Profitability of genre ezines and the future of genre print magazines

[ellen_datlow]

Simon Owens has run this piece on bloggasm:
The rise of the genre ezine: Will it ever find a profitable model?

Comments

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

I don't care if it's an e-zine or a print zine--I just wish you were editing something with a SCIFICTION budget again. I miss that magazine quite a bit. I haven't read a Waldrop story in ages!

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

From your mouth to someone with money's ear :-)

[lonfiction.livejournal.com]

Funny you mention HW. I just cracked open HOWARD WHO? last night and re-read "The Ugly Chickens" and "Der One Vit Der Long Germannamenschnitzel". His writing just holds up so well.

My first Waldrop exposure was reading the retrospective that came out last year...now I'm an addict/evangelist. :)

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Howard's work is wonderful. I'm always pushing him to write stuff for me but he's currently actually trying to finally finish a couple of novels...
He's also writing a nonfiction wrap up of the sf/f movies of the year for the Nebula award antho I'm editing this year.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

"Ugly Chickens" is my favorite story period. Howard is in my pantheon of writers around whom I would lose the ability to converse intelligently. Lucius Shepherd being another. I was first exposed to both writers by SCIFICTION. And many more that I am not thinking of at the moment.

[lonfiction.livejournal.com]

Neat! I'll be looking forward to all of the above.

[lonfiction.livejournal.com]

When I started reading last night I told myself I was going to try to be aware of any clues to what it is about the story I like so much--and more to the point, how he did it! Wasn't two paragraphs in before I was too wrapped up in it all over again to do any analyzing. :)

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

The best stories are like that. I try to start editing and get caught up all over again.

[zhai.livejournal.com]

That is a great overview. Thanks for posting the link. I got it from scott_h_andrews but I think he got it from you.

Your comments are very interesting about how SciFi didn't properly actualize the potential in the new IP being generated by SciFiction. I could see this happening for two reasons:

1) there is already a market saturation in old award-winning science fiction, so they have enough material to be making movies and television shows from short stories that are genre classics rather than new material;

2) current genre writers don't have the Hollywood connections that older generation genre writers had, so we don't see as many of them selling short stories for options -- and this is really sad, because IMHO the best movies actually come from short stories, not from novels. A corollary to this would be the glut of creative people who now directly enter Hollywood or television wanting to create their own material whole.

But I know from personal connections that there are genre-based Hollywood agents out there actively looking for material -- so I suspect it's a disconnect factor? Perhaps another argument for genre not being quite so insular...

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't agree much with either #1 or #2. I've been in touch with movie and tv producers and they're ALWAYS looking for new work (whether they actually USE it or not is a different issue) and always picking my and other editorial brains for new material being published.

Current genre writers have more connections than most of the older generation. Only a handful of the older generation got tv shows or movies made of their work. Some, like Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, and a handful of others did because they worked IN the movie industry and lived in LA. How many east coast writers had tv shows created from their stories or novels? Did Asimov have movies or tv series or episodes made from his many short stories? No.
Currently, most genre writers have agents and/or film agents (some do both) who are pushing their work more than ever before.

Lots of short story writers today have sold their work --some even to the SCIFI Channel: John Varley and Jim Patrick Kelly are two I can think of off-hand. The fact is, the SCIFI Channel which is in the same building as SCIFI.COM and are sometimes on the same floor, dropped the ball.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Dropped the ball, nuthin'. Maybe I'm still cranky about the time I wasted talking to SCI FI reps while I was working for the official magazine, but every indication I got from the people actually at the Channel was that they wanted us to shut up and take what was offered. After all, why spend actual money on making original programming such as Exposure (a short film compilation program that I still miss, even if YouTube has made it obsolete) when Skiffy could run Canadian film industry workfare like Lexx or Stargate: Atlantis and failed series that nobody else was crazy enough to take (anyone remember Black Scorpion or The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne)...and the fans would watch it no matter how bad it was?

Twenty years ago, I snapped and turned into the charming denizen of the underworld you know today when a fan told me that she was continuing to watch the first season of Next Generation because "it sucks, but I'm going to support it so that it'll get better." When I pointed out that all this did was encourage producers to pump out more crap because they thought the crap was what fans wanted, she stopped talking to me. The difference between the me of 1988 and the me of 2008 is that I've stopped wasting my time and annoying the pig.

The Last Hurrah?

[(Anonymous)]

Doubtless the last award nomination to go to a SciFiction story. "There's a Hole in the City" published almost 2 1/2 years ago was just named to the short list (winners already decided) of the much delayed Gaylactic Spectra 2005/6 short form. Thank you once again for having published it.

Rick Bowes

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

Hell, I miss Omni. I wish GUD could get articles like they got, even if we don't do the full-color glossies. Academic papers look great with black and white line graphs and such. :)

Budget, budget, budget...

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

Great article. Alas, I think everyone will miss the various e-zines.

Re: The Last Hurrah?

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Hi Rick,
I saw that and forgot to congratulate you --because it was so long ago--you're very welcome. Thank you for writing it.

Inferno

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Ok. Just posted a review on Amazon. I'm going to have to think about the book further before I post one on Whispers of Wickedness and my own livejournal.

Re: Inferno

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much, Tim. Please let me know when you post in the other places.