Like many people, I received news from Ellen Datlow on November 12 that www.scifi.com was shutting down Sci Fiction - its high quality, well-paying, well-read speculative fiction webzine. Having asked Ellen to Brisbane to teach at Clarion South 2005 and seeing the enormous impact she had on the students (not to mention also spending quality bar-time with her at the Glasgow Worldcon) my annoyance went beyond my self-interest as a writer watching another wonderful market sink into oblivion. It's a tremendous sight seeing Ellen work one-on-one with a writer to help make a good story great. She's a classy editor.
I've read a lot of the comments about the - pending - closure. I've tried to keep up with what is possibly the most fitting response -The Ellen Datlow/Sci Fiction Project. Go read some of it when you have time. And now I'm trying to work out what's to be learnt from the venture - as a writer and as an editor. When I first heard the news three things went through my mind - that sux; poor Ellen; and, I'm not surprised. And I honestly wasn't. I had always thought that Sci Fiction was a bright billboard for the Science Fiction Channel to shout out to everyone in the genre writing community how wonderful they were. Clearly it was a successful venture, attracting high-profile and interesting new authors alike, receiving multiple awards - including a Hugo for Ellen and one for the site itself this year - and generating a lot of website traffic. And seemingly, the billboard having done its job, is being pulled down.
Unlike many people, I don't think Sci Fiction can tell us much at all about web publishing as a business because it was clearly never set up that way. Three things suggest that. First, there was little in the way of banner advertising supporting the site. That could have been from a lack of takeup but I doubt it. It feels as if the advertising was kept to a minimum to enhance the reading experience. Secondly, the pay rate was too high. This to me was the clearest indication that Sci Fiction wouldn't continue in the same form over the longer term. In anyone's language, 20 (US) cents a word for original fiction is a lot of money. To be fair, they didn't have the cost overheads of a print mag but they didn't have the income either. But that rate almost assured there'd be a sesmic shift in focus at some stage - I just wish it could have come later, much later. Finally, rather than change the model by cutting the pay-rate, publishing timetable or shifting to subscriptions they simply dropped the webzine altogether.
My observations on the closure of Sci Fiction fall into a few different (and random) areas:
1. Sci Fiction can't tell us much about the financial realities of web publishing. My gut feeling is that its closure was as much a marketing decision as a strictly economic one. Perhaps when they started six years ago they had a bucket of money to devote to the project and knew it would run out eventually, so in that sense it may have been a financial decision. But I don't think we can get a lot out of examining Sci Fiction as a business because it didn't seem like it was run as one but rather as a promotional tool for a larger enterprise.
2. Writers should grab opportunities while they can. From time to time a new 'Big Venture' will come along. As long as it's legit don't spend any timing wondering whether it's too good to be true. I've got the feeling there's an example of this currently happening in Australian mainstream magazine publishing. Get while the going is good, folks.
3. Nature abhors a vacuum. The editorial of issue six of Ticonderoga Online describes Sci Fiction as the 'net's flagship webzine'. And they're right. Clearly Sci Fiction was the best webzine around. The good pay-rate, quality stories and great authors combined with Ellen's quality editing meant Sci Fiction was top of the heap. Now that it's gone Strange Horizons probably fills that niche. But it's closer to the rest of the pack than Sci Fiction was. If there's no new 'Big Venture' in web publishing in 2006 or if no one finally cracks the holy grail of making web publishing work financially, stay on the lookout for a major shake-up of genre webzines in 2006/07, including possible ventures from the big three mags - Asimovs, F&SF and Analog.
4. Good editing doesn't need to be done on paper. Even though there are still a few disbelievers, Sci Fiction is a clear demonstration that good writing isn't confined to marks made on dead trees.
I've read a lot of the comments about the - pending - closure. I've tried to keep up with what is possibly the most fitting response -The Ellen Datlow/Sci Fiction Project. Go read some of it when you have time. And now I'm trying to work out what's to be learnt from the venture - as a writer and as an editor. When I first heard the news three things went through my mind - that sux; poor Ellen; and, I'm not surprised. And I honestly wasn't. I had always thought that Sci Fiction was a bright billboard for the Science Fiction Channel to shout out to everyone in the genre writing community how wonderful they were. Clearly it was a successful venture, attracting high-profile and interesting new authors alike, receiving multiple awards - including a Hugo for Ellen and one for the site itself this year - and generating a lot of website traffic. And seemingly, the billboard having done its job, is being pulled down.
Unlike many people, I don't think Sci Fiction can tell us much at all about web publishing as a business because it was clearly never set up that way. Three things suggest that. First, there was little in the way of banner advertising supporting the site. That could have been from a lack of takeup but I doubt it. It feels as if the advertising was kept to a minimum to enhance the reading experience. Secondly, the pay rate was too high. This to me was the clearest indication that Sci Fiction wouldn't continue in the same form over the longer term. In anyone's language, 20 (US) cents a word for original fiction is a lot of money. To be fair, they didn't have the cost overheads of a print mag but they didn't have the income either. But that rate almost assured there'd be a sesmic shift in focus at some stage - I just wish it could have come later, much later. Finally, rather than change the model by cutting the pay-rate, publishing timetable or shifting to subscriptions they simply dropped the webzine altogether.
My observations on the closure of Sci Fiction fall into a few different (and random) areas:
1. Sci Fiction can't tell us much about the financial realities of web publishing. My gut feeling is that its closure was as much a marketing decision as a strictly economic one. Perhaps when they started six years ago they had a bucket of money to devote to the project and knew it would run out eventually, so in that sense it may have been a financial decision. But I don't think we can get a lot out of examining Sci Fiction as a business because it didn't seem like it was run as one but rather as a promotional tool for a larger enterprise.
2. Writers should grab opportunities while they can. From time to time a new 'Big Venture' will come along. As long as it's legit don't spend any timing wondering whether it's too good to be true. I've got the feeling there's an example of this currently happening in Australian mainstream magazine publishing. Get while the going is good, folks.
3. Nature abhors a vacuum. The editorial of issue six of Ticonderoga Online describes Sci Fiction as the 'net's flagship webzine'. And they're right. Clearly Sci Fiction was the best webzine around. The good pay-rate, quality stories and great authors combined with Ellen's quality editing meant Sci Fiction was top of the heap. Now that it's gone Strange Horizons probably fills that niche. But it's closer to the rest of the pack than Sci Fiction was. If there's no new 'Big Venture' in web publishing in 2006 or if no one finally cracks the holy grail of making web publishing work financially, stay on the lookout for a major shake-up of genre webzines in 2006/07, including possible ventures from the big three mags - Asimovs, F&SF and Analog.
4. Good editing doesn't need to be done on paper. Even though there are still a few disbelievers, Sci Fiction is a clear demonstration that good writing isn't confined to marks made on dead trees.
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roberthoge- Robert Hoge
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