Didn't Playboy do something along those lines, years ago? I recall Harlan Ellison publishing with them at least once.
Jonathan Sherwood wrote: > Does it have anything to do with the stigma SF/fantasy has garnered? > There is a sense of pride in paying to go to the opera, but an SF book > is more often thought of as a guilty pleasure. > > Here's a thought experiment: A super-wealthy individual pledges to > underwrite a spec lit magazine, paying $1 a word - prime rate, as good > as the New Yorker. Would that magazine then attract writers from > "reputable" genres into the SL fold? Would SL start to lose its ghetto > stigma and become someone someone would be proud to pay for? > > > -- > Jonathan Sherwood > Sr. Science & Technology Press Officer > University of Rochester > 585-273-4726 > > > On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:50 AM, cd <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > 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 > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 [email protected] 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
