Recommended Reading: Diverse Fantasy Novels

Catherine Kovach has an interesting listicle entitled 15 Diverse Magical Fantasy Novels To Read ASAP over at Bustle.com. The focus is on books with characters that are from diverse backgrounds, and not necessarily on books by authors from those backgrounds.

I had heard of only a few:

1. The Girl With Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boronson
2. Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
3. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
4. Huntress by Malinda Lo
5. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
6. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
7. Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
8. Minion by L.A. Banks
9. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh
10. Luminous by Dawn Metcalf
11. All Our Pretty Songs by Sara McCarry
12. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
13. Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
14. Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey
15. A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files

As I've mentioned before, while I am not prepared to sign up for K Tempest Bradford's challenge, I am trying to broaden my reading horizons. I think there are some very good options in this list (even after excluding Neil Gaiman). 

You can read brief synopses of each at the original link.

More on the Publishing Industry

In addition to recently writing about the market for short fiction (which I have done here, here, here, and here), I have also been writing about the market for longer fiction and the publishing industry as a whole (here and here). Much of the debate in the latter has been about low incomes and sales for literary fiction, as well as about the relative role of eBook versus print and traditional versus independent publishers.

My summary of this debate was that, although the data are limited and hard to interpret, I thought that the fiction market was in decent shape driven by the expansion of independent publishers, but also supported by some strength (if not strong growth) in the sales of traditional publishers. I figure that the experiments that traditional publishers have been running with the pricing of eBooks probably explain some of their recent declining sales results and especially the decline in their share of eBooks. Much the same conclusion was reached by Mathew Ingram at Fortune in No, e-book sales are not falling, despite what publishers say.

These opinions have only been strengthened by the recent research that I have read. Or more accurately, by the older research that I have only recently read about the industry and the quality of its data.

Jim Milliot's post for the Independent Book Publishers Association Keeping Count: What Industry Statistics Do and Don’t Reveal does a good job reviewing the information available on the size of the publishing industry as a whole. In addition to the problems with the AAP numbers (data only from its 1200 members) and Nielsen BookScan (doesn't include eBooks), Milliot also reviews data from consumer surveys such as the renamed Nielsen Books and Consumers surveys of 60,000 book buyers. In summary: the data we have is limited and hard to interpret.

There are also good reasons to be skeptical over the quality of BookScan numbers beyond the fact that they do not include eBooks. On the accuracy of Nielsen BookScan data, especially for SFF titles, one useful analysis was provided by Suw Charman-Anderson Can Nielsen BookScan Stay Relevant In The Digital Age? in Forbes. The idea behind BookScan is that it requests data from retailers which it then aggregates and sells. It is limited to the extent that the retailers it requests data from are representative of the market as a whole.

This coverage has not always been great. For example, it was not until January 2013 that BookScan started capturing sales from Walmart stores. According to Charma-Anderson's article, it is believed that BookScan captures 80% of book sales in the US and 95% of UK sales, including all the major stores.

Nonetheless, there are some gaps in coverage. As Nielsen BookScan themselves note “library, professional, corporate, premium, export, and some specialty retail sales are not included in the BookScan physical panel.” This is a significant problem for SFF titles as the category "specialty retail sales" is likely to include your local SFF bookstore and almost all comic book stores.

As for information from the publishers themselves, as Dorie Clark points out in Harper Lee and Dr. Seuss Won’t Save Publishing for Harvard Business Review

If I were to self-publish on Amazon, I’d see thorough, up-to-the-minute sales data about how my book was performing. Publishing through a traditional house? Most of us get weekly Nielsen BookScan reports—courtesy of Amazon—and sales figures every six months from our publisher. It’s an 18th century level of opacity that seems shockingly out of date for authors trying to make smart marketing decisions about how and where to promote their books. How can you even know, if you get zero real-time feedback? (A hat-tip here to Penguin Random House, Portfolio’s parent company, which recently launched a comprehensive Author Portal that tracks weekly sales, putting them light years ahead of the competition when it comes to analytics.)

Although this may simply be the publishers strategy to keep their own authors in the dark, I suspect it reflects the fact that the publishers own data is not very good.

That is not to say that the story about flat eBook sales is necessarily entirely false, either. As pointed out on the Stratechery blog in Are eBooks Declining or Just the Publishers?, the Author Earning Reports snapshot shows flat revenues in total. This is inconsistent with what Amazon is reporting as a whole and may reflect the fact that randomness inherent in taking a single snapshot of the market.

In summary, the data are poor and it is hard to know exactly what is going on. More data please!

Recommended Reading: Cyberpunk

Having recently read Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (see my review here), which William Gibson credits as the birth of cyberpunk, I have been tempted to explore the genre (or subgenre) in greater detail.

Stubby the Rocket, over at Tor.com, has come out with a listicle of great cyberpunk titles Are You 1337 Enough for these Cyberpunk Tales?. Although a few are obvious, there are some other ones that I had not heard of before and look forward to picking up:

1. True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier—Vernor Vinge
2. Neuromancer—William Gibson
3. Trouble and her Friends—Melissa Scott
4. Snow Crash—Neal Stephenson
5. Halting State—Charles Stross
6. The Quantum Thief—Hannu Rajaniemi
7. Schismatrix Plus—Bruce Sterling
8. The Shockwave Rider—John Brunner
9. Corsair—James L. Cambias
10. Alif the Unseen—G. Willow Wilson
11. Gridlinked—Neal Asher
12. Equations of Life: Book 1, Samuil Petrovitch—Simon Morden
13. Mindplayers—Pat Cadigan
14. The Ware Tetralogy—Rudy Rucker
15. Little Brother—Cory Doctorow

I seem to be coming across recommendations to read Charles Stross from all kinds of places these days (see here and here). The synopsis for Halting State sounds pretty interesting:

In the year 2018, a daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of a MMORPG called Avalon Four. But Sergeant Sue Smith discovers that this virtual world robbery may be linked to some real world devastation. To foil the crime, she’ll need to team with an intrepid insurance fraud investigator named Elaine Barnaby, and hapless, recently laid-off programmer and MMORPG expert, Jack Reed. Will they learn the truth, or are the orcs going to win this one?

I had not heard of Alif the Unseen before; the synopsis makes it sound pretty cool:

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups—from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the “Hand of God,” as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.

You can read the rest of the synopses at the original site.

Heroism in SFF

Cedar Sanderson has been wondering about the absence of truly heroic figures in modern fiction, and SFF in particular. What she is interested in, in particular, are role models:

What I’m specifically talking about is looking for role models in books of heroes. We all know that heroism is sometimes the quiet acts of life, unnoted and uncelebrated. But the characteristics of a hero in a book: loyalty, duty, honor, love of fellow man, and a willingness to lay down his life for his friends… that’s what I’m looking for. Someone to inspire hero-worship in the readers who get to know them.

And so asked her readers to come up with lists of characters in SFF novels that they "imprinted on" as younger readers. Her framing of the request is a little strange:

A list of role models for young men, and also for young women, to look for in husbands or wives
....
I wanted to create a list – and it wound up being a twinned list – of books for young people who are looking for a hero, for a role model that will influence their selection of a mate later in life.

As is the presentation of the results as two lists:

1. A List of Books for Big Girls. Specifically, a list of male heroes for young women to aspire to as potential husbands.
2. A List of Books for Big Boys. Specifically, a list of "strong female lead characters who can serve as role models for what to look for in a Lady when it comes time to seek a life partner, but the same in being a list of characters that can inspire hero-worship."

I have some problems with the framing, but I'll set that aside without further comment.

As for the lists, I haven't read many of the novels in question (I think many of them are self published and/or are friends of the author):

Strong Female Characters (Sanderson's list for 'Big Boys')

• Cordelia Naismith-Vorkosigan from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. 
• Faith Smith and Sarah Jane Smith from John Ringo’s zombie series. 
• Barbara Everette from John Ringo’s Special Circumstances 
• Kate Daniels from Ilona Andrews Magic series. 
• Mercy Thompson from Patricia Brigg’s werewolf books. 
• Honor Harrington from David Weber’s series
• Tinker, from Wen Spencer’s Elfhome series. 
• April, from Mackey Chandler’s Home series. 
• Echo Sackett, from Louis L’Amour’s book Ride the River 
• Eilonwy from the Prydain books. 
• Telzey and Trigger from James Schmitz’s books. Leewit! 
• Margo Green held her own in Preston & Child’s Relic 
• Star from Heinlein’s Glory Road 
• Gretchen from Eric Flint’s 1632 Series. 
• Elizabeth Moon’s series with Esmay de Suiza and Herris Serrano…I think it’s called the Familias Regnant series? 
• Elizabeth in the Colplatschki Chronicles by Alma TC Boykin

Strong Male Characters (Sanderson's list for 'Big Girls')

• Caine Riordan from Chuck Gannon’s Fire books. 
• Harry Dresden. 
• Travis Long from David Weber’s The Manticore Ascendant series. 
• Steve Maxwell from Peter Grant’s Take the Star Road series 
• Jack Holloway from H Beam Piper’s Fuzzy series. 
• Bahzell Bahnakson from David Weber’s 
• Pete Brumbar from Lloyd Behm’s Martian series. 
• Finn the sometimes-dragon from Dave Freer’s Dog and Dragon series. 
• Jake Sullivan from Larry Correia’s Hard Magic series. 
• Xen Wolfson from Pam Uphoff’s Gods and Wine series. 
• Earl Harbinger, conversely, and Owen Pitt, from Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series. 
• Tom the definitely-a-dragon from Sarah Hoyt’s shifter series. 
• Tarzan, John Carter, Carson of Venus, all from Edgar Rice Burrough’s series and books. 
• Pretty much any Louis L’Amour book… they do have strong adults who are good role models; not wanting trouble but meeting it head-on when it comes…. 
• Conrad from This Immortal by Zelazny 
• Mannie from RAH’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 
• Edward from Rob Howell’s A Lake Most Deep 
• Captain Pausert from James Schmitz’s Witches of Karres, and Dave Freer’s follow-on, Wizard of Karres. 
• Heinlein’s “Space Cadet”. 
• John Christian Falkenberg, from Jerry Pournelle’s Co-Dominion universe. 
• Black Jack Geary and Tanya Desjani from the Lost Fleet series. (I believe this is Jack Campbell’s work) 
• Wilson Cole from the Starship series by Mike Resnick. 
• Corran Horn from I, Jedi by Michael Stackpoole. 
• Dalinar Kholin and Kaladin from the Way of Kings. 
• Tryton from Ben Hales Warsworn series. 
• Ishmael Horatio Wang (pronounced Wong) in the “Golden Age of the Solar Clippers” series by Nathan Lowell. 
• Mighty Mike O’Neal from John Ringo’s Posleen series 
• Hadrian and Royce from the Riyria Revelations series (by Michael J Sullivan)

I haven't read more than a few of these books and so am unable to comment on their suitability. 

For myself, however, I prefer my heroes to be flawed. I want them to feel real. And I want their heroism to seem attainable by people like me who are also flawed; not the result of some nobler than thou quality that they have. Perhaps I am being unfair ... some of the heroes from the list that I do know seem to grow into their heroism.

Message Fiction vs Propaganda

There has been a lot of discussion over the past year, especially in regard to the Hugo Awards, about the prominence of "message fiction" in SFF. Some puppy supporters have drawn a line between what they regard as message fiction and what, for want of a better word, we'll call 'plot driven' fiction, which they state that they prefer.

Frankly, I think all fiction contains messages. However, some works focus more on plot than others. And so it might be possible to make sense of such a distinction.

Recently, Stina Leicht took a stab at identifying the difference over on Chuck Wendig's blog. I don't agree with a lot of the material framing her attempt to answer the question, but she has some good points to make and a nice way of explaining them.

First, what is message fiction?

As I understand it, message fiction is fiction that contains a theme. If you’ve taken an English literature class, you’re familiar with the concept. All writers of fiction use these concepts whether they’re noticed by readers or not. Sometimes, they’re even used unconsciously by the writer.

Second, does ‘Message Fiction’ have a place in Science Fiction and Fantasy?

YES. Because Science Fiction is often defined as the fiction of ideas, and while I tend to lean more toward Science Fiction and Fantasy being the fiction of ideas and characters, I agree. I’d go so far as to say that without thoughtful, attention-grabbing concepts (and characters,) you’re left with a simple chronicle of events. That isn’t literature. It’s a diary entry. In that sense, all good fiction is message fiction. And I think we can all agree as SFF fans that our genre contains good, even great, fiction.

Themes have been used in SFF since its inception. Let’s start with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which is widely regarded as one of the first, if not, the first SFF novel. One of its main themes is the question of whether or not scientific knowledge can be/should be used ethically. This is a classic in our genre. It’s everywhere. It’s even present in Jurassic Park which I can’t imagine anyone labeling as anything but entertainment. Star Trek has successfully used social commentary as has Sir Terry Pratchett with his extremely popular Discworld series.

Third, can an author push a message too far? The answer is yes, and Leicht refers to fiction like this as propaganda:

What’s the difference between fiction containing a theme and propaganda? That’s easy.

It’s the distinction between a question and a statement.

Propaganda tells you how to think. Literary themes invite you, the reader, to come up with your own answers. Propaganda leaves no doubt whatsoever. It demands that you agree. It’s very obvious. No other interpretation is permitted. It’s a closed, authoritarian approach. Literary themes, on the other hand, invite the reader to explore the matter for themselves. They’re interactive. A theme can be something you disagree with. In fact, a theme can be extremely effective if it drives home uncomfortable concepts. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is a fine example. It illustrates the struggle between chaos and order, and in doing so, poses questions about the balance between individual freedom versus the establishment. How much of each is too much? It’s a difficult, uneasy read for all sorts of reasons. None of the characters are remotely admirable from what I remember. Nothing demonstrated in the novel is anything I agree with, either. Still, I felt it was a worthwhile read and an important contribution to the SFF genre because it exposed me to new ideas.

I don't disagree with anything Leicht says and think she has a nice way of putting things.

The thing is, I expect the puppies don't have any problem with it either. Their concern---as I understand it---is that the theme often dominates the plot in a lot of recent award winning SFF, to the extent that the plot is uninteresting or secondary to the author's aim of sending a message.

Ideally, IMNSHO, a book both entertains and informs. As Leicht puts it:

My favorite kinds of fiction are fun fiction that teaches me something. I find it more mentally engaging. I suspect I’m not alone in this.

I concur.

The Market for Short SFF: Could The Academic Model Work?

There has been a lot written recently about the market for short fiction in SFF, as well as literary short fiction generally. A few weeks back, in response to The Offing introducing submission fees for authors, I wrote a post speculating as to whether the academic journal model with significant submission fees could work for literary or genre magazines. More recently, after a post by the editor of Clarkesworld, there has been a lot of speculation about the future of short SFF.  You can read my recap here (which contains links to the originals):

1. The Market for SFF Short Fiction
2. The Market for Short SFF (Continued)

In this post, I want to update my earlier speculations about the academic publishing model in light of what I have learned over the past few days.

To set the stage, note that there are very few SFF magazines that I would describe as self supporting in the sense that they can raise regular revenues sufficient to cover all of their costs including paying authors professional rates, editorial staff a reasonable wage, as well as covering the costs of illustrators and all other costs including overhead.

Of those that are not self supporting, the balance of the funds seems to come from one of three sources:

1. Sugar parents. A parent company that runs the magazine at a loss.
2. Staff. Editorial staff who volunteer their time and/or work at a below market wage.
3. Authors. The magazine pays nothing or below pro rate for stories that it publishes.

The discussion over the past few days suggests to me that there is no shortage of fans who will donate their time to run a magazine, nor of authors willing to publish their work for little or no money. As long as this is true there is nothing to fear as far as the future of short SFF. However, as long as this is the case we should probably expect to see a continual churning of publishers in which new magazines enter the market and fold after a few years without ever graduating to self supporting status.

I think the short fiction market would be better off (authors, fans and readers all) if it were possible to create alternative publishing models that paid pro rates to authors, a reasonable wage to editorial staff, and delivered a good quality product to readers. Could the academic publishing model work as an alternative?

What do I mean by the academic publishing model? They key feature of the academic publishing model is that the product delivered by the journal is not just a collection of published papers; the product is also a mentoring and development service for young academics through the provision of good referee reports by established members of the profession. In return, it charges significant submission fees to authors.

It is important to stress that this is not a variant of the author-supported model listed above. Rather, the key idea behind the academic publishing model is that the customers of the journal would now be both readers---who get stories to read---and authors---who get significant and detailed feedback on their writing from experts in the field. That is, the approach bundles a loss making magazine together with a writing feedback/writer development product that makes a profit in the hope that the bundle breaks even as a whole. In this sense it is closer to the sugar-parent model in which the magazine is a loss leader for the profit making writing feedback business.

Could it work for SFF? In my earlier post I threw out some numbers which, in light of the recent discussion, now seem too optimistic. Before revising them a little, let me stress that the academic model relies on getting three "prices" correct. That is:

1. Being able to pay expert "referees"---in this case established writers---enough to make providing significant feedback attractive to them as an income stream;
2. Bring able to charge authors a low enough submission fee to attract submissions in the first place; and
3. Charging a high enough subscription fee or attracting enough patrons to defray whatever costs are not covered by the margin between the submission fee and the compensation to the referee.

With that as a prelude, what would it take to make this kind of a magazine self supporting? I take it as a given that the magazine would make a loss its first few years. These losses would need to be covered by a wealthy benefactor or by crowd funding. Supposing that can be done, what would it take for this magazine to cover costs once it was established?

Let us suppose that the magazine aims to publish (eventually, if not initially) 500,000 words of fiction per year.  Suppose it aims to pay pro rates. SFWA pro rates are currently six cents per word meaning $30,000 in author compensation. If SFWA rates go up, this amount obviously increases. Last time I worked on the assumption that rates rose to 10 cents per word meaning $50,000 of author compensation.

Some of this might be covered by patrons, subscriptions and donations.  How much? Last time I assumed 5,000 subscriptions paying $1 per month (net of any costs) for $60,000 per year. I now believe that this was hopelessly unrealistic. Although Clarkesworld claims 35 thousand readers, they have only 3,000 subscribers after being in operation 9 years. Strange Horizons is looking for $18,000 in crowd funding this year and I am not entirely sure how much of their costs that is covering.

It seems possible (although not certain) that between subscriptions (maybe 1,000 brave souls paying $12 per year), donations, patrons, and advertising, that it might be possible to raise $20,000 in revenue per year. Depending on what pro rates turn out to be, this means we need to raise an additional $10,000 to $30,000 just to cover author compensation, without factoring in other costs like artwork, overhead and editorial compensation. The latter would be considerably less under the academic model given that the editor is mostly a part-time managerial position (a managerial editor) with content editing outsourced to the referees, but it would still be significant.

As an academic, I can typically work out whether an academic paper (much longer than a genre short story, often filled with math and tables) is publishable, and then write up a detailed report on the paper, in about three hours. I know some of my colleagues who are faster, although I imagine their reports are less thorough. Suppose this can be done in two hours for a typical (shorter) SFF piece. How much would established authors require to participate?

Obviously, very famous authors would require far more than could be charged. But if reports on author incomes are accurate, then it is conceivable that there exists a decent set of midlist authors who would work for $30 per hour (last time, I worked with $40 per hour, but we need to reduce it to make ends meet now). This requires a $60 submission fee to pay for itself. But we'd need to charge a markup on this in order to cover the costs of paying authors, the managing editor, artists and other overhead.

Suppose we charge $100 per submission making for a $40 markup (less on average if the submission fee was reduced for people from middle and low income countries, or if subscribers get a submission fee discount, and taking into account the fact that accepted works would have the submission fee refunded). How many submissions would we receive?  Last time I postulated 400 per year. With an average $30 markup, this generates only $12,000; enough to cover author costs if pro rates stay the same, but not enough to cover much of the other costs, or cover an increase in pro rates.

Could we increase the markup by charging $120 submission fee? Could we get more than 400 submissions? Previously, I had thought that this might be possible given that the market for writing workshops seems to be healthy. But the discussion of recent days makes me think that might be quite difficult, especially if increasing numbers of authors think they do not need editorial feedback and are happy to publish online immediately after finishing a draft.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, we could get 500 submissions charging a $120 fee generating a markup of $50 on average after discounts etc. That $25,000 could conceivably cover costs for an online only journal given current levels of pro rates. If pro rates went up significantly, the additional revenue would need to be raised through further increases in that markup, or subscriptions or some other source.

To know whether this would work or not, the questions we need answers to are:

1. Would any established authors work as 'referees' for $30 per hour? With an editorial board of 25 established writers, 20 reviews per year would generate $1,200 in extra income for about one weeks work spread throughout the year. Is that attractive enough?
2. Would any authors be prepared to pay $120 in return for prompt detailed feedback on the work and a chance of publication?

What do people think?

The Market for Short SFF (Continued)

The reaction to the Neil Clarke editorial continues to roll in. In addition to the posts that I summarized yesterday, today I came across a response by Steve Davidson from Amazing Stories. According to Davidson, Amazing Stories is currently what Clarke would call a hobbyist, in that it does not pay pro rates, but that is in the process of transitioning having recently paid pro rates in its inaugural writing contest.

Most of what Davidson has to say is tangential to the points I am interested in, but a few things stood out:

1. Galaxy's Edge should be added to my list of sugar-parent magazines.
2. Clarke's 'non-profit' category includes magazines that are crowd-sourced or privately funded. I am inclined to regard crowd-sourced magazines as self-supporting as long as there is an indication that the crowd funding source is stable. Privately funded, to the extent that it means some small group of wealthy person is covering the costs, I am inclined to regard as staff funded.
3. Davidson seems to agree that the traditional subscription based model is in its death throws.

   magazines like Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction seem to be proving ... [that] the market has changed so drastically that old school doesn’t work (if it did there’d be a lot more “professional” magazines) and the younger market does not view crowd-funded magazines (and anthologies), or impassioned hobbyist efforts as lesser entities.

   I don't necessarily disagree, and am happy to interpret crowd sourced magazines as self-supporting.
4. Davidson is more concerned about the supply of short fiction declining. Pointing to self-published novels, he notes that

   Most of the new indie authors coming onto the scene these days head right for novel length work – because that’s where they’ll see the most immediate reward for their work, be it the sale of five electronic copies or a blockbuster like Weir’s The Martian. Rather than growing up from short fiction (in the magazines), they’re skipping that whole phase. Because they can, and because they have to. Why have to? Neil has definitely got it right – magazines need to pay more (and I say this despite the fact that endorsing that view is going to make my life more difficult). No aspiring author in their right mind is going to be attracted by 6 cents per word for a hard to write short story when they believe that they can write a novel that they’ll be receiving 70% of $3.99 for each and every electronic copy ($2.79). (Do the math: short story length runs to a max of 7500 words. At 6 cents per word, that’s $450. They’d need to sell 161 copies of their (super-fantastic best, most awe-inspiring SF novel) to earn the same amount, which is a number well within performance levels in the mind of most aspiring authors.
   
   Beyond that equation: new, younger authors are growing up in a culture that tells them that they do not need the vetting, the approval or the gatekeeping offered by a magazine’s submission process. They think sitting around and waiting to be accepted (even if the turn-around time is very short) is nothing but a waste of time. Many of them view the entire rejection process with complete disdain. (Who does that yahoo think they are? The editor of some magazine I never heard of before? Like that means anything.)
   
   It may be a sense of entitlement that’s driving this view, but even if it is, so what? If the vast majority of your supplier base thinks that someone or something else offers a better distribution deal, they’d be foolish not to take advantage.

5. Davidson recommends the hobbyist to aspiring route, although it helps to start by buying a recognizable brand:

   When Amazing started, it was nothing more than me wanting to preserve the name for the science fiction community. My wife and I made a coldly calculated business decision that the money we invested in the trademarks would be recoverable in future if only by selling it (to someone in the field). Finding a partner in the field that wanted to use the name was the initial business “plan”.
   
   But then it took nearly three and a half years for the trademarks to grant, during which time I was able to really survey the market and develop a plan that I believed I had the initial funding for and that would meet the goals of offering professional rates on a sustainable basis.
   
   The marks granted – but too late for me to be able to sell my other business for an amount that would fund the startup of Amazing Stories (the economy was going into its dive). But I’d already announced the acquisition and started getting a lot of pressure to “do something” with the name.
   
   Which necessitated a reversion to a “bootstrapping” strategy, one we are in the final stages of right now. With nearly 25,000 members/subscribers and internet traffic that is on par with all but a handful of the top online fiction sites and just beginning the first stages of purchasing and publishing fiction at professional (albeit unacceptable) rates. We’d not be where we are right now if I’d “known when to quit”.
   
   We’d also not be here right now if authors didn’t see some benefit to themselves in supplying us with copy at no charge; if sponsors didn’t see some value in funding us for specific projects; if a whole heck of a lot of people didn’t see some value in devoting a bit of time to reading the site.
   
   My “business model” (following that initial one) was predicated on the belief that the name of the magazine still carried enough cache and import to become a source of income through licensing. A source of revenue that is atypical and not an option for most competitors (though I do note that some of them sell t-shirts, associated collections and anthologies, posters). I think it safe to say that in the 21st century, a business may find that its flagship offering is not what brings in the majority of its revenue; it may very well be that the short fiction magazine market will need to move in the direction of offering its magazine as a loss-leader, offering other related product lines that have a higher profit margin. (You don’t sell razors – you sell razor blades.)
   
   Do I pay staff or contributors? Only in trade. Is everything we produce of professional quality? No. Are we on the path to addressing those issues and “doing things the right way?” You bet. I’ll not say anything else regarding that other than the fact that my original contention – that the name was capable of funding the magazine largely through licensing – is proving to be correct.

I also came across this older post of an interview with Scott H. Andrews from Beneath Ceaseless Skies.  Among the many points covered:

1. BCS in nearly seven years has published 350 stories
2. The Editor does a lot of work to make this publication go:

   We publish a new issue every fortnight. That two-week publication cycle begins with promoting the new issue on the BCS website and Twitter and Facebook. Then the preparation for the next issue starts immediately. I make the ebooks for that upcoming issue and send the files to our ebook distributors, including Amazon Kindle Store and WeightlessBooks.com. The ebooks go out a week early because our ebook customers and subscribers get each issue a week before it goes live on the website.
   
   I do all the production of the BCS Audio Fiction Podcast, so I coordinate the audio reading for each episode, whether it’s a guest narrator or I do the narration myself, and I spend two to three hours a day editing the audio narration. I’m an amateur musician, so I have a sharp ear for audio quality and the rhythm of the pacing and delivery.
   
   I spend about four hours a day reading submissions. That includes new submissions, whether passed up by my Editorial Assistant Nicole Lavigne, who reads the slush, or automatic pass-ups from writers who have sold to BCS before. It also includes line-editing accepted manuscripts and rewrites, which for me require several readings and writing the editorial emails to the author laying out my issue and some ways it might be fixed.
   
   Other tasks include compiling and releasing our anthologies, like our annual Best of BCS series that’s now in its sixth year or our new Weird West anthology Ceaseless West; promoting the magazine at cons and sitting on panels; submitting material for reviews or awards; etc.

3. There are many challenges to making a short fiction magazine work:

   There’s always the challenge of making F/SF short fiction zines financially viable. Ebook sales and crowd-funding have offered great new tools to help with that, but it’s not as easy as the high-profile success stories make it seem.
   
   There’s also the challenge of getting the stories to readers. The F/SF short fiction audience is much smaller than for novels, but I’m always hoping that we as a field can expand that audience and draw in novel readers; show them that short fiction does exist in the styles they love to read novels in, like epic fantasy, and interest them in reading it.
   
   The two huge pitfalls in F/SF zining are well-known: the huge time commitment it requires, and the need to have a realistic business model that fits your approach.
   
   The time commitment to run a zine in a professional manner, like keeping response times to submissions quick enough that it’s not an insult to writers, is massive, almost suffocating. If you aren’t cognizant of that, you’ll get behind and it can hobble your zine.
   
   There are multiple working business models in practice now–for example, BCS is a 501c3 non-profit, funded by donations; Clarkesworld is funded by ebook sales; others have used crowd-funding. But new zines can’t just copy a model and expect it to work for them as well as it works for the zine(s) currently using it. They need to choose or modify whatever model best fits their own strengths and needs.

Again, plenty more food for thought. The striking thing about these reports is how much the truly dedicated editors of these magazines are prepared to sacrifice to keep them going. As long as there exists a strong supply of these individuals, staff-funded magazines will continue to exist. When this is combined with the apparent abundant supply of authors prepared to publish for little or no compensation, there should be room for plenty of author-funded magazines, and so overall I feel confident in asserting that the market for short fiction in SFF should continue to exist.

But is there another way? Could a magazine along the academic model work for short SFF? I will present my revised calculations tomorrow.