Getting People to Talk About Short Fiction

       

As is reported pretty much everywhere, Warren Ellis and Cory Doctorow have been comparing notes about the state of the short fiction magazine market and wondering what can be done to reverse its long history of decline.

Let us consider what I am calling The Doctorow Plan :

If I were running the mags, I'd pick a bunch of sfnal bloggers and offer them advance looks at the mag, get them to vote on a favorite story to blog and put it online the week before the issue hits the stands. I'd podcast a second story, and run excerpts from the remaining stories in podcast. I'd get Evo Terra to interview the author of a third story for The Dragon Page. I'd make every issue of every magazine into an event that thousands of people talked about, sending them to the bookstores to demand copies -- and I'd offer commissions, bonuses, and recognition to bloggers who sold super-cheap-ass subscriptions to the print editions.

Sure it's lot of work, and a huge shift in the way the mags do business. But hell, how many more years' worth of 13 percent declines can the magazines hack?

As an "SFnal Blogger" I can see a few problems with the plan.

Firstly, there's really very little online discussion of the content of the short fiction magazines.  I've recently started doing reviews of Interzone but google reader and a google search for other reviews suggests that not many SF bloggers bother to write about these kinds of magazines.  At best there'll be the odd piece on Ted Chiang and Kelly Link or, as has been the case for the last week, a general discussion of the state of the magazines, but it's rare that you'll see a review of a short piece or of a magazine.  So asking a load of bloggers to start reading and voting on stories might not get you the massive increase in coverage you're looking for.

Secondly, going by the hits my reviews of Interzone have had (despite clear labeling and a decent number of subscribers), there's really not a huge demand-side interest in reviews of these kinds of magazines.  My reviews might get picked p by the forums the individual writers hang out at but I can't remember the last time I noticed someone had googled "Interzone+review" and arrived at my site.  So I'm not sure that people are shopping around for magazines to buy... they either buy or they don't, there's no culture of reading reviews and then purchasing as there is with books or films for example.  Part of the motivation of being an SFnal blogger is to say stuff that'll get you a reaction, whether it's a link on another blog, a link on a forum or a discussion in the comments.  At the moment, magazine reviews have not been driving any of these for me.  So I'm not sure that there'd be a supply-side appetite for the kind of expansion in blog coverage that Cory is talking about.

Thirdly, I'm not sure that SFnal blogging has enough grunt to make that big a dent in sales.  I currently have a Technorati rating of 103, which, while not stellar, isn't bad considering how inaccessible a lot of my writing is and the fact that I don't devote a lot of space to the more populist titles.  If I look at the ratings of the other "usual suspects" of SFnal blogging I see that it's comparatively rare that an SF blog will have a rating much higher than 300.  Those that do tend to be either link accumulators (thereby not so much driving discussion as picking up "via" links back) or authors (who have their own fish to fry).  Unlike BoingBoing or, say, the technology and videogame blogs, we have a relatively small footprint as a blogging scene.  Putting aside the fact that a lot of the same people read all of the SFnal blogs and that those are the kind of people who tend to buy SF mags anyway, I don't think that a) there would ever be "thousands of people" discussing the content of SF magazines (hundreds maybe) and b) I don't think that enough people read SFnal blogs to halt the decline of the magazines even if blogging about SF mags became a lot more common.

These are the observations that I've made and they are purely anecdotal.  It's possible that the lack of hits to my Interzone reviews is related to a) the fact that I'm an over-educated prick and write in a style be-fitting such a monstrous countenance and b) I'm writing about a magazine that, alarmingly, only sells 2-3000 issues.  Perhaps if I were to write about the larger American magazines and if I weren't such a prick then I'd get more hits but, given the scene's lack of serious critical engagement with the magazines I can imagine that my anecdotal experience matches that of a number of other bloggers.  But, obviously, what I'm saying is caveat emptor and I could well be way off base here.

However, assuming I'm not, magazines face a catch-22 when it comes to getting the bloggers to drive their sales in that nobody is looking for reviews of the magazines and as a result those that do go looking for them tend not to find many and so never bother looking again.  Frankly, the subscription model of dead tree SF publishing precludes this kind of shopping around anyway as not many people are going to go out and look for reviews of stories that they're going to be getting through the post before long anyway, so creating a scene whereby people don't subscribe but instead shop around critically before purchasing might very well see the mags cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

So is there an obvious way to break the deadlock?

A sad fact that has just occurred to me is that, as a critic who has written for a number of different venues, I have yet to be offered a single free review copy of a dead tree magazine.  In fact, I've never even seen one offered in one of those round robin emails that editors send out when looking for their next batch of reviews.  Indeed, I wonder whether the SF magazines even send out review copies as a matter of policy.  But then I can understand why they would not.  Firstly, if SF mags operate on quite short publication schedules then there's no time to send out ARCs so reviews would only appear after the magazines had been in the shops for a while.  Secondly, a lot of SF websites operate on very long publication schedules either due to backlogs, erratic publication dates or because they save up all of their reviews and put them out together once a month.  Combine these two factors and you find magazine publishers facing the specter of sending out a load of review copies only for the reviews to appear once the magazines are off the shelves.

Another problem with the short fiction market is that while the magazines want reviewers to discuss individual magazines, they might not be too crazy about us discussing individual stories.  Indeed, if you look at short fiction review site The Fix you'll see that the focus is on magazines and not stories (despite the site's strapline "short fiction review").  This is because while it's all very well discussing the latest Ted Chiang or Kelly Link story, a lot of people won't buy the magazines the stories first appear in but they will buy the Year's Best SF-style anthologies that the stories will eventually re-appear in.  So having everyone rave about Chiang and Link is a mixed blessing for SF mags as such discussion also drives the sales of anthologies that are partly in competition with the magazines but is also undermines the issues that don't have stories by Link of Chiang.  So I suspect that many SF mag publishers might be wary of bloggers overly focussing on individual stories and writers rather than whole magazines.

Indeed, I think that one of the reasons why SF mags seem to be quietly going into that good night is because they feel comfortable behind a fog of ignorance.  It's noticeable that one rarely hears of a story being an "Asimov's-style story" or an "Interzone-style story".  In fact, if anything the different magazines seem to go out of their ways to cover as much ground as possible so as not to alienate any possible future subscriber.  The goal seems to be to cultivate a bland lack of identity designed to leave a reader with a positive enough impression to commit to buying a year's worth of future issues but without pinning that positivity down to any particular trait that might alienate anyone who didn't see that characteristic as a positive.

These two characteristics combine to create a magazine publishing culture that is actually quite hostile to critical engagement, providing the magazines with another reason for not really wanting to engage with the bloggers.  But, as the numbers suggest, this needs to change and the strategy is not keeping readers but actively alienating them, prompting them to stop reading magazines entirely and it's also contributing to the growing sense that the short fiction scene is all about churning out stuff that's "competent" as Jeff VanderMeer put it.

I think if SF magazines are to survive they need to shake off the bland neutrality they hide behind and actively court outrage, controversy and disagreement.  They need to wrestle back the creative initiative from the book publishers and also beef up their non-fiction output.  Every new magazine should ask a new question, shock a different reader and stop and make you think.  Short stories and magazines are a great format to blog about and by giving us something to argue about, maybe we can try and convert some more of those SF fans into magazine readers.  There might not be enough SF bloggers to put short fiction publishing back where it was but maybe we can stop the rot and make these magazines exciting again rather than largely loved but equally unread dinosaurs.

Comments

[Ian Sales]

I wonder if your suggestions are not contradictory. In order to survive, magazines need as large a circulation as possible. Which means their contents must appeal to as many people as possible. Publishing edgy, shocking fiction might well alienate most of a magazine's readers - by definition, it's not "lowest common denonminator".

Perhaps all that's left is niche publishing and "long tail" readers. Perhaps all a magazine can hope for is a relatively comfortable existence in a small niche market...

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I don't think there's a contradiction. I'm suggesting a change of emphasis.

At the moment they're being bland so as to not alienate anyone. Now, demonstrably this does not work as a strategy. They're losing almost one in ten readers every year in some cases. I think this is because they've allowed themselves to become isolated from the larger SF community.

I think that the way forward is to integrate that community more thoroughly and get people excited again. At the moment more and more heavy SFF readers don't even bother looking at short fiction, I'm suggesting that they need to appeal to their niche audience more seeing as blandness is simply not a workable strategy any more.

[Martin]

Re: point one. There is also the drift into silence of Short Form.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I'd be tempted to say that that could also be down to a drift away from LJ as the focus for fannish activity. I remember reading about the arrival of the Third Row and how they'd give you not just their email addresses but also their LJ handles. You wouldn't see that now I think.

but yes... there's less and less discussion of short form stuff online.

[James]

I'm not as pessimistic as you on points one and two. Surely Cory's point is to create an online buzz, to get people looking at reviews of SF magazines? Yes most people will be searching for how to watch lost for free online, but they might stay and read other stuff.

As for the footprint of SF blogs, I agree, it is quite small, but it only takes a link from BoingBoing or Slashdot or Digg to send things crazy for a short while.

Also "a lot of SF websites operate on very long publication schedules" is something that using bloggers could avoid.

And no, I've never been offered a review copy of a magazine (yet I have been offered all sorts of other crazy stuff).

[Liam]

In many ways I prefer short fiction. My introduction to SF was when I bought some short story collections as a kid.

Courting controversy and the like might work. But for me I wish the emphasis was on getting stories out and not on the method of distribution. It might be fairly straightforward for a SF expert to track down the best mag's for short fiction, but for a relative newcomer it's a nightmare. It's newcomers that are needed to keep the short story market alive.

I am probably stupid but, many SF readers have tech/science leanings so I can't see why SF stories could not find their way into tech/gaming magazines and comics and their associated blogs. Playboy did it with nudes and some of the new journo stuff so why not something similar with SF and tech publishing.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

James --

How often do Slashdot, BoingBoing or Digg link to something on the SF scene? it's vanishingly rare and tends to be not because of the inherent value of SF and more to do with side stuff like copyright discussions and so on. In fact, Doctorow is probably one of the younger Sf authors that engages least with the online SF scene.

Anyhow, I think it's wildly optimistic to think that a boingboing link to a review of a piece of short fiction would do much to drive sales. Firstly, you'd never get a BoingBoing link to a review and secondly I think people would then promptly go back to looking for episodes of lost.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who hasn't been offered free SF mags. You'd think that would be quite easy to do too, particularly if they targeted bloggers rather than review sites. Hmmm.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Liam --

Actually, I find the short fiction SF scene to be very inaccessible largely because there's no sense of the different mags having any kind of identity. In the old days you'd buy New Worlds and they'd have an agenda and you'd agree or disagree with the agenda and make the choice based on that opinion.

Now it's all of these shadowy editors that don't have much of an online presence and who make decisions almost as if they're trying to keep their magazines neutral. A neophyte on the SF scene would have NO way of distinguishing between magazines, as someone who has an interest in such matters, it's hard enough for me. I subscribed to Interzone because it's in the UK and they have Clute... beyond that it was a blind guess as to the quality of the content.

You're right about the tech people being a natural market but they've shown a complete lack of interest in us. Closest is when Wired recommends an SF novel. They're really shit that way... mind you, it's not as though I have much of an interest in gadgets, I never write about them.

I think Paul Raven was involved with a site that was trying to merge the SF and science scenes... not sure how that's working out for him.

[Liam]

Jonathan,

This Wikipedia entry sums up a magazine that I enjoyed as a kid:

"OMNI developed a dual personality during its life. In its early run, its high circulation (permitting payment for stories many times higher than that of other science fiction magazines), coupled with some outstanding fiction editors, allowed it to attract prominent speculative fiction writers, and it published a number of stories that have become genre classics, such as Orson Scott Card's "Unaccompanied Sonata", William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" including Johnny Mnemonic" and George R. R. Martin's "The Way of Cross and Dragon". The magazine also serialized Stephen King's novel Firestarter, and featured a short story, "The End of the Whole Mess". OMNI also brought the works of numerous painters to the attention of a large audience, such as H.R. Giger and De Es Schwertberger.
The bulk of the magazine, meanwhile, profiled science and scientists with a visionary, gonzo-style science journalism rooted in story-telling, credibility, and authorial voice. OMNI 's Q&A Interviews constituted a collective oral history of 20th-century science told by the world's greatest thinkers in areas from evolutionary biology to chaos theory to space. OMNI celebrated science with an edgy entertaining patter and irreverence. OMNI 's pro-technology orientation has been compared to the later magazine Wired."

I'd be happy for a magazine like that.

[Ian Sales]

When it comes to genre fiction, readers now appear to value immersion highest of all the elements of a novel. There's not much room for immersion in a short story. Perhaps it's time to bring back serialised novels...

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Liam --

Yes! I remember Omni. I didn't read it regularly but I remember buying an issue when they announced Star Trek Voyager. I think it was a bit like Playboy back in the old days in that it made the most of its high circulation to also have decent short stories in it. I agree I'd like to see that kind of magazine return too.

Wired does my head in as a magazine because while it frequently has interesting stories, the magazine itself is practically unreadable because of all the adverts. It seems like the mag's 50% adverts and of the 50% remaining, way too much of it is photos. Gah!

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Ian --

"Immersion"... that's the word I was looking for last night. I never immerse myself in a novel.

I think you could be right, I think a lot of magazines are creeping slowly towards longer stories and novelettes.

[Martin]

How often do Slashdot, BoingBoing or Digg link to something on the SF scene? it's vanishingly rare

Really? I quite often see SF links on BoingBoing and when I used to read Slashdot all the books they covered were either tech or SF.

[Mark Pontin]

'You're right about the tech people being a natural market but they've shown a complete lack of interest in us. Closest is when Wired recommends an SF novel. They're really shit that way...'

Pay attention. MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW has fiction in its current issue:
Greg Egan - "Steve Fever"

Bruce Sterling - "The Interoperation"

Earlier this year TECH REVIEW also published Dave Marusek's "Osama, Call Home," which F&SF has just reprinted in its latest issue as the lead story.

All these stories are substantial efforts by leading writers, taking the "edgy, non-anonymous" themes and approaches posters upthread have called for.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Thanks for reminding me Mark, I was going to blog about that.

They not only do cover decent SF writers, they also make their stuff available online. I realised this because I bought the new F&SF today and, aside from the desire to break my notional cane across the back of one of the reviews in a Moliere-stylee, I did pick up that nugget of information.

[Kaolin Fire]

GUD Magazine is trying to enter the conversation with the life and times of a startup magazine. We're about to birth our third issue (at 2 x year), and we're trying to consider any reasonable (or potentially reasonable) way to boost circulation / word of mouth / support for our contributors / etc. :)

We've sent PDF copies of the magazine to a number of people we've found randomly "on teh intartubes" doing reviews of short fiction. And we regularly send PDF (and hard, depending) copies to the main review sites (Best SF, The Fix, SF Site, Whispers, Black Gate, NewPages, SciFi UK Review, SFRevu, Tangent ONline).

And we're honestly happy to send a PDF to anyone with an interest and some sort of following that would like to discuss the magazine (or the short stories, poetry, art) within. Dead tree copies... on a case by case basis, because we have a very small print run at the moment. But we'll definitely consider it. We know we need to "get our name out".

[Kaolin Fire]

Er, and you (anyone, of course) can email me at kaolin@gudmagazine.com, or editor@gudmagazine.com.