SF Online Markets

An Overview of the History and Current State of the Field

last updated 4/18/01

This is taken from an editorial I wrote for Strange Horizons, on the state of the field, which was itself based on a presentation I gave at ICFA. I'm all about recycling material. I'll try to keep this reasonably updated, and hopefully it'll be useful to someone besides me. :-) Please feel free to send me notification of changes, particularly to the semi-pro and pro markets. If you'd like me to add a market not listed, then tell me as much as you can of the following:

A more up-to-date listing can be found at Ralan's Webstravaganza.

These are just some quick notes on information I've gathered from various magazines, either from their web pages, or from talking to editors/publishers. Unfortunately, I don't have the same types of info for each magazine; not all editors were available to answer questions, and of those that were, not all answered each of my questions.

Especially problematic is the question of figuring out readership -- as you'll see, some magazines count page hits, some count unique visitors, some give their best estimate. Use extreme caution when comparing numbers, remembering that it's often in the magazine's best interest to choose the best possible number to represent their readership. Caveat emptor.

The following list is organized into six categories:

As noted previously, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list. The listings are alphabetical within each category. Unless otherwise specified, the publications are free to the public.

Defunct

Many of these were ambitious projects, done professionally, and would probably have been worthy additions to the field; sadly, funding became a serious issue for them. As we'll see later, that's not just a problem for the prozines. One of the basic questions about e-zines is still: how do people solve the funding issue, given how unlikely it is that they'll be able to charge for their content? I talked a little about this in an earlier editorial.

Some possibilities for addressing this issue follow in the sites below.

Amateur sites

These are just two of the significant amateur sites; such sites pay nothing to authors, but they often have a loyal readership, and publish some good stories. Many of the sites are quite popular, and clearly, there's some good work being done with amateur sites. The problem, of course, is that many of the amateur sites are not particularly well done, and the trick is finding the good ones. Still, I think more and more good ones will emerge -- spec fic has a long tradition of fine fanzines and other amateur publications, perhaps more so than any other genre.

Other Genres

Both of these publications pay pro rates to their writers. These magazines may not impact the genre much directly, but they (and others like them) may well be important markets for writers in the future; since they cater to a difference audience, some of the financial considerations spec fic magazines have to worry about may not apply.

Print Magazines

Interestingly, most of the print magazine sites only have excerpts on their websites, with one notable exception:

What's most interesting about this project is what Warren reports -- he's surprised by how few of the visitors actually read the material that they publish online, but notes that he does get a lot of orders for print mags from the site. Apparently they're averaging about $1200/month in orders, and the average order has been going up by about $100/month every month. This is especially interesting when compared to similar news from Baen about how the free books they publish online are driving hardcover sales of the books -- we may be seeing the birth of a functional model for online/print collaboration. But it's important to note that part of the reason that giving away text for free can drive print sales is that screens are currently uncomfortable to read. If you like the beginning of something you find online, you'll be inclined to read the rest later at your leisure, so you may buy the print version. If comfortable e-book readers and/or "digital paper" arrive, this effect may be greatly reduced.

News/Market Info

The news magazines (tentatively) seem to be doing better than the fiction magazines at staying afloat; the only conclusions I can draw from this is that news readers may be more willing to pay for their news, and that perhaps there are more of them than there are fiction readers (!).

Semi-pro

Many of the semi-pros are currently suffering some funding difficulties, due to the cutbacks in ad revenue across the net. But since their costs are often quite low, it seems likely that several will survive online, even if the publishers end up primarily supporting them out of pocket. (Many of the current print fanzines have similar (or higher) costs and are published entirely out of the publisher's pocket.)

Pro

There are clearly several different business models being attempted for the prozines; it's impossible to tell at this point which will be the most successful. I can only wish them all luck.

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