One thing I found out quickly while doing my own minizine, is that more people want to write for a magazine instead of read it. Which just makes no sense to me. I mean, to me that sends a message to the magazine creators: you only exist to pay writers. That’s it. Readers? We don’t need to read or buy your stinking magazine, we just want your cash.
Now, I admit. I sadly don’t have subscriptions to my favorite magazines anymore. And it breaks my heart. But the minute I get some money from a short story sale, the first thing I do is buy subscriptions. I used to be susbcribed to at least 10 different magazines, and I miss them all greatly. I’m also not trying to sell them short stories, either.
I’m not the only one who’s noticed this disapointing trend.
http://htmlgiant.com/random/comment-of-the-day-andy-hunter-on-tin-house-gate/
One key part of the problem is writers being told to start with the short story, work their way up to big bad novel sales. The problem is most writers writing the short form don’t give a rats ass about short stories. They don’t read them, they only write them because they’re told that’s the way it goes.
Myself? I’ve always loved the short form. Ever since I first read Poe when I was 9. Some days I actually prefer it. Something nice about it, and it’s good to read a complete story between kids playing and yelling and having a good time (which makes concentrating on a novel difficult).
Ah, me. Just some thoughts.
The trouble with short stories is people don’t seem to be reading them as much, and writing them effectively is a slightly different skill to coming up with that big, bad novel. It might have been a good way to break into writing a few years ago, but not so much now.
It’s a shame. I do wonder though whether the general lack of short stories in genre magazines has less to do with our changing tastes as readers, and more to do with what editors think they can sell?
Being an online zine, Innsmouth Free Press definitely has more readers than writers (we had over 10,000 visitors last month). We got a mention from Datlow in the honourable mention category last year. Am I still broke most of the time? Yes.
Eyeballs doesn’t mean cash, so while we do decently in the eyeball department, getting money to fund the venture is another story. We’re not in it for the money, so that’s not much of an issue. Though I wonder what pubs that actually sell their product feel when readership is super low.
Well, if you have X number of readers and the number of submitting writers it triple that, it’s easy to see what I’m talking about
Also: online magazines, by the nature of being free & easy to access usually have more readers than a print version
Not that I’m knocking emags. I love them.
I love them too. But, being a layout and design person in real life, I would love to do a physical magazine because I know mine would look a lot better than many I see on the market. But it’s just not affordable. We may do a Lovecraftantho of some sort next year, which would be the closest to that.
Why not trying using Kickstart to get funding for a physical magazine?