Re: Pulp Magazines Struggle to Survive in Wired World

[Eric Scoles]

Jed -- How dare you fail to lurk ;-)! But seriously, thanks for input from someone plugged-in. Strange Horizons gets mentioned frequently as a prospective market by folks around here, when they're talking IRL. I'm also glad to hear someone mention Realms of Fantasy, because most of the "SF people" I know are simply unaware of it. (I think they write it off as sort of Starloggy, maybe.) They pay relatively well, and from what I can see their quality is pretty good. FWIW to other folks, they do publish SF, but they don't seem to want to call it that -- all their SF trades in sort of fantasy meta-tropes. They're an interesting example also because I think they use the web a lot more effectively than the "big 3" (though they could stand to improve their web presence, for sure). I think it's abundantly clear that pure print 'zines, pro or otherwise, are not the wave of teh future (to put it mildly), and furthermore I think that should be clear to anyone who has lived through the last 15 years as an active member of society. The fact that there's not one model for how an online magazine should work should, IMO, be taken as a good sign: It means the market is still vital and growing, still experimenting. The "big 3" are so stuck in a print mindset that they don't really seem to understand how to do anything different. (Part of that may be structural. I wonder how much latitude Sheila Williams and Stan Schmidt have in choosing the grand strategy their magazines. Gordon VanGelder seems to have something of an idea that things must work differently going forward, but it's not clear to me that he's got any really innovative publishing concepts up his sleeve -- he's just making do a little better than the others.) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to r-spec@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---