Personally, I think if you can do print, do it. But electronic editions should be a given. It costs maybe an hour of your time to take your files and convert them into the popular formats. There are websites that do it for you. If anyone wants to know about those, I’ll dig up the links.
Cory Doctorow has talked about this in the past, and I agree with him. Sell a normal subscription for print, but those people get a free electronic version as well. The electronic version supports the print version. It’s easier to search, and, honestly, easier to share, which at the size we’re talking about? People pirating your stories around is a good thing. Anything that makes it easier for people to spread the word about your publication is a plus.
Also, sell a cheaper straight electronic version. If someone really wants to just get a PRC file every month, then let them. But I think you’ll find that the electronic version is a selling point of the print version. I can’t guarantee it will increase sales, but I think it’s the best of both worlds. It’s your chocolate in my peanut butter, my peanut butter in your chocolate. Mmmm!
I’d be ecstatic if every book I bought came with an electronic version so that I can search it afterwards, or even better, while I’m waiting for the book to arrive via Amazon. In fact, yesterday, I ordered some web application design texts and after I placed my order, Amazon tried to sell me a $15 e-book copy of one of the books so I could start reading right away. That’s great–only I sure as hell ain’t going to pay another $15 for a $50 book for that promise (and probably find that it is full of DRM that prevents me from really using it).
There are things I can do so much better on a computer or e-reader than I can do with a book. But paper is still easier to read until we see e-ink really take off (the Kindle is apparently cool, but I’ve never seen one in the wild). The two formats are complimentary, and I’d really like to see someone try out the model I’ve outlined above. I’d subscribe, anyway, and I currently subscribe to no magazines (although that’s a factor more of my recent unemployment than it is any problem with the magazines).
Are you publishing a print zine and giving away e-copies to your subscribers for archiving and easy indexing? Let me know in the comments.
The latest anthology edited by John Joseph Adams, Seeds of Change, is available for pre-order on Amazon now. The table of contents includes Ken Macleod, Tobias S. Buckell, Jay Lake, and many more fine writers. It also includes my story, “Arties Aren’t Stupid,” one of my personal favorites.
The origin for this story came from reading about mad gardeners in Britain creating living graffiti with blendered moss and spray bottles. I wondered what would happen if such people had in their hands something a bit more powerful than a blender, and the story spun off of that concept.
I hope you’ll order a copy, if not for me, than for those other fine writers. I’ve read the anthology, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The ABC series Lost is, quite possibly, the most broadly successful science fiction television show yet. While ratings have been on a decline in this, the fourth season, the season’s premiere pulled in 16.07 million viewers. Now, these are Nielsen numbers, which I consider suspect at best, but it shows that the show is very popular, and almost certainly not just with traditional SFfans (those numbers cannot be accounted for purely by fans). Current episodes have dealt openly with science fiction tropes (which I will not name exactly to avoid spoilers). You could argue about the true classification of the show, but it most certainly falls into science fiction, as well as maybe a couple of other genres.
When the show first started, fans knew something was unusual, but that was a bit subtle. Dozens of people had survived a horrific plane crash, landing on a strange island. Compasses don’t work. There’s a weird radio transmission. And there’s a monster in the jungle that nobody can see.
Still, I suppose, many audience members disinclined to like SF could make the case for the show being in the thriller/mystery genre. And it did have a heavy human, more dramatic element in the form of each episode’s character-centric back story arcs. It wasn’t until late season 2 that things really began to take a turn for the speculative. And even then, it was subtle, just a few elements. But as the show has progressed, it’s become clear that the entire foundation of what the show is about is science fiction (or at least science fantasy).
But as each season has gone on, it has been increasingly impossible for even the most determined to deny that Lost is, at its roots, a science fiction show. You could call the techniques they used to grab their audience bait-and-switch, because the show creators introduced the heavy speculative elements slowly. I’d also call it the frog in a pot of boiling water acclimation method.
My coworker, the Lost fan
An anecdote: I have a coworker who hates science fiction. In his words, he likes “real things.” He despises superhero movies, and pretty much everything a SF fan loves. Early on, the show creators of Lost said in an interview that everything presented on the show had a grounding in real science (something that at this point is highly debatable). Still- my coworker clung to this statement like it was a life preserver. It allowed him to keep watching the show no matter how fantastic things got, because it was still somehow “real.” At this point in the fourth season, he’s pissed off, because he realizes that statement was total bullshit. But he’s still watching, and still hooked.
The reason? A good mystery is compelling no matter what other genre tropes you add to the stew of your story. The characters, after 3 complete seasons, are sympathetic and well-known. All the foundations of a good story are there, to the point that, despite my coworker hating everything there is to hate about science fiction, he is still a huge fan of the show.
This is a good example of how genre is becoming the mainstream. For those fans who would like to see the genre remain distinct and separate, I think this turn of events is going to be a massive disappointment. Reviewing the past events of the show, it almost looks as if the show creators deliberately plotted out their introduction of SF tropes to create the frog in a pot of boiling water effect.
What’s especially fantastic in my mind is that Lost hasn’t given us SF-lite. It slowly introduced the elements, yes, but they are not watered down to be more palatable. We have full-fledged weirdness here. This is a show that Charles Fort would watch and clap his hands with glee.
The potential for new fans
By the time Lost completes its arc, there is going to be a whole new audience primed to accept our stranger ideas. New TV shows will come along to take advantage of this, but maybe, just maybe, SF publishers can lure some of them in too. Frankly, you could do worse than adding even 1% of Lost’s fanbase to your readership. You could do a hell of a lot worse.
I’m sure there are downsides to the mainstreaming of SF tropes. It makes us feel less special and unique, maybe. But as a working creative, I will just have to swallow my pride on that one. With this kind of potential for fans out there, it gives me hope that we could actually make a good living telling genre stories, and not just the ones marketed to an aging, increasingly conservative SF fanbase.
But then, maybe I’m all wrong
But then, the decline in ratings that Lost is suffering right now might be an indicator that the broader audience of Lost has been alienated by the speculative aspects of the show. For the week of May 4, the show didn’t even break the top 20. There may be many reasons why this show is falling in the ratings. And even if it is popular by genre show standards, it pales in comparison to reality shows involving dancing and singing.
A few years ago, we were all upset when SCIFICTION was dropped by the SciFi Channel. The genre lost its best paying market, and arguably the highest quality publication, online or in print. Its departure from the scene left a hole that many have tried to fill, to varying degrees of success. But the world has changed significantly since then.
Today, nearly every publisher, large or small, has some sort of online component. No longer is digital content being largely ignored, as it was when I first came onto the scene in 2001. Baen, Prime Books, Small Beer Press, Tor, just to name a few that have recently or regularly released content online for free. Tor’s coming social networking/publishing site might be the final piece of the puzzle that ties the SF/F community together under one roof (depending on the extent of their social networking tools). I eagerly await the chance to beta test their site.
SCIFICTION and Strange Horizons stood mostly unopposed for a very long time. Smaller, respectable markets flourished, but none of us had the audiences of these two publications. Baen came onto the scene, and shook things up, but I don’t know much about them because their model of the subscriber wall keeps me out. Tor is going to bring in the existing online audience, and I think they have the clout and stable of authors to bring even more readers to online short fiction.
Tor’s entrance onto this stage is going to elevate everyone’s game. With a new giant player on the scene, the smaller publishers are going to be working harder to innovate, harder to stand out. We’ll see even more experimentation. We started out with the online fiction itself as the experiment. Tor’s entrance proves that experiment’s central thesis. People will and do read fiction online, and in great numbers. What’re more, I believe it validates the model of the short fiction as advertisement for long form publishers. Prime Books, Clarkesworld, and Subterranean have pioneered this.
I can’t help but think that we have Cory Doctorow to thank for much of this. I’m sure many people released books online for free before him, but did many who had traditional publishing contracts release their books online in conjunction with the print release? It’s almost certainly his influence that has led Tor to developing their coming site–I’m sure others, such as Patrick Nielsen Hayden and semi-anonymous Tor employees at who I do not know are ultimately responsible for the project, and I don’t want to minimize what they are doing. But Cory blazed the path. That path is turning into a paved road. Soon, it may be a highway.
Who Falls Behind?
I like the fiction in Asimov’s and F&SF very much, but they are beginning to look a bit like large warm-blooded bird ancestors prone to massive extinction by meteor impact. F&SF has made some strides in the online world, with it’s free fiction and blog, but the fiction is mostly pretty old, practically ancient in online terms, and their presentation leaves much to be desired.
Asimov’s web presence has not changed significantly since I first visited their website. It’s a mess, frankly. It’s great that you can buy it for the near-mythic Kindle, and they’ve been available in various e-formats for a long time via Fictionwise. But they have utterly failed to take advantage of the web as a medium. And no, I do not count their septic forums. I haven’t paid much attention to Analog, but I suspect they’re in a similar place, being owned by the same publisher.
What Next?
Who will make the next innovations in publishing? I think it will still be the small, fleet-footed publications like Futurismic, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, and so on. Podcasting, once the sole domain of EscapePod, now has several other major players on the field, even excluding the various EscapePod spinoffs. And remember, their number of listeners outweighs the readership of any print magazine out there. I also think that their listeners are not the same people as the subscribers of magazines. It’s a completely different audience, and ignoring the podcast audience would be like throwing money away at this point. I predict more will offer podcasting supplements to their web presences. Small publishers will begin to investigate developing for the mobile web, and this may call for a different type of fiction, something shorter and leaner. The use of multimedia and artwork is going to grow. A simple site like the Fortean Bureau looks like an Amish buggy compared to the hot rods we’ll be seeing in the next couple of years. I don’t know about you, but I’m very optimistic and excited about the things that are to come. We may not get paid much in the short fiction world, but there are more and more opportunities to connect with audiences. And for readers, there’s never been so many options for your reading experience (which presents its own set of problems).
Hi! My name is Jeremiah Tolbert, but you can call me Jeremy. I am a fantasy and science fiction writer, photographer, and web designer living in Northern Colorado. I am currently starting a new job and cannot take freelance work at this time. Drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I love hearing from new people and I now have a lot more time to chat.
Do you remember that Disney CG film Dinosaurs? It’s original concept involved a feature length movie with animals that only emoted, and never spoke. Having always been a big fan of computer animation, I was excited at the early rumors of the film. Unfortunately, Disney execs got involved and the result was the talky-travesty that [...]
I forget where I got this, but I think that it’s the level of quality I’d like to see in more book trailers online:
Having Tim Curry as a narrator is probably outside of the range of what we can afford as SF/F writers, but still. Let’s go over what makes this awesome:
Located 15 minutes south of Fort Collins, Coyote Ridge is a natural area consisting if a couple hundred acres of prairie. A trail runs from the road up across several ridges. Today, I walked to the base of the second ridge before coming back. I’ll make the full hike to the end [...]
The Dream Zine?
I hear what you’re thinking, “You mean your dream magazine wasn’t the Fortean Bureau?” At the time, it was everything I could make it be with the constraints (financial, content, format) I worked under. And even though the magazine is on semi-permanent hiatus, I still follow the publishing side [...]
Paul Raven made a comment today on his blog comparing the artwork on a couple of different magazine covers. Warren Ellis has recently been on about cover design as well. So I thought today, I’d look at the latest batch of covers for every magazine I could remember, and write some generalized thoughts [...]
