I just wish we had numbers. How many subscribers did they have? What
was their overhead? Etc. Same for Strange Horizons, EscapePod, etc.
An estimate of those would really help understand what's possible and
what's not.
(I confess I was always annoyed by the Baen rejection letter, which
seemed to me to betray a misunderstanding. It says in it that they
are trying to compete with Joe Six Pack's beer money. But that's not
right. Joe Six Pack already bought cable, it's sunk cost, so you're
competing with Joe Six Pack's "free" (no additional cost) Stargate
episode or Mansquito. And that's a very different thing. I'm not
sure short fiction can compete with free Stargate, for someone who
wants to watch Stargate. I mean, let's face it, compared to Mansquito
reading a short story is work. Now, this might have just been a
figure of speech for Baen -- Baen has a solid audience of military sf
fans, and they could, or at least should, have been targeting those if
self-sufficiency was their goal.)
Also: is there an audience problem here? Do SF audiences not feel
that they should pay for SF? Something like McSweeneys, or any part
of the not-broadway theatre world, or the ballet, or classical music,
or all of poetry, or much of jazz, survive because there are audiences
("fan bases") that feel they have to invest in these things. I gather
that that feeling is completely absent from almost all SF fans. Maybe
we need to train our audience.
cd
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