Featured Member and have it include 50 words on an author along­side a nice photo of the author or the cover of their lat­est book.

Junk every­thing in the right col­umn and start over, basi­cally. None of that belongs here. And it’s all ugly and out­dated in look.

So these are just a few of my ini­tial thoughts on the web­site. As I am not a mem­ber, I can’t really speak for the pri­vate mate­ri­als behind the login page, but I think there is plenty of work to be done on the public-​​facing side of things.

Jason Stoddard Has a Blog (And He Knows How to Use it)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Jason Stoddard, a fan­tas­tic SF author that we pub­lished in the last issue of the Fortean Bureau, and with whom I have shared at least one issue of Interzone, I believe, has a blog, and lately, he’s using it to pro­pose a model for a SF mag­a­zine that could not only sur­vive, but thrive, in our cur­rent media envi­ron­ment. He says many things I have been try­ing to say for the last five years, and says them a hell of a lot bet­ter than I can. For instance:

Great. Now go back and read the above. Yeah, there are a bil­lion blogs out there, but most of them are noth­ing more than an exten­sion of a sophomore’s Livejournal. You’re the edi­tor of a major pub­li­ca­tion, or a pro­fes­sional writer. You have inter­est­ing things to talk about. Hell, you have con­tent. Set it free. There’s end­less inter­est in proto-​​science-​​fiction com­mu­ni­ties such as Slashdot, SomethingAwful, and BoingBoing about pub­li­ca­tions and authors. Use this.

YES, god yes. Listen to this man. How in the world SF mag­a­zines got left in the dust on the web rev­o­lu­tion is com­pletely beyond me. Time to catch up. Now. Or cease to be.