The Market for SFF Short Fiction

Recently, I used the controversy over The Offing magazines decision to charge submission fees as the basis for exploring whether the academic model of journal publishing would work for genre (or literary) fiction. I concluded that it might, although acknowledged that my calculations on profitability and my understanding of the market itself were very poor so that I might be very wrong.

Recently, Neil Clarke, the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Forever Magazine, and Upgraded, weighed in with an editorial on the state of the market for short science fiction and fantasy. This spurred a significant debate which revealed a number of facts about the market which have led me to revise my calculations on the feasibility of the academic model for genre fiction. Out of this discussion, I find reasons to be even more optimistic about the prospects of the academic model, but also some reasons to be more pessimistic.

In this post, I will review the debate arising from Clarke's editorial, before returning to my calculations on the feasibility of the academic publishing model in a future post.

Clarke divides the markets for short SFF into those that generate enough revenue to support themselves and those that do not. There are only three magazines that are self-supporting, paying their authors pro rates, compensating their staff and covering overhead and other costs out of revenue raised from sales and advertising:

1. Analog
2. Asimov's
3. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Of those that are not self-supporting, Clarke offers five classifications. I did not find his classification scheme all that useful and instead prefer to classify markets according to where they obtain additional sources of revenue and/or support:

1. Sugar-parents. Supported by a parent company, as with Tor.com and Subterranean (now closed).
2. Staff. Clarke calls them 'conceivable' who pay authors pro rates but rely on editorial staff volunteering their time to make ends meet. I think he includes Clarkesworld here.
3. Authors. Clarke calls them 'hobbyists'. They are distinguished by paying their authors little or nothing.

(Clarke identifies two other groups of publications. First are 'non-profits' including Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I am not sure what he means by them. If they can pay pro rates to authors, can compensate their staff, and can cover overhead, even if they do not make a pure profit, then I think of them as self-supporting; if not, then where is the money coming from?

The second are 'aspirants' who pay pro rates but haven't worked out how to cover costs. Again, I ask: where does the money come from? I presume it is coming from an 'owner' who is also editor, and so I will classify them as staff financed.).

Clarke's article then points to problems in the market for short SFF. The main symptom of a problem is that none of the non-self supporting publications have managed to become self-supporting. Ever. Many have died despite generous fundraising and volunteer efforts from supporters. And, in his opinion, the situation is only going to get worse. As digital publication has become easier and cheaper, more and more publications that aspire to be self-supporting have entered the industry. This has made the competition to publish good stories tough, and the competition to attract new readers fierce. With the total number of readers (and possibly also authors) of short SFF not growing very fast, he sees a declining quality of published stories and thinks the industry is ripe for a market correction. He even encourages increasing the level of pro rates in order to encourage that correction.

There may be some reasons for optimism that Clarke is neglecting. Perhaps the controversy over this years Hugo Awards will attract more people to the genre and, in particular, to the short fiction part of the genre? It has had that effect on me (I have read many times as much short fiction this year as in years past) and perhaps it has affected other people in the same way. But absent this, and absent a reversal in the greying of fandom, he is probably right to be concerned.

A couple of other interesting factoids emerged in the article, or in the ensuing discussion:

1. it costs a lot of distribute a print version. In Clarke's words:

   The amount of money necessary to launch a print-based aspirant-level market with national distribution is staggering. You could fully-fund a digital publication for well over a year with the same amount and that’s not even taking into consideration warehousing expenses, the headaches caused by the distributors and their antiquated returns system, or the USPS and their continually increasing postal costs.

2. On revenue sources, Clarke has more to say in the comments to his own post:

   Sales and advertising are not the only source of revenue magazines should be pursuing, but they are the dominant source of income for the most financially successful. Honestly, advertising is a distant second and can often be ignored by less-established magazines. There are many other sources of income that can add up, but even in total, they are overshadowed by impact that subscriptions/sales can have. Subscriptions may not be the proper course of action for someone who is running a charity, loss-leader (they are making their money elsewhere, probably sales of something else), or hobby, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

3. Clarke has advice for those wishing to start their own magazine:
1. Know when to quit: how much money are you willing to lose?
2. Start small and grow: where do you want to be in three years? Work slowly towards it.
4. Some commentators (for example, this excellent blog post by nerds of a feather) have argued that the market for short SFF is driven almost entirely by aspiring authors of short SFF.
5. This ties into earlier arguments by Jonathan McCalmont, among others, who believe that:

   Genre culture’s ability to produce short fiction now so comprehensively outstrips its ability to engage with short fiction that the odds of any given story receiving much attention are rapidly approaching zero. Dozens of anthologies can drop out of print without ever being reviewed and entire magazines can launch, acquire a following, lose vital editorial staff, and collapse without anyone ever bothering to comment on the nature of their output. Little wonder that Hugo voters now find it almost impossible to pick five short stories that stand out against the deafening hum of cultural production. Increasingly dominated by a suite of free online publications, the genre short fiction scene is becoming a literary niche in which readers are entirely optional. As with academic publishing, many of the institutions supporting genre short fiction are less interested in reaching an audience than they are in providing the rungs for a vast aspirational ladder:
   

   • Your first sale makes you a ‘proper’ writer.
   • Your 10,000th published word makes you a ‘professional’ writer.
   • Your first appearance in a Year’s Best anthology makes you a ‘notable’ writer.
   • Your first appearance on an award ballot makes you a ‘promising’ writer.

6. Nerds of a feather also argues that we need more short SFF magazines focused on publishing the kind of SFF that's sells well in longer formats. What kind is this? In an echo of the puppy complaints, it is " what might variously be called 'popular' or 'commercial' genre fiction" and not "self-consciously 'literary' stories where science fictional or fantastic elements function as literalized metaphors." McCalmont makes similar arguments about publications needing to find a consistent voice and contrasts the recently released Uncanny and Terraform magazines.
7. In a series of tweets, Clarkesworld have revealed more information about their business model:
1. Data on submissions by author. From October 2014 to September 2015:

   More interesting data. In the last year (Oct-Sept), 75% of all submissions were by authors who only sent us one story in that period.

   — clarkesworld (@clarkesworld) October 2, 2015

   14% sent two, 5% sent three, 2.5% sent four, 1.4% sent five. Most we received from one author was 25.

   — clarkesworld (@clarkesworld) October 2, 2015

2. The link between submitting authors and readership is weak:

   We saw an increase of over 200 submissions a month simply because we changed the guidelines. No change in readership +/- 3 months.

   — clarkesworld (@clarkesworld) October 2, 2015

3. The size of their market:

   Ok, we have over 35K online readers/3K subscribers/10K listeners. Even assuming overlap, it doesn't map to the number of authors submitting.

   — clarkesworld (@clarkesworld) October 2, 2015

Overall, I take two things away from this discussion. First, the perception that the bulk of the readership of SFF magazines are aspiring writers in the genre is not exactly true (see points 2 and 3 from Clarkesworld's twitter feed), but they are significant. To the extent that this 'aspirational ladder' exists, the academic model has a good chance of success. Second, the size of the market for short fiction is smaller than I had thought. This necessitates significant changes in the way an academic style SFF magazine would have to fund itself.

I'll return to this in tomorrow's post.