Comments on: SF Signal: mind melds me

By: Michael Livingston

Michael Livingston — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:58:29 +0000

Great thoughts, Mary. (Not that I expected less.)

By: Mike F

Mike F — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:30:46 +0000

You make some good points. I found a couple of old magazines at my mom’s house from when I was (much) younger, and they are exactly the same. I don’t know any finances of the mags out there, but if the readership is low they probably don’t have the money to make grand changes. They are kind of stuck in a negative loop. Electonic versions will probably take over, but they still have to make sure people follow them there. Make it visual and make sure it us easy to read at work on lunch breaks, etc.

By: Dave Bara

Dave Bara — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:22:42 +0000

I think you’re closest of all the opinions here, Mary. Those tiny little digest mags with dirty, lousy-looking newsprint pages are a dying breed. Online publication seems to be the way forward for the “traditional” short fiction markets, but not the only way. When I look at magazines like “Fantasy” I see a full-sized color glossy magazine with great graphics and art. If the magazine markets are going to continue with print publication this seems to be only model that will work for attracting the graphics-heavy gamers, which are in reality the genre’s future.

If the magazines convert to online publication, traditional text-on-web-page models will probably work for part of the audience, but in the future I think stories will have to be more interactive for the reader. That probably means more content-specific stories produced by authors rather than original works. Still there will remain a market for good old orignal genre’ fiction, just in a different format.

Of course, all of this would be helped by a genre’ anthology series in the tradition of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, but maybe that’s too much to ask for.