Question on market and Baen Universe

[jinkang]

Hi all, newbie here.

I did a search but didn't find any postings related to it...hopefully this is not a topic already over-discussed.

The question of markets came up as I 'just' found out about the impending closure of Baen Universe. I know, it's an old news but I just found internet yesterday (I kid).

Even when I dallied with an idea of writing few years back, I always thought Baen Universe as a prime example of holy grail in the writing industry. It provided something akin to open forum for critters, and an access to publishing! I see that it didn't quite work out.

So I'd like to leave the soapbox for those who have been around: will this change anything in the market or was JBU just one more e-zine closing its doors while new ones open up?

Thanks.

[Polenth]

I never submitted there in the end, because their critters forum thing didn't work properly for me and they were closed to regular submissions anytime I checked.

A professional market closing down is never a good thing, but it isn't going to change life as we know it either. Most of the professional markets are still going and SFWA added a few new ones to their listing this year.

[StoneTable]

It's bad in that we lost a pro market; the water ripples but does not break.

As Polenth said, we've seen more new pro markets added this year and I suspect that trend will continue. I think we're starting to see a minor resurgence in short genre fiction. I see more new markets starting and, most importantly, staying alive^*. They are a strong group of potential future pro markets in the making.





* Sorry. I couldn't help myself.

[Jamesaritchie]

Baen tried a horrible business model, and in my opinion, it stood no chance of working. Magazines must survive because there are enough readers willing to buy that magazine to provide a profit, or because there are enough well-paying advertisers to provide an extra margin of profit.

The only thing Baen Universe folding means is that enough readers didn't subscribe.

I think writers are largely to blame. It's mazing how many of us submit to magazines, and how few of us subscribe.

[jinkang]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

The only thing Baen Universe folding means is that enough readers didn't subscribe.

I think writers are largely to blame. It's mazing how many of us submit to magazines, and how few of us subscribe.

I think that's entirely true, specially for me. I'm at a point where I should slow down on how-to-write-books and shift my focus more on reading what I'm trying to write: fictions.

But what caught me surprised was that Baen Universe lacked readers. I grew up reading Baen, and few time I checked the 'bar', there were always activities. I had presumed it meant readership but I guess that doesn't quite equate to 'paid' subscriptions.

I know as a fact that advertising (be it google or whatver) doesn't pay much....perhaps enough to sustain the website but not enough cover for the story-fees and editors.

How to other magazines currently on market survive?

[eqb]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

The only thing Baen Universe folding means is that enough readers didn't subscribe.

This. A magazine need money to pay its bills, and that includes paying authors and artists. Baen has/had a fabulous pay rate and a great stable of artists, but it wasn't making enough money from subscriptions to survive.

The model for online magazines that seems to work better is the one Strange Horizons uses: a combination of several sponsors, plus a series of fundraisers throughout the year.

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

I think writers are largely to blame. It's mazing how many of us submit to magazines, and how few of us subscribe.

I disagree. Magazines that sell to only writers will fail. To survive, a magazine needs to reach a much wider pool of readers.

[cathyfreeze]

Originally Posted by eqb

I disagree. Magazines that sell to only writers will fail. To survive, a magazine needs to reach a much wider pool of readers.

Thank you. I get a mite annoyed at the notion that writers should buy subscriptions to all the mags that buy their work. There should be a way to let readers (and there are plenty out there that don't write) know about the short-story market; it's a ways cheaper than novels, really, and more satisfying, imho.

I always wonder how people can believe 'you should subscribe' and 'money flows toward the writer' in the same head, but it seems that they do.

Strange Horizons has a sugar daddy, btw. And they still have to have fund raisers. It's a sad world, imho, for short stories--the writing world's red-headed step child.

cat

[jinkang]

red-headed step child

I was going to ask who the sponsor was but I did some google-fu and found this: http://bloggasm.com/the-rise-of-the-...ofitable-model

It's dated 2008 but I'm guessing not much changed since then.

[Robert E. Keller]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

Baen tried a horrible business model, and in my opinion, it stood no chance of working. Magazines must survive because there are enough readers willing to buy that magazine to provide a profit, or because there are enough well-paying advertisers to provide an extra margin of profit.

The only thing Baen Universe folding means is that enough readers didn't subscribe.

I think writers are largely to blame. It's mazing how many of us submit to magazines, and how few of us subscribe.

The problem is that it can get very costly subscribing to every magazine a writer submits to. If I see that a magazine is opening its doors to new writers now and then, and writers that have smaller credits, I'm much more inclined to make purchases.

[Jamesaritchie]

Originally Posted by eqb

This.



I disagree. Magazines that sell to only writers will fail. To survive, a magazine needs to reach a much wider pool of readers.

I never said anything about a magazine selling only to writers. I said writers who don't subscribe to magazines have no right to compain when that magazine folds.

Of course a magazine needs to reach as wide an audiane as possible, but this wide audience needs to include those who want to make money by selling to the magazine, which means writers.

If you want to sell to a magazine, you need to help support that magazine by buying it.

And even many of teh vvery small magazines I've dealt with may received from one to two thousand submissions per month. If even half those writers subscribed, the magazines would not only survive, they'd be making a fortune.

[eqb]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

I never said anything about a magazine selling only to writers. I said writers who don't subscribe to magazines have no right to compain when that magazine folds.

True, you didn't say selling only to writers.

The comment you made that "...writers are largely to blame" is still bunk. If a magazine fails because enough writers didn't subscribe, then its reader base was too small to begin with.

[mommyjo2]

In his most recent anthology, Gardner Dozois says:

Ironically, the one form of entertainment in the genre that is still reasonably cheap, the digest sized SF magazines, are being put out of business because they can no longer easily reach the customers; most people, even most regular SF readers, may go for years without ever laying eyes on an SF magazine...
Perhaps the Kindle and the iPod and other similar text readers...will save the magazines by making them accessible to readers once again.

(The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection, p. xiv)

I thought the Nook's idea of "loaning" a book to a friend (and you can't read the work while friend has it) was interesting. How great would it be if there was a paid library/Netflix type model for zines? I'd love if a similar service let me subscribe and check out an unlimited number of shorts (but only one at a time).

[Jamesaritchie]

Originally Posted by eqb

True, you didn't say selling only to writers.

The comment you made that "...writers are largely to blame" is still bunk. If a magazine fails because enough writers didn't subscribe, then its reader base was too small to begin with.

If writers aren't a very large part of any reader base, the writers themselves ARE to blame. What's bunk is someone claiming to be a writer, but not actually buying and reading the magazines they want to sell to. If you aren't part of the reader base, you have only yourself to blame when a magazine folds.

Writers ARE readers, or should be. Saying the reader base was too small to begin with is just silly. Where is the reader base supposed to come from if not from the ranks of the millions of people out there trying to be writers? Do you think readers just grow on trees? A large, nonfiction national glossy may get by without solid support from the writers, though from the numbers I've seen a LOT of writers do subscibe because doing so is very, very smart, but mid-size to small fiction magazines stand no chance of survival without solid support from writers. Writers are the basic reader base.


1. Subscriptions are a tax write off for writers, so money is almost never an excuse.

2. If you want to sell consistently to magazines, you must read many issues of the magazines. Otherwise, you'll be a hit and miss writer at best.

The idea is to sell stories. In order to sell stories on any sort of consistent basis, you need to read the magazines, AND the magazine must survive long enough for them to actually buy the story.

3. Subscribing to the magazines not only gives you a much better chance of selling a story there, and not only helps ensure that the magazine will survive, it's a solid vote of self-confidence.

4. One sale to a tiny magazine pays for a subscription, probably two or three, one sale to a mid-size magazine pays for ten or more subscriptions, one sale to a large magazine pays for fifty to one hundred subscriptions. If you don't believe you're going to make a sale that will pay for the subscription many times over, why the heck are you wasting your time sending them stories in the place?

Subscribing to magazines is an invesment in your own future. And since subscriptions are tax deductible, you really only need to make the investment once. From that point on, your tax returns pay for your subscriptions.

But writers are either a solid part of the reader base, or they're a drain on the system that almost guarantees a fiction magazine will not survive, and absolutely guarantees that even if it does survive, it won't be able to pay much.

[elysdir]

Originally Posted by cathyfreeze

[Strange Horizons] still [has] to have fund raisers.

Side note: in case this isn't clear, SH operates on essentially the same model as NPR. We have fund raisers for the same reason NPR does: we're funded by donations.

[elysdir]

As for readership and writers:

When a major magazine has circulation of a hundred thousand copies, you can be pretty sure that most of its readers are not submitting fiction to it.

These days, the sf print prozines have (as someone noted earlier) much lower circulations than they used to. Even so: a few years back, Asimov's had a circulation of about 20,000, and was getting under 500 fiction submissions a month. That means 6000 stories submitted each year.

My guess (based very loosely on SH stats) is that each author was sending an average of 1.5 to 2 stories a year. But even if each author sent only one story a year, no more than 6000 authors were submitting in a given year.

I'm guessing that only half of those authors subscribed to the magazine. But even if all of them did, that means that there were a minimum of 14,000 readers who weren't submitting stories to the magazine, or at least who didn't do so that year.

There are all sorts of ways in which my analysis here is flawed, and it's full of wild guesses and approximations, and I left out a bunch of factors (including the fact that circulation has continued to fall since then). But my point is that it seems pretty likely that a substantial majority of readers of the sf print prozines aren't regularly submitting stories to those magazines.

[Robert E. Keller]

Originally Posted by elysdir

As for readership and writers:

When a major magazine has circulation of a hundred thousand copies, you can be pretty sure that most of its readers are not submitting fiction to it.

These days, the sf print prozines have (as someone noted earlier) much lower circulations than they used to. Even so: a few years back, Asimov's had a circulation of about 20,000, and was getting under 500 fiction submissions a month. That means 6000 stories submitted each year.

My guess (based very loosely on SH stats) is that each author was sending an average of 1.5 to 2 stories a year. But even if each author sent only one story a year, no more than 6000 authors were submitting in a given year.

I'm guessing that only half of those authors subscribed to the magazine. But even if all of them did, that means that there were a minimum of 14,000 readers who weren't submitting stories to the magazine, or at least who didn't do so that year.

There are all sorts of ways in which my analysis here is flawed, and it's full of wild guesses and approximations, and I left out a bunch of factors (including the fact that circulation has continued to fall since then). But my point is that it seems pretty likely that a substantial majority of readers of the sf print prozines aren't regularly submitting stories to those magazines.

If your statistics are correct, they're inspiring. That would mean there's still a pure reader base for short fiction out there (even if it's a declining one). Obviously it wasn't enough for Baen's Universe, for whatever reason, so perhaps more writers subscribing could have kept that particular magazine afloat.

[Polenth]

Originally Posted by Robert E. Keller

If your statistics are correct, they're inspiring. That would mean there's still a pure reader base for short fiction out there (even if it's a declining one). Obviously it wasn't enough for Baen's Universe, for whatever reason, so perhaps more writers subscribing could have kept that particular magazine afloat.

As a reader, if I have some money spare, it'll either go to an ezine with free stories or a print magazine. I mostly favour ezines with free stories.

I will buy electronic copies as market research, but not from magazines with awkward submission systems (I consider having to be an active participant on a forum in the awkward category). I might as well submit (and spend my money) elsewhere.

So Baen just didn't hit the nail on the head for me.

[jinkang]

Originally Posted by Polenth

As a reader, if I have some money spare, it'll either go to an ezine with free stories or a print magazine. I mostly favour ezines with free stories.

I will buy electronic copies as market research, but not from magazines with awkward submission systems (I consider having to be an active participant on a forum in the awkward category). I might as well submit (and spend my money) elsewhere.

So Baen just didn't hit the nail on the head for me.

I think Baen did allow 'regular' submission...it's just that they wanted to promote the community spirit a little more.

On that note, I always had trouble with their browser based 'bar'/forum, which stopped me several times. Perhaps it would have worked better if I had used mailing group or other options.

I do wonder if they had used some public forum (something akin to AW?), if that would have saved some technical upkeeps, if there were any.

On the other hand, based on reading that article I had linked earlier, most of the cost seemed to flow to authors, not technology (for ezines) or editors...so perhaps it didn't matter for Baen.

[Polenth]

Originally Posted by jinkang

I think Baen did allow 'regular' submission...it's just that they wanted to promote the community spirit a little more.

On that note, I always had trouble with their browser based 'bar'/forum, which stopped me several times. Perhaps it would have worked better if I had used mailing group or other options.

Like I said before, anytime I checked, they were closed to normal submissions. It also made it clear you'd have much less chance of selling a story that way. Rather than encouraging me to use the forum, it encouraged me to avoid the magazine.

The things I struggle with might not have been everyone's reasoning (though it seems you also had trouble with the browser forum), but I think it's worthwhile considering why it might not have worked. Other magazines might try the same business model in the future.